Man, must have been pretty disheartening for the other semi-finalist to realize he was bringing a deck that wins by staying at 5 life and being immune to non flyers...Against a deck that gives haste to 5/5 flyers from the graveyard.
its pretty amazing that he got that far with form of the dragon in the first place, really shows how much faster the game is nowadays, FOTG would be unplayable garbage now.
@@empty5013 It is an Enduring Ideal prison deck. The whole point is to stall out the game as long as possible with various enchantments that make it continually harder for your opponent to kill you, and then play Enduring Ideal so you can get a hard-lock going with the cards that you tutor. It is basically just an old version of what Modern-day Enchantress decks are trying to do: stall with Ghostly Prison, Blood Moon, Runed Halo etc., until you can get a lock via Solitary Confinement and some repeatable Draw effects in play, and the tutor is Sterling Grove instead of Enduring Ideal. Just because the shell looks a little different doesn't mean the strategy is "unplayable garbage".
@@Kurse_of_Kall i didnt call the strategy unplayable garbage and i didn't call the deck bad either, i was musing on how power level changes, whats your problem?
This was really interesting to see how MTG solved this problem completly differently from for expample YGO. Not really sure if I like how it is done, but as this rule probably is taken into consideration when designing cards, I don't see an objective problem with. To clarify for anyone interested: You can not "fail to find" in YGO currently. If you activate a card and don't have enough targets, it counts as an illegal activation and you rewind back to the point before the card was activated, which results in a Play Error penalty.
I'm not a big fan of that one either...it being one of my least favorite things about YGO competitive. Keeping a mental note of every single card in your deck is a pain in the ass...especially back in the day when your deck is probably mostly made of 30 one-ofs.
That's not stricly true. If a mandatory effect requires you to search for a card (like Sangan) and you don't have any cards that fit, you announce that you cannot fulfil its effect and you opponent gets a chance to verify it by looking through your deck.
@@TheGloriousLobsterEmperor wait, technically i dont think that's true. if you chain an effect to crop circles, such as one which mills from your opponent's deck, you can potentially remove all valid targets for summoning. like, if there's one alien in his deck, and you mill it out on chain link 2, the crop circles would resolve to deal 2000, right?
@@ancientswordrage Idunno, that was what people were doing in modern around the time of Time Spiral or a little after. They would use mindslaver and academy ruins to lock you after that. i guess this fell out of favor when they started printing cards like Ugin which could just power through wins with sheer value instead of combos. i mean im sure it fell out of favor BEFORE then, but ugin is what people use the urza lands for now i think. among others im sure. idk.
@@Lowkey-NoPressure also spending turn 4 getting your tron lands in hand and not even on the battlefield means your probably gonna lose if you didnt already have tron
I got in around 5E/Visions and Weatherlight was the first time I got to experience a new set's release. Lots of memories here, like my mom buying me a booster box of Urza's Saga (didn't get the Academy but I did get Time Spiral and Cradle)
Rules quirks like this are part of the reason I fell in love with Magic. Thinking outside of the box used to be so much more rewarding with designs like this.
man, rules like that give me context for the kind of players that magic attracts. As someone who plays both mtg and yugioh, i thought that mtg tournaments had a cardshark problem, but with rules like that it kinda makes sense. the stated quality rule is really cool.
I love this guy. I've been nursing and reinventing an Enter the Infinite deck for years now because of some unusual yet incredibly fun ways of playing it (or sometimes not playing it, but using it). It's the sole reason I've stuck to MTG for 25 years now, the ability to make some cards do some very interesting things.
I must admit, sometimes just because your audio was so quite, it was quite difficult to actually make out what you're saying. You seem to have adopted a quieter voice for your newer videos as opposed to your older ones, where you were always legible. I hope you speak louder in your next one, still loved this!
Being that I have more recently been introduced to Magic the Gathering (going on 30 years old soon) I wish I was introduced sooner and was a Patreon Supporter earlier. Keep up the great work Sam. I look forward to all that you do.
Hi Sam! I'm a big fan of your videos in which you analyze a magic artist in great depth. Recent sets have seen an explosion in artists with unique styles. Off the top of my head: Sam Guay, Dominic Mayer, Anato Finnstark, Wylie Beckert, Rovina Cai. I'd love to see a video on one of more of them. Alternatively, some analysis of why were seeing more artists like them. I think it comes down to people seeking novelty - Jonas De Rio's art for Abrade is competent but not very different from hundreds of other artworks, and this primes people to enjoy and appreciate the new Abrade by Dominik Mayer. I think its useful for explaining to people why painters moved from highly faithful representations a la the old masters to more abstract art.
gifts seems like such a fun card dont get to play it often as i mostly just play commander but i do enjoy playing its distant cousin realms uncharted in my titania deck its basically a green version of the card but only gets lands and although nowhere near as good is allot of fun to play
The explanation of the fail-to-find rule is very funny as a Yu-Gi-Oh player, because the hypotheticals about what you might do to prove you don't have any targets, presented with reason as ridiculous, are exactly what that game's broken rules insist upon.
Grate video on one of the most complex cards in magic, Gifts Ungiven!! I love these kind of analysis videos that are devoted to one particular card. That explain the card from a game-play perspective and also highlighting the history behind it. Can you pleas make a similar video on the card Gush. In my opinion one of the most deceiving cards in magic. Recently I have been playing more and more pauper because of its affordability and complexity. Unfortunately for me Gush is no longer in the format because of its power-level. It surprised me at fist because when I saw the card for the fits time, I taught the drawback was to grate to make the card playable. But hey its no longer legal so it must be broken in some way that I don’t get. Later I found out about it’s shear power and it is now one of my favorite cards (that I can no longer play)😔. Its power-level was deserving to the casual player (me) and maybe to the game-designer that made the card. I don’t know everything about this card. So I would love to see tour take on the topic! P.S. Keep up the good work. And happy new year!
I've been playing magic since I was 5 back in 2008. I only play really with my family and friends. Occasionally ill play with some others but I've always like the home brewed or table top format.
Big brain plays. Play demonic tutor, pick up your entire deck, thumb through it, stare your opponent in the eyes and say "fail to find", and then shuffle your deck.
Can somebody explain to me how gifts ungiven makes yosei trigger? The card reads “When Yosei dies…” so wouldn’t he have to die, rather than just have to be put into a graveyard via gifts ungiven to trigger? I’m sure I’m missing something here, so if anyone could explain this interaction I’d greatly appreciate it
I believe it's because of how certain cards used to be worded. Where they would say sent the GY or something instead of dying. It was a problem with Dragon's Egg IIRC
Gifts Ungiven does not cause Yosei to trigger. Karsten wanted the dragons in his graveyard rather than in his hand because, with Goryo's Vengeance, he could reanimate them *and* give them haste on the same turn, as to avoid losing them to Asahara's Confiscate.
Yeah you can Gifts for just one card and they still have to put it in your yard, I think it's just one of those very small things to get the 2nd dragon. I can't remember what GY hate he might have been playing around, perhaps he wanted a spare 5/5 just in case.
Since Gifts for 2 has become pretty common because of Unburial Rites it's hard to get across just how hype this play was at the time. Listen to excited BDM was. He's a knowledgeable, skilled player so imagine being a PTQ grinder or FNM player or just a casual viewer seeing this live. It's one of the all time great Pro Tour plays for a reason.
I love Gifts Ungiven. we need more new cards with interesting complicated decisions. there's the colorshifted/typeshiftex Realms Uncharted. there's newish Signal the Clans and Burning-Rune Demon. and the art & card name of Gifts are great too.
the "Fail to Find" rule is such an interesting part of Magic I know why the rule exists, and I respect it, but it's pretty funny that Gifts says to find four cards with different names, and you fail to find more than two I just imagine the opponent raising their eyebrow and asking "really? in the 40 cards left in your deck, all of them are either Ryusai, the Falling Star or Yosei, the Morning Star?"
yeah i'm not fond of this. it's scheming the rules and just because it's allowed doesn't mean it's in good intentions of how the game is meant to be played. To me, it's just flat out cheating to manipulate the mechanics of the game to your favor despite the obvious parameters set before you.
@@kincaid9134 This is the good thing about analogue games, if you and your friends don't like the rule, you can just decide that it doesn't apply. Luckily though, most high level players do like this kind of weird thing, less "cheating" and more trying to find the weird niche applications of rules that give them an edge. It really just depends on your vibe on it.
The newer printings of the card read "Search your library for up to four cards with different names and reveal them..." . So it makes the possibility of finding any amount of cards clear. Unfortunately we can't do anything about the printed text on old printings. This is kind of common. I like to highlight the Lightning Bolt case, which started as "Lightning bolt does 3 damage to one target", then changed to "Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage to target creature or player", to clarify the possible targets that could be target at that time. Then Planeswalker were introduced and we had a weird rule that they could be targeted, even they weren't creatures or players. Today we circled back to "Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage to any target", very close to the original. For the up-to-date version we should always search for the "oracle text", which can be found in many card search websites, like scryfall or the official gatherer.
Really loved the interview with Frank Karsten. In my dream world, getting Kibler to talk about his famous Armadillo Cloak moment would be awesome. Keep up the inspiring work!
@@zga042 i just learned about that today. Young Brian Kiebler won a championship with a Riss the redeemed carrying an armadillo cloak aura. Something "janky" in the pro environment which cemented him as the "Dragonmaster" !
The best episodes of RS are the ones like this, it's soo hard to find "good plays" videos that arnt "oh wow he top decked the one out..." I want to know WHY a play was soo good and how that okay forever changed magic
I love that this was covered. It was a ruling that I loved when they outright changed it on the Modern Masters reprint, but it made people angry when I did it in person. I did it in Storm more than once to just drop PiF and Grapeshot, and had a judge called more than once because of it. It also happened playing UR Gifts Tron a few years ago. (grave hate as just gotten too good to play Reanimator in Modern)
@@kingfuzzy2 Modern doesn't really have a dedicated reanimator deck because it doesn't have the pieces necessary to consistently turn 1 (like the reanimator deck in Legacy, which is powered by cards like Entomb and Dark Ritual + all the cheap reanimation spells) - Modern's primary deck of that nature is Creative Reanimator, which is more of a Midrange/Control deck with a very fast combo-y clock via Persist and Indomitable Creativity for Archon of Cruelty. Actually kinda like those old Gifts Ungiven decks, which were pretty Midrange.
I love when you cover little time capsules of Magic’s history like this! It’s so interesting to someone who started playing during Theros and only got really into Magic during BFZ.
I miss the days of Magic where format metagames weren't collectively figured out by the internet in a matter of weeks, allowing players to make it to the finals of Worlds with a homebrew
It's worth mentioning that Magic discussion on the internet had been happening since the late 90's - Magic: The Gathering is younger than the first website, 1993 versus 1991. MTGO, the source of a large amount of netdecking data, had been available for three years when this event happened. Kamigawa-Time Spiral-Ravnica standard was the way it was not because Magic was conducted in a different way than it is now, but because it was a standard format with a ludicrous number of cards and strategies that were all fairly balanced - it was full of bizarre build-around cards and strange interactions that could be capitalized on. There was no oppressive monolith that you could mathematically find after analyzing a few months worth of league dumps, no small handful of mythic rares that were just head-and-shoulders above everything else. There's nothing stopping such a thing from happening again, except perhaps the perception of players that it's not worth brewing in this day and age - and of course, R&D's general acceptance of that "small handful of busted cards and a bunch of chaff" status quo.
Might be a year later, but I've only been playing magic for about a year, and that's exactly what I think. Most of the time there are just popular decks that see slight variations, and no one really uses their own complete homebrew.
There's no "fail to find" in Yugioh. So, at least in the way back when, your opponent got to look through your deck to make sure no valid search targets existed.
@@danielwappner1035 I think what he's saying is that you cannot intentionally activate an effect that makes you search for something you cannot find (as that becomes an illegal move since it doesn't change the game state), but if something outside of your intentional activation of said effect were to cause it to trigger independently, that is still legal.
Quite the sick play by Frank. Though I am familiar with the ruling, I didn't even notice that "different names" qualified as such a quality, and even if I did I would've totally overlooked this interaction in the heat of the battle. For him to come up with the play in the heat of a game 5 world semifinal battle is mad impressive.
Lol, while i was watching this, a friend sent me a picture of this card, and asked me why no one is playing this in commander. I told him to keep watching and let me finish the video too.
This channel never fails to deliver the highest quality mtg content there is. Loved having an actual interview with the player in question, great stuff!
I know it's sarcasm but for the record, your opponent has to choose two cards to put in the graveyard, it's not a "may". The reason failing to find works with Gifts Ungiven (and specifically in this case) is because you're not just searching for two cards with different names--you're searching for four cards with different names, two of which happen to not be in your deck.
Frank Karsten always struck me as such a humble and honest guy. He would have been my first choice for a pro team if I had ever really attempted to go pro, simply because the maths he could provide for the numbers of cards in deck construction, especially lands, is incredibly difficult. My brother is an Oxford graduate and maths PhD and even he told me that to really find out how many mana sources of each color you need if you want to factor in drawing multiples - but not too many too early - the right multiples and the right untapped sources early (for example: Early untapped green mana for ramp spells/mana dorks) is really tough and requires very advanced maths.
As a Yu-Gi-Oh player, I can't help but be fascinated by that rule - in Yu-Gi-Oh, you're not allowed to search for a card if no such card exists in your deck, and doing so is considered an illegal action. It's always pretty cool to see different games explore rules differently.
Can't that make you accidentally doing something illegal simply because you don't remeber how many of a certain card you have? The Evolving Wilds example is one where it's perfectly possible to have no more basic lands in your deck and you just lost count.
@@kukuc96 at that point since the activation of the card that searches is illegal, the card is returned to your hand, and a warning is given if a judge was called in this scenario (since it is up to you to keep track of how many of a certain card you have), the gameplay then proceeds from there
I love Gifts Ungiven, probably my favorite card as well. I had a RUW firemane angel deck (kamigawa+ravnica standard) and it utterly lost to the combo decks at the time (did destroy aggro and control, but combo was more prevalent), but I loved the many decision points and the clever ways I could use Gifts. Didn't win any tournaments with the deck, but FNM was always a blast and the regulars really hated seeing my Gifts packages.
I find the contrast between Magic the Gathering, and another card game I am far more familiar with, YuGiOh. In YuGiOh, there is no such ruling. If you could not find a card, the card cannot be activated. This results in the very humorous card, Crop Circles. You see, Crop Circles has you send any number of monsters you control to the graveyard to find an Alien with a level equal to the total level of the cards you sent and take it straight from your deck onto the field. A seemingly boring card. But of note is its next line: *"If you fail to find a monster to Special Summon, you take 2000 damage."* Seemingly innocuous, but once you remember that in YuGiOh, you *must* have a legal target in order to activate the card, you begin to realise something. You can't activate Crop Circles if you can't summon an Alien. If you summon an Alien off Crop Circles, you don't take the damage. What does this mean? It means that Crop Circles has specifically the most nonsensical line of text ever, since the only way for you to take 2000 damage from it is to activate it, and then have your opponent respond with a card that somehow removes *every legal target from your deck before Crop Circles resolves. This is the only known way to take 2000 damage from Crop Circles, a card which should seem so simple is so needlessly complicated.*
I play yugioh but have a mild interest in mtg, and it's really fascinating to see how the power level of certain similar cards between both games varies based on how the games work Gifts Ungiven is very similar to a card in ygo, Painful Choice, and while Gifts was apparently considered strong but not meta warping, Painful Choice is undeniably one of the strongest, most busted cards ygo ever had due to how much that game emphasizes GY manipulation
Gifts was restricted in Vintage, so it is indeed an uber-powerful magic card. Cards of it's caliber are rarely printed today. At the time, Magic was willing to print very powerful card selection tools and limit the options you could use them to get. Now they limit the card selection tools so that the cards you would get with them can be more powerful. Gifts isn't the most broken 4 mana blue instant in Magic history, but i'd guess it's in the top 4 or so. (with FoF and Cryptic Command)
The ending when Karsten talks about Gifts pushing him the get a PhD and then flashing back to his glory days was a wonderful transition and a beautiful way to end the video.
I understand failing to find in a different way. The rules state that we don't have to reveal information about secret zones (e.g. sideboard, deck, hand). To protect this privacy and strategic advantage, we are not required to be truthful to our opponent if they ask us a question (e.g. "What's in your hand?") unless required by an effect. Lying about secret zones can be an effective bluff (e.g. I have a counterspell in my hand), but it's illegal to lie about the board state since it's public information that both players ought to have access to. I understand these qualifications for searching as a way to ensure that the player who is getting the card is following the rules and not lying about it (e.g. revealing the card from Enlightened Tutor to ensure that it's an artifact/enchantment). In the case of failing to find, that can be a form of bluffing since the opponent has no way to verify the information. Interestingly enough, even if they do (you have 1 card left in your library and it's revealed), it's still considered a secret zone which means you aren't compelled to find cards with qualifications.
3:35 Unsleeved decks at tournaments. Just love seeing how any card game was different just over 15 years ago. Now everything is double or triple sleeved because maybe this one common in your deck is going to be a $100 card in two years and you have to 'protect your investment'.
They were sleeved then too. Not sure if you missed it or were watching without audio, but in feature games players were often asked to play without sleeves in order to avoid camera glare. That's what happened here.
Frank is a wonderful man, drafted against him in Netherlands one time and he is just so polite and helpful. Also a great player. Thanks for this wonderful content!
Weird- I would have thought (based on the original text) that if you “failed to find” that would apply to the whole search, and not individual cards. Like you could “fail to find” any cards, but you couldn’t grab two and “fail to find” the rest.
9:58 Ok, that feels about as dirty as the Pithing Needle Borigmous Enraged nonsense. It is rulemongering in a similar vein, yet I also can't really suggest an alternative. Most of the cards I'm designing are careful to sidestep such issues by stating "up to X cards" rather than a solid "search X cards", and leaving stuff with defined values up to cards already revealed. I'd have called a judge on him, though it IS a good use of a loophole. Dirty, but smart.
I 100% agree. If you are required to find 4 cards that meet the requirements and can't, you should fail to find all 4 cards: all or nothing. It's unintuitive and obtuse that you can bend the rule to just find a fraction of the cards and skirt the hard requirement of 4.
@@CanadianBaconPwnage It definitely strikes me as a Yugioh ruling. That being something that changes the rules because of badly designed card(s), either due to something the card does ir a problem a card causes. Automatic infinite loops and their send to grave clause being another example , although far less egregious. I describe it as a Yugioh ruling because Konami has done it multiple times. A card called Swarm of Scarabs can do something when flipped up on the field, then flip itself face down. Now, a card can only flip itself the turn after its played. So, if you play it normally it can set itself, but cant flip itself up. Similar if you play it set already. BUT. Konami did something silly if the card is already face up when your turn starts. Basically: the card sets itself. You can then flip it face up, use its flip effect. And since flipping the card blinks it, youd think it would them be able to set itself for next turn.....right? Wrong. Because Konami said so, its flip down is a static once per turn, regardless of game rules. Other cards can do that just fine, it is just Swarm of Scarabs and similar cards that cant.
I've gotten to "i didn't even know you could do that" and I'm really hoping I'm not too drunk to understand this edit: just needed to pause and get a refresher on goryo's vengence ,and paused at the perfect time for Sam to say Gifts is banned in Commander (as I was looking ton see if it was banned in Commander)
What an incredible video :) I remember learning about "failing to find" during RTR/Theros standard where Loxodon Smiter was cheeky sideboard tech against thoughtseize decks. You can't fail to find with thoughtseize if your opponents only nonland card is loxodon smiter :)
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I wish you a happy new year Rhys!
The perfect gift.
I noticed that you said you have both a MacBook and a Windows desktop. Isn't that inconvenient for you?
did you get that xbox?
@@robbiestrong-morse730 about a year later, I finally got a 360 and everything changed after that.
Man, must have been pretty disheartening for the other semi-finalist to realize he was bringing a deck that wins by staying at 5 life and being immune to non flyers...Against a deck that gives haste to 5/5 flyers from the graveyard.
its pretty amazing that he got that far with form of the dragon in the first place, really shows how much faster the game is nowadays, FOTG would be unplayable garbage now.
@@empty5013 It is an Enduring Ideal prison deck. The whole point is to stall out the game as long as possible with various enchantments that make it continually harder for your opponent to kill you, and then play Enduring Ideal so you can get a hard-lock going with the cards that you tutor. It is basically just an old version of what Modern-day Enchantress decks are trying to do: stall with Ghostly Prison, Blood Moon, Runed Halo etc., until you can get a lock via Solitary Confinement and some repeatable Draw effects in play, and the tutor is Sterling Grove instead of Enduring Ideal. Just because the shell looks a little different doesn't mean the strategy is "unplayable garbage".
@@Kurse_of_Kall i didnt call the strategy unplayable garbage and i didn't call the deck bad either, i was musing on how power level changes, whats your problem?
@@empty5013 Who said I had a problem?
Man, tone has such a hard time coming through on text only mediums.
This was really interesting to see how MTG solved this problem completly differently from for expample YGO. Not really sure if I like how it is done, but as this rule probably is taken into consideration when designing cards, I don't see an objective problem with.
To clarify for anyone interested: You can not "fail to find" in YGO currently. If you activate a card and don't have enough targets, it counts as an illegal activation and you rewind back to the point before the card was activated, which results in a Play Error penalty.
I'm not a big fan of that one either...it being one of my least favorite things about YGO competitive. Keeping a mental note of every single card in your deck is a pain in the ass...especially back in the day when your deck is probably mostly made of 30 one-ofs.
That's not stricly true. If a mandatory effect requires you to search for a card (like Sangan) and you don't have any cards that fit, you announce that you cannot fulfil its effect and you opponent gets a chance to verify it by looking through your deck.
Yes, but that's a very niche case which would have overcomplicated my comment.
Whenever you need to remember YuGiOh's rulings on not failing to find, just remember this simple mantra: Crop Circles' 2000 damage cannot go off.
@@TheGloriousLobsterEmperor wait, technically i dont think that's true. if you chain an effect to crop circles, such as one which mills from your opponent's deck, you can potentially remove all valid targets for summoning. like, if there's one alien in his deck, and you mill it out on chain link 2, the crop circles would resolve to deal 2000, right?
I remember people used to use gifts ungiven + the urza lands + life from the loam and crucible of worlds to make sure they got their urza lands out
What changed?
@@ancientswordrage Idunno, that was what people were doing in modern around the time of Time Spiral or a little after. They would use mindslaver and academy ruins to lock you after that.
i guess this fell out of favor when they started printing cards like Ugin which could just power through wins with sheer value instead of combos. i mean im sure it fell out of favor BEFORE then, but ugin is what people use the urza lands for now i think. among others im sure. idk.
@@Lowkey-NoPressure also spending turn 4 getting your tron lands in hand and not even on the battlefield means your probably gonna lose if you didnt already have tron
Modern didn't exist until five years after Time Spiral...
@@namename8004 what did they used to call it back then... extended?
Amazing to hear Carsten started playing around Tempest. My brother and I got into MTG around the exact same time with Tempest and Urza’s Saga!
