The biggest memory I have of how in demand the Jitte was is that there were Rat's Nest decks out of stock for £7.50 next to unsold "Rat's Nest minus Jitte" for 50p. Also made the other rare in the pre-con (Patron of the Nezumi) super easy to get ahold of. I also own a lot of Kamigawa swamps.
@@hyperchord Umezawa's Jitte is still a staple in the Canadian Highlander format, which the UA-cam show North 100 Showdown showcases. It's great, you should go watch it.
One thing to note is that there were a lot of strong less creature centric decks in Jitte's time in Block/Standard (by the end of its Standard run, countertop was a thing). In Block, there no good dual lands, but some of the best ramp spells ever printed. So those ramp decks became dominant, as aggro decks ended up being limited to one color, whereas it cost nothing for the ramp decks to go multicolor. The Aggro cards for Black Hand included the likes of Takenuma Bleeder and Sink into Takenuma. White aggro doesn't look as bad today, but still was heavily reliant on Charge Across the Araba. On the other hand, the most dedicated ramp deck could consistently hardcast Myojin of Seeing Winds (Though most didn't go that hard into ramp and tended to prefer that 6-7 mana range). Kami-Rav might've fixed the land issue, but aggro decks were still playing the likes of Skyknight Legionnaire. At the same time, cards like the guild signets and remand and the like were in common supply and you had your pick of acceptable boardwipes from Wrath of God, Kagemaro, Wildfire, and smaller ones like Pyroclasm. Essentially, Jitte was allowed to stay because there was concern that aggro in those formats might not exist at all without it. Post-Mirrodin, Kamigawa formats tended to enable decks that had the ability (but not necessarily the intention) to go to very skill intensive, grindy late games, and Jitte helped aggros decks to play in that area.
The dumbest decision I ever made was trading away a Jitte I pulled from a booster I cracked back then, because I didn't have Toshiro Umezawa and my friend did.
i never pulled a Jitte (was too young to recognize its Power anyway), but i pulled a Toshiro Umezawa and traded it away because i back then i wasn't playing black and had no use for that card. Reading it today i'm like "damn, i could use this in my Tor Wauki Commander"
I’m glad you explained it because I never got the power of this card originally. Just bad reading comprehension and lack of understanding on how it actually worked. Definitely appreciate it now!
I was there, back when 25€ was the most someone would pay for a card in Standard. People ran Jittes in combo decks just to counter opposing Jittes due to the old legend rule. It was insane. Jitte was incredible (still is). Among the best cards for limited ever.
to me, the biggest trip-up of assessing this card is the charge counters - they go on the equipment, not the creature. i played a release booster draft where someone opened a jitte and got *passed* a jitte (yeah... a lot of people didn't understand jitte's power), and they correctly assessed the card and included both. playing against their deck, my first read was "huh, ok" and then i killed their equipped creature after one combat exchange. and then when i saw the charge counters still on the card, i'm like "huh?" and the other person offered the card for reading again, and then i had this sudden sinking feeling that i still clearly remember, as i suddenly had a realization that i had no real answer to this and the game was going to spiral out of control.
Jitte battles were especially intricate with damage on stack, and this is why some sacrificing creatures (Sakura Tribe Elder) was so powerful. It can block an opposing X/1 wielding Jitte, kill it, AND don't add counters to it.
I remember getting this card in the pre-release... I had to read the card a few times to make sure I was reading it right, it seemed too good. Such a strong card! It was truly a bomb in limited.
I started playing shortly before the Guilds of Ravnica release and I still have PTSD of this card. The only other card I remember being so dominant against me was Jace the Mind Sculptor .
Being a Commander player only anymore, I can say this card is very underrated. Every deck could play it, but I very rarely see it. It's so useful and it can be an all star in many decks. My Vhal+Clan Crafter deck very much loves it.
Huh, that's super interesting about a modal ability not being able to be both mana and non-mana. I had never really thought about it before this, but that isn't something that's in the game despite it being definitely something that, from a design instead of rules perspective, seems like it would be fully on flavor and normal. Little things like that are why I love this channel.
I remember having Jitte in my first Betrayers sealed pool. It didn't even make the cut because at first read, it looked too clunky. It wasn't until a week or so later that I realized just how busted it was.
I hate Lost Jitte, solely because the art clearly depicts a dagger with an edge and a sharp point, and lacking an edge or point is essentially the only defining feature of a jitte
Honestly, if you made it so the mana ability could only be activated as an instant (another fix to the problem of it being a mana ability)...itd be way more busted than it ended up being. "You need other stuff to spend it on" is a silly reason to say it's less powerful, since you also need something to give -1/-1 to for the ability it ended up being. And 2 mana is a lot more powerful overall than giving something -1/-1 (which itself isn't even a whole 1cmc effect usually - 1 mana buys you -2/-2 at least).
I felt like a genius when I was a kid and bought a playset of Umezawa's Jitte for cheap early in Kamigawa's release. Took my cheap white weenