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?
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" !
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 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 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 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.
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!
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.
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
9:05 has got to be one of my favourite moments in any of your videos editing in terms of editing. The subject matter, the pure profoundness of it paired with "Sing About Me" playing on the background. Gives me chills everytime.
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.
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!
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 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)
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.
You manage build such a cosy atmosphere that it's so easy to rewatch and enjoy these videos over and over again. I hope you know that we all appreciate these videos, and thank you for making them.
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.
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.
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.
I work in a comics and gaming store, and I adore watching these videos: they explain more about the art and lore which ‘unlocks’ the mechanics in my mind- when I started here I knew most of nothing about the game, but after three years I’m still learning and I genuinely love it- thank you!!
Your episodes highlighting cool/important moments in high level magic play are some of my favorites, so I was super happy to see the subject of this one. Hope there are still more of these to come, too!
This video was beautiful as someone who enjoys the small nuances of magic rules and the fun of piloting decks of your own creations this video felt fantastic. I can't wait to see more videos like this in 2022!
Best Magic channel on the world! I don't even play it but i watch every video! Wish Yu-Gi-Oh content was this good. Unfortunately the game is a bit younger and the highest quality Yu-Gi-Oh UA-camrs probably still don't have a channel.
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.
First drop with my name in the credits! So happy to be a champion of this channel and looking forward to a fantastic 2022 filled with Rhystic Studies content!
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.
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
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'd heard of gifts ungiven and vaguely placed it in that fof category, but the second I read that oracle text I realized what was happening and a smile spread across my face. Incredible.
I was a player who got into modern because of storm, and I hated that I would storm off just to not draw a grapeshot or empty the Warren's. But when Gifts was shown off as a legitimate addition to the deck, I fell in love with the deck all over again. It is such a technical card that I love to problem solve games with. This is equal parts a late Christmas and Birthday gift. Ty Rhystic!
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 :)
3 роки тому
You always find ways to reinvent yourself in these video. Thank you so much Sam!
That was great. You should cover some more plays like that. I think this might be your strong suit, certainly your most entertaining video for me. Thanks!
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.
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.
Lovely piece, Sam the Historian-of-Magic-not-employed-by-WotC. Anyone ever called you that? Watching this, hits me that I’d really care to continue consuming live MtG coverage, particularly high level tournaments, if Wizards &/or other big organisers care to continue. These moments, are just so precious on so many levels. I’d very much love to pull off my own “Gifts for ONLY 2 cards” moments in EDH too!
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.
"with a deck of his own design" basicly what is magic to me, great one We really need a podcast channel doing interview with magic pros and so on about magic moments, id watch that ;D
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.
Awesome video. I love the dives into MTG history and the backstories on cards. Thanks for being one of the main inspirations for my channel!!! Appreciate everything you do!!!
I have learned to love this card through Modern Storm, especially my friend's version. Once he finds one, he knows exactly how to solve the game from there.
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.
![Limits of a [CARDNAME] | The Story of Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pukpaxSBeAE/mqdefault.jpg)
Get NordVPN at www.nordvpn.com/rhysticstudies and use coupon code RHYSTICSTUDIES to get a 2-year plan plus 1 additional month with a huge discount.
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.
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
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.
Thank you Rhystic Studies for giving us this end of year gift.
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
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" !
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.
This is up there as one of my favorite tournament moments, next to surviving five copies of ignite memories
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
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
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 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
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!
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.
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?
9:05 has got to be one of my favourite moments in any of your videos editing in terms of editing. The subject matter, the pure profoundness of it paired with "Sing About Me" playing on the background. Gives me chills everytime.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Saw the name and image, knew exactly what story this would be about. Such a legendary moment in competitive history.
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.
You manage build such a cosy atmosphere that it's so easy to rewatch and enjoy these videos over and over again. I hope you know that we all appreciate these videos, and thank you for making them.
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
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.
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.
OMG ur transitions im so glad i found you two years ago your videos make me think so much deeper about every thing i love u man
I work in a comics and gaming store, and I adore watching these videos: they explain more about the art and lore which ‘unlocks’ the mechanics in my mind- when I started here I knew most of nothing about the game, but after three years I’m still learning and I genuinely love it- thank you!!
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 why is this banned in Commander? I love the art and I would love this in my Araumi list-"
8:56
"... ah. Oh. Oh god."
Yep ... for that
Your episodes highlighting cool/important moments in high level magic play are some of my favorites, so I was super happy to see the subject of this one. Hope there are still more of these to come, too!
This video was beautiful as someone who enjoys the small nuances of magic rules and the fun of piloting decks of your own creations this video felt fantastic. I can't wait to see more videos like this in 2022!
Best Magic channel on the world! I don't even play it but i watch every video!
Wish Yu-Gi-Oh content was this good. Unfortunately the game is a bit younger and the highest quality Yu-Gi-Oh UA-camrs probably still don't have a channel.