I got in around 5E/Visions and Weatherlight was the first time I got to experience a new set's release. Lots of memories here, like my mom buying me a booster box of Urza's Saga (didn't get the Academy but I did get Time Spiral and Cradle)
Can you explain Tempest for someone not knowledgeable of Magic? I didn't understand the significance of that in this video.
Rules quirks like this are part of the reason I fell in love with Magic. Thinking outside of the box used to be so much more rewarding with designs like this.
That intro was possibly the most complex way to say "in 2005", in the true video essay format
Evolving Wilds is BUUUSTED!
go back to shilling shit repacks to your following
Not nearly as broken as Terramorphic Expanse!!
@@TheyCallHimPogo not even legal in historic, to scary for the format
Babe wake up, new Rhystic Studies dropped
Oh, was your hand asleep?
@@skykur yeah my hand fell asleep, your dad was sleeping on top of it and made it go numb
man, rules like that give me context for the kind of players that magic attracts. As someone who plays both mtg and yugioh, i thought that mtg tournaments had a cardshark problem, but with rules like that it kinda makes sense. the stated quality rule is really cool.
I love this guy. I've been nursing and reinventing an Enter the Infinite deck for years now because of some unusual yet incredibly fun ways of playing it (or sometimes not playing it, but using it). It's the sole reason I've stuck to MTG for 25 years now, the ability to make some cards do some very interesting things.
No one can make me love a card like Rhystic Studies, it started here, and includes Goyf and Needle
Your videos want me to get back into magic, amazing work, and Frank Karsten seems like quite the clever player
Beautiful and after this I dove right into Frank Kasten's How Many Lands article. Absolutely a great resource when deck building.
13:55 this dude sounds so smart. Most of us would get overwhelmed and just search for four random good cards, but he loves the mental challenge.
Love your stuff dude, really awesome to hear more coming down the pipe. Thanks and cheers
I was watching again the mind sculptor video and the notification was on point haha
his smile in that moment is exactly the kinda thing that makes me love this game
I must admit, sometimes just because your audio was so quite, it was quite difficult to actually make out what you're saying. You seem to have adopted a quieter voice for your newer videos as opposed to your older ones, where you were always legible. I hope you speak louder in your next one, still loved this!
Being that I have more recently been introduced to Magic the Gathering (going on 30 years old soon) I wish I was introduced sooner and was a Patreon Supporter earlier. Keep up the great work Sam. I look forward to all that you do.
Always a good day with a new rhystic video
thank you for such great videos this year, and happy new year rhystic studies. we all eagerly await more awesome content from you
always love a new video essay from you (comment for the algorithm god)
Thank you for your work in all your videos! I'm looking forward to what the next year will bring, happy new year to you!
i like this topic, and your well researched and well presented work around it.
The content you bring to the platform is so consistently flawless that it's getting boring. X)
Hi Sam! I'm a big fan of your videos in which you analyze a magic artist in great depth. Recent sets have seen an explosion in artists with unique styles. Off the top of my head: Sam Guay, Dominic Mayer, Anato Finnstark, Wylie Beckert, Rovina Cai. I'd love to see a video on one of more of them.
Alternatively, some analysis of why were seeing more artists like them. I think it comes down to people seeking novelty - Jonas De Rio's art for Abrade is competent but not very different from hundreds of other artworks, and this primes people to enjoy and appreciate the new Abrade by Dominik Mayer. I think its useful for explaining to people why painters moved from highly faithful representations a la the old masters to more abstract art.
Cheer to you Sam! Happy new year!
cant wait for next year, i absolutely love your channel
always glad to see more of your content
His little shrug of "nope, failed to find, just two, i guess!"
Very cool story :) Happy New Year! Thanks for all the awesome videos!
playing without sleeves on top level, wow, those were different times for sure
Happy new year man
It's a shame such interesting and uncommon, powerful yet not broken card is still banned in EDH, with all the power creep
That handshake at the end of the set was strong
Are they playing unsleeved at tournament level? 2005 was wild.
Question!
sweet berries ready for two...
But did you get the Xbox 360?
gifts seems like such a fun card dont get to play it often as i mostly just play commander but i do enjoy playing its distant cousin realms uncharted in my titania deck its basically a green version of the card but only gets lands and although nowhere near as good is allot of fun to play
that’s cool bro 👍 never heard of that card until now
The explanation of the fail-to-find rule is very funny as a Yu-Gi-Oh player, because the hypotheticals about what you might do to prove you don't have any targets, presented with reason as ridiculous, are exactly what that game's broken rules insist upon.
Grate video on one of the most complex cards in magic, Gifts Ungiven!! I love these kind of analysis videos that are devoted to one particular card. That explain the card from a game-play perspective and also highlighting the history behind it.
Can you pleas make a similar video on the card Gush. In my opinion one of the most deceiving cards in magic. Recently I have been playing more and more pauper because of its affordability and complexity. Unfortunately for me Gush is no longer in the format because of its power-level. It surprised me at fist because when I saw the card for the fits time, I taught the drawback was to grate to make the card playable. But hey its no longer legal so it must be broken in some way that I don’t get. Later I found out about it’s shear power and it is now one of my favorite cards (that I can no longer play)😔. Its power-level was deserving to the casual player (me) and maybe to the game-designer that made the card. I don’t know everything about this card. So I would love to see tour take on the topic!
P.S. Keep up the good work. And happy new year!
I've been playing magic since I was 5 back in 2008. I only play really with my family and friends. Occasionally ill play with some others but I've always like the home brewed or table top format.
7:49 "in *medias res" (not "in media res")
Ps : Karsten won the first lorcana challenge in Lille… I mean legends are meant to stay legends
Big brain plays. Play demonic tutor, pick up your entire deck, thumb through it, stare your opponent in the eyes and say "fail to find", and then shuffle your deck.
Sorry to to be the one to tell you this but you can't do that since demonic tutor is unconditional, and as such you cannot fail to find
Frank is such a cool guy.
does this rule still apply,.. now the print says 'search for upto' ,.
happy holidays
So what you're saying is that when giving presents, I can fail to find the ones for other people?
LRR cameo, nice
This is why it always feels like people just make shit up when playing this game sometimes 😂
Just when I think I'm getting a grasp on Magic, I see a 500 IQ level play like this. I was right there with the commentators lol
Can somebody explain to me how gifts ungiven makes yosei trigger? The card reads “When Yosei dies…” so wouldn’t he have to die, rather than just have to be put into a graveyard via gifts ungiven to trigger? I’m sure I’m missing something here, so if anyone could explain this interaction I’d greatly appreciate it
I believe it's because of how certain cards used to be worded. Where they would say sent the GY or something instead of dying. It was a problem with Dragon's Egg IIRC
Gifts Ungiven does not cause Yosei to trigger. Karsten wanted the dragons in his graveyard rather than in his hand because, with Goryo's Vengeance, he could reanimate them *and* give them haste on the same turn, as to avoid losing them to Asahara's Confiscate.
@@RhysticStudies Ah ok, thank you very much!
It makes me sad that gifts is banned in commander
god i love OG kamigawa
magnificent
Rules question why did he need 2 dragons cant he just search for one?
Yeah you can Gifts for just one card and they still have to put it in your yard, I think it's just one of those very small things to get the 2nd dragon. I can't remember what GY hate he might have been playing around, perhaps he wanted a spare 5/5 just in case.
Christmas indeed
I love rule loopholes like this
why did he have to find two dragons? does the enduring ideal have an out if there's only one dragon in gy?
Damn... the more you know. :O
EOTFOFYL?
End of turn, Fact or Fiction, You lose
Seems weird that you can turn a find 4 into a find up to 4 by just saying fail to find
I adore Karsten's emotivity when he finds the Gifts line. A little chuckle and a shrug that screams "here goes everything". It's very charming
Since Gifts for 2 has become pretty common because of Unburial Rites it's hard to get across just how hype this play was at the time. Listen to excited BDM was. He's a knowledgeable, skilled player so imagine being a PTQ grinder or FNM player or just a casual viewer seeing this live. It's one of the all time great Pro Tour plays for a reason.
I love Gifts Ungiven. we need more new cards with interesting complicated decisions. there's the colorshifted/typeshiftex Realms Uncharted. there's newish Signal the Clans and Burning-Rune Demon. and the art & card name of Gifts are great too.
there's also Ecological Appreciation from Strixhaven, does something similar
@@halofreakrun1 LOL Nothing like a little Ecological Appreciation after Peer(ing) into the Abyss :P
You probably love Goblin Game too then. LOL!
But Gifts Ungiven see competitive play only when 4 cards you've searched for DO NOT give opponent a real choice
So really there is no decision making
I love the puzzle but what it does to the physical tempo of the game I don't
Thank you Rhystic Studies for giving us this end of year gift.
the "Fail to Find" rule is such an interesting part of Magic
I know why the rule exists, and I respect it, but it's pretty funny that Gifts says to find four cards with different names, and you fail to find more than two
I just imagine the opponent raising their eyebrow and asking "really? in the 40 cards left in your deck, all of them are either Ryusai, the Falling Star or Yosei, the Morning Star?"
yeah i'm not fond of this. it's scheming the rules and just because it's allowed doesn't mean it's in good intentions of how the game is meant to be played. To me, it's just flat out cheating to manipulate the mechanics of the game to your favor despite the obvious parameters set before you.
@@kincaid9134 This is the good thing about analogue games, if you and your friends don't like the rule, you can just decide that it doesn't apply.
Luckily though, most high level players do like this kind of weird thing, less "cheating" and more trying to find the weird niche applications of rules that give them an edge. It really just depends on your vibe on it.
Interesting to not you probably can’t do this on Arena or maybe even MTGO
The newer printings of the card read "Search your library for up to four cards with different names and reveal them..." . So it makes the possibility of finding any amount of cards clear. Unfortunately we can't do anything about the printed text on old printings. This is kind of common. I like to highlight the Lightning Bolt case, which started as "Lightning bolt does 3 damage to one target", then changed to "Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage to target creature or player", to clarify the possible targets that could be target at that time. Then Planeswalker were introduced and we had a weird rule that they could be targeted, even they weren't creatures or players. Today we circled back to "Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage to any target", very close to the original. For the up-to-date version we should always search for the "oracle text", which can be found in many card search websites, like scryfall or the official gatherer.
They can't prove you don't have 40 islands left.
Really loved the interview with Frank Karsten. In my dream world, getting Kibler to talk about his famous Armadillo Cloak moment would be awesome.
Keep up the inspiring work!
Yes please!
Seconding this!
sounds like a great idea. More pros talking about the good ole days of magic!
what's the armadillo cloak moment?
@@zga042 i just learned about that today. Young Brian Kiebler won a championship with a Riss the redeemed carrying an armadillo cloak aura. Something "janky" in the pro environment which cemented him as the "Dragonmaster" !
I "fail to find" a reason to ever skip watching a Rhystic video the day it's uploaded
more like life fails to pay for the cost, so you get to draw the video
Looking for something to watch and, lo and behold, Rystic Studies provides!
Same
The best episodes of RS are the ones like this, it's soo hard to find "good plays" videos that arnt "oh wow he top decked the one out..." I want to know WHY a play was soo good and how that okay forever changed magic
This is up there as one of my favorite tournament moments, next to surviving five copies of ignite memories
I love that this was covered. It was a ruling that I loved when they outright changed it on the Modern Masters reprint, but it made people angry when I did it in person. I did it in Storm more than once to just drop PiF and Grapeshot, and had a judge called more than once because of it. It also happened playing UR Gifts Tron a few years ago. (grave hate as just gotten too good to play Reanimator in Modern)
Modern reanamator is now about winning turn 1
@@kingfuzzy2 Modern doesn't really have a dedicated reanimator deck because it doesn't have the pieces necessary to consistently turn 1 (like the reanimator deck in Legacy, which is powered by cards like Entomb and Dark Ritual + all the cheap reanimation spells) - Modern's primary deck of that nature is Creative Reanimator, which is more of a Midrange/Control deck with a very fast combo-y clock via Persist and Indomitable Creativity for Archon of Cruelty. Actually kinda like those old Gifts Ungiven decks, which were pretty Midrange.