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.
Happy New Years, Sam! And thank you for helping to close it out so well
First drop with my name in the credits! So happy to be a champion of this channel and looking forward to a fantastic 2022 filled with Rhystic Studies content!
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.
That intro was possibly the most complex way to say "in 2005", in the true video essay format
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.
Glad I found this video, thank you. Gifts Ungiven has to be one of my top 5 instants ever! Elegant and complex card.
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
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
Anyone else notice the gaming version of 'Sugar we are going down' That was epic! I love all your vids keep up the good work!!
I love this feeling of interesting decisions, which is why Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar is my favourite commander deck by far.
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.
Magic is such an old game, this legendary tournament happened before I was born, and I’m 16. Kinda wild to think about
I'd heard of gifts ungiven and vaguely placed it in that fof category, but the second I read that oracle text I realized what was happening and a smile spread across my face. Incredible.
The true gift is this video
This brings back pleasent memories :)
Gifts is most likely one of the best cards I ever tapped for in this game :)
I remember seeing this clip when I was first getting back into magic and not completely realizing just how artful Karsten play was.
Best MTG channel on UA-cam and one of the best channels in general.
Love your stuff dude, really awesome to hear more coming down the pipe. Thanks and cheers
Beautiful and after this I dove right into Frank Kasten's How Many Lands article. Absolutely a great resource when deck building.
Dude I loved the intro of this video… your description of 2005 transported me back in time.
What a nice episode, just Frank Karsten being happy.
Moments like this are what makes Magic so much more than a game. Thanks for sharing it; I never would have known it existed otherwise.
That happy smile when he came up with that play :)
That look on his face when he sees the path to victory seems to say "hey man, what more can I possibly ask for from a game of magic!"
I love out of the box thinking with deck building
Doing things no one else is trying or things people said wouldn't work is so much fun
I'm glad your getting sponsors. Great to see creative people getting paid to create.
Texas parks and wildlife! Respect! Here to support our wild life and help the algorithm
I am so happy for you (and selfishly myself) that you get to make these videos! Youre really good at these.
Thanks for more content. Always the best part of my day when you drop new stuff
I was a player who got into modern because of storm, and I hated that I would storm off just to not draw a grapeshot or empty the Warren's. But when Gifts was shown off as a legitimate addition to the deck, I fell in love with the deck all over again. It is such a technical card that I love to problem solve games with.
This is equal parts a late Christmas and Birthday gift. Ty Rhystic!
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 :)
You always find ways to reinvent yourself in these video. Thank you so much Sam!
Your videos want me to get back into magic, amazing work, and Frank Karsten seems like quite the clever player
Always a joy, when a new video is uploaded.
That was great. You should cover some more plays like that. I think this might be your strong suit, certainly your most entertaining video for me. Thanks!
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
Excellent video. Loved the intro portion with the stroll down memory lane. From Under the Cork Tree is one of my favorite albums of all time.
his smile in that moment is exactly the kinda thing that makes me love this game
I was watching again the mind sculptor video and the notification was on point haha
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.
One of my favorite cards ever, just pure gameplay in a nice little package
Beautiful video my man, loved Frank's statements about how Gifts Ungiven is kind of like the game of Magic itself within one card.
Lovely piece, Sam the Historian-of-Magic-not-employed-by-WotC. Anyone ever called you that?
Watching this, hits me that I’d really care to continue consuming live MtG coverage, particularly high level tournaments, if Wizards &/or other big organisers care to continue.
These moments, are just so precious on so many levels. I’d very much love to pull off my own “Gifts for ONLY 2 cards” moments in EDH too!
"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.
Always a treat to see a new video. Thank you!
"with a deck of his own design"
basicly what is magic to me, great one
We really need a podcast channel doing interview with magic pros and so on about magic moments, id watch that ;D
Happy new year, Sam. A lovely video with two brilliant and affable minds. Thanks!
No one can make me love a card like Rhystic Studies, it started here, and includes Goyf and Needle
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.
I'm terrible at math, but reading Karsten articles are always a joy no matter what such an awesome dude
Awesome video. I love the dives into MTG history and the backstories on cards. Thanks for being one of the main inspirations for my channel!!! Appreciate everything you do!!!
Never knew gifts could get less than 4, now it makes sense why it’s banned in edh
I wish I could subscribe twice, thank you so much for the art you bring to us.
The content you bring to the platform is so consistently flawless that it's getting boring. X)
Always a good day with a new rhystic video
Great Vid, Sam!
Tho i don't play any magic anymore, your vids always brighten up my day, dude! Truly. Hope you're doing well, have a great 2022!
happy holidays to all, much love
I have learned to love this card through Modern Storm, especially my friend's version. Once he finds one, he knows exactly how to solve the game from there.
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.
So nice to see and remember this moments
Your videos are so in depth and awesome. Thank you for the content.
Great video, merry Christmas!