Okay that's odd news to me
I love when you cover little time capsules of Magic’s history like this! It’s so interesting to someone who started playing during Theros and only got really into Magic during BFZ.
I miss the days of Magic where format metagames weren't collectively figured out by the internet in a matter of weeks, allowing players to make it to the finals of Worlds with a homebrew
That's the internet for you
It's worth mentioning that Magic discussion on the internet had been happening since the late 90's - Magic: The Gathering is younger than the first website, 1993 versus 1991. MTGO, the source of a large amount of netdecking data, had been available for three years when this event happened. Kamigawa-Time Spiral-Ravnica standard was the way it was not because Magic was conducted in a different way than it is now, but because it was a standard format with a ludicrous number of cards and strategies that were all fairly balanced - it was full of bizarre build-around cards and strange interactions that could be capitalized on. There was no oppressive monolith that you could mathematically find after analyzing a few months worth of league dumps, no small handful of mythic rares that were just head-and-shoulders above everything else. There's nothing stopping such a thing from happening again, except perhaps the perception of players that it's not worth brewing in this day and age - and of course, R&D's general acceptance of that "small handful of busted cards and a bunch of chaff" status quo.
Might be a year later, but I've only been playing magic for about a year, and that's exactly what I think. Most of the time there are just popular decks that see slight variations, and no one really uses their own complete homebrew.
@@IceTutuolayou always try but it'll be like a kitten fighting a dinosaur
I mean, Displacer Kitten is a pretty good card. You could probably build around it in a way to beat Dinos.
There's no "fail to find" in Yugioh. So, at least in the way back when, your opponent got to look through your deck to make sure no valid search targets existed.
Actually, activating an effect in yugioh that makes you search for something you can't find is an illegal move. Was it not back then?
@@danielwappner1035 _activating_ an effect that makes you search for something you can't find is an illegal move. _resolving_ such an effect is not
@@danielwappner1035 I think what he's saying is that you cannot intentionally activate an effect that makes you search for something you cannot find (as that becomes an illegal move since it doesn't change the game state), but if something outside of your intentional activation of said effect were to cause it to trigger independently, that is still legal.
@@TeeJayLars I don't know a single compulsory effect that makes you search, are there any? Intenionality is a weird word to use lol
@@TeeJayLars I deleted my previous comment, compulsory effects always trigger even if they can't resolve mine was a weird thing to say earlier
You know you’re a good magic player when the commentator says “I didn’t even know you could do that”
Quite the sick play by Frank.
Though I am familiar with the ruling, I didn't even notice that "different names" qualified as such a quality, and even if I did I would've totally overlooked this interaction in the heat of the battle.
For him to come up with the play in the heat of a game 5 world semifinal battle is mad impressive.
Lol, while i was watching this, a friend sent me a picture of this card, and asked me why no one is playing this in commander.
I told him to keep watching and let me finish the video too.
good friend haha
It's a shame really, this card's design is so sweet.
Unfortunately gifts ungiven almost always leaves oppenents in the bad or worse position at best and screwed beyond belief at worse
Shame because muldrotha likes this card alot
This channel never fails to deliver the highest quality mtg content there is. Loved having an actual interview with the player in question, great stuff!
"I failed to find more than 2 cards while searching."
"I failed to choose 2 cards to put into your graveyard."
/s
I know it's sarcasm but for the record, your opponent has to choose two cards to put in the graveyard, it's not a "may". The reason failing to find works with Gifts Ungiven (and specifically in this case) is because you're not just searching for two cards with different names--you're searching for four cards with different names, two of which happen to not be in your deck.
Saw the name and image, knew exactly what story this would be about. Such a legendary moment in competitive history.
Frank Karsten always struck me as such a humble and honest guy. He would have been my first choice for a pro team if I had ever really attempted to go pro, simply because the maths he could provide for the numbers of cards in deck construction, especially lands, is incredibly difficult.
My brother is an Oxford graduate and maths PhD and even he told me that to really find out how many mana sources of each color you need if you want to factor in drawing multiples - but not too many too early - the right multiples and the right untapped sources early (for example: Early untapped green mana for ramp spells/mana dorks) is really tough and requires very advanced maths.
Wake up babe new rhystic studies
As a Yu-Gi-Oh player, I can't help but be fascinated by that rule - in Yu-Gi-Oh, you're not allowed to search for a card if no such card exists in your deck, and doing so is considered an illegal action.
It's always pretty cool to see different games explore rules differently.
Can't that make you accidentally doing something illegal simply because you don't remeber how many of a certain card you have? The Evolving Wilds example is one where it's perfectly possible to have no more basic lands in your deck and you just lost count.
Yeah that's true but there's still edge cases for it like Crop Circles.
@@kukuc96 at that point since the activation of the card that searches is illegal, the card is returned to your hand, and a warning is given if a judge was called in this scenario (since it is up to you to keep track of how many of a certain card you have), the gameplay then proceeds from there
I love Gifts Ungiven, probably my favorite card as well. I had a RUW firemane angel deck (kamigawa+ravnica standard) and it utterly lost to the combo decks at the time (did destroy aggro and control, but combo was more prevalent), but I loved the many decision points and the clever ways I could use Gifts. Didn't win any tournaments with the deck, but FNM was always a blast and the regulars really hated seeing my Gifts packages.
I find the contrast between Magic the Gathering, and another card game I am far more familiar with, YuGiOh. In YuGiOh, there is no such ruling. If you could not find a card, the card cannot be activated. This results in the very humorous card, Crop Circles. You see, Crop Circles has you send any number of monsters you control to the graveyard to find an Alien with a level equal to the total level of the cards you sent and take it straight from your deck onto the field. A seemingly boring card. But of note is its next line: *"If you fail to find a monster to Special Summon, you take 2000 damage."* Seemingly innocuous, but once you remember that in YuGiOh, you *must* have a legal target in order to activate the card, you begin to realise something. You can't activate Crop Circles if you can't summon an Alien. If you summon an Alien off Crop Circles, you don't take the damage.
What does this mean? It means that Crop Circles has specifically the most nonsensical line of text ever, since the only way for you to take 2000 damage from it is to activate it, and then have your opponent respond with a card that somehow removes *every legal target from your deck before Crop Circles resolves. This is the only known way to take 2000 damage from Crop Circles, a card which should seem so simple is so needlessly complicated.*
Here's hoping for a happy new year, and a reprint of Gifts Ungiven in NEO.
Edit: Gifts shall remain Ungiven, for now.
I play yugioh but have a mild interest in mtg, and it's really fascinating to see how the power level of certain similar cards between both games varies based on how the games work
Gifts Ungiven is very similar to a card in ygo, Painful Choice, and while Gifts was apparently considered strong but not meta warping, Painful Choice is undeniably one of the strongest, most busted cards ygo ever had due to how much that game emphasizes GY manipulation
Gifts was restricted in Vintage, so it is indeed an uber-powerful magic card. Cards of it's caliber are rarely printed today. At the time, Magic was willing to print very powerful card selection tools and limit the options you could use them to get. Now they limit the card selection tools so that the cards you would get with them can be more powerful.
Gifts isn't the most broken 4 mana blue instant in Magic history, but i'd guess it's in the top 4 or so. (with FoF and Cryptic Command)
A large part of what makes Painful Choice so strong is it sends to the grave as part of an effect so you can get four death triggers off of it.
@@iBloodxHunterah, so like flash?
The ending when Karsten talks about Gifts pushing him the get a PhD and then flashing back to his glory days was a wonderful transition and a beautiful way to end the video.
I understand failing to find in a different way. The rules state that we don't have to reveal information about secret zones (e.g. sideboard, deck, hand). To protect this privacy and strategic advantage, we are not required to be truthful to our opponent if they ask us a question (e.g. "What's in your hand?") unless required by an effect. Lying about secret zones can be an effective bluff (e.g. I have a counterspell in my hand), but it's illegal to lie about the board state since it's public information that both players ought to have access to.
I understand these qualifications for searching as a way to ensure that the player who is getting the card is following the rules and not lying about it (e.g. revealing the card from Enlightened Tutor to ensure that it's an artifact/enchantment). In the case of failing to find, that can be a form of bluffing since the opponent has no way to verify the information. Interestingly enough, even if they do (you have 1 card left in your library and it's revealed), it's still considered a secret zone which means you aren't compelled to find cards with qualifications.
3:35 Unsleeved decks at tournaments. Just love seeing how any card game was different just over 15 years ago. Now everything is double or triple sleeved because maybe this one common in your deck is going to be a $100 card in two years and you have to 'protect your investment'.
They were sleeved then too. Not sure if you missed it or were watching without audio, but in feature games players were often asked to play without sleeves in order to avoid camera glare. That's what happened here.
Frank is a wonderful man, drafted against him in Netherlands one time and he is just so polite and helpful. Also a great player. Thanks for this wonderful content!
Weird- I would have thought (based on the original text) that if you “failed to find” that would apply to the whole search, and not individual cards.
Like you could “fail to find” any cards, but you couldn’t grab two and “fail to find” the rest.
Never knew gifts could get less than 4, now it makes sense why it’s banned in edh
9:58
Ok, that feels about as dirty as the Pithing Needle Borigmous Enraged nonsense. It is rulemongering in a similar vein, yet I also can't really suggest an alternative. Most of the cards I'm designing are careful to sidestep such issues by stating "up to X cards" rather than a solid "search X cards", and leaving stuff with defined values up to cards already revealed. I'd have called a judge on him, though it IS a good use of a loophole. Dirty, but smart.
I 100% agree. If you are required to find 4 cards that meet the requirements and can't, you should fail to find all 4 cards: all or nothing. It's unintuitive and obtuse that you can bend the rule to just find a fraction of the cards and skirt the hard requirement of 4.
@@CanadianBaconPwnage
It definitely strikes me as a Yugioh ruling. That being something that changes the rules because of badly designed card(s), either due to something the card does ir a problem a card causes. Automatic infinite loops and their send to grave clause being another example , although far less egregious.
I describe it as a Yugioh ruling because Konami has done it multiple times. A card called Swarm of Scarabs can do something when flipped up on the field, then flip itself face down. Now, a card can only flip itself the turn after its played. So, if you play it normally it can set itself, but cant flip itself up. Similar if you play it set already. BUT. Konami did something silly if the card is already face up when your turn starts.
Basically: the card sets itself. You can then flip it face up, use its flip effect. And since flipping the card blinks it, youd think it would them be able to set itself for next turn.....right? Wrong. Because Konami said so, its flip down is a static once per turn, regardless of game rules. Other cards can do that just fine, it is just Swarm of Scarabs and similar cards that cant.
I've gotten to "i didn't even know you could do that" and I'm really hoping I'm not too drunk to understand this
edit: just needed to pause and get a refresher on goryo's vengence ,and paused at the perfect time for Sam to say Gifts is banned in Commander (as I was looking ton see if it was banned in Commander)
What an incredible video :) I remember learning about "failing to find" during RTR/Theros standard where Loxodon Smiter was cheeky sideboard tech against thoughtseize decks. You can't fail to find with thoughtseize if your opponents only nonland card is loxodon smiter :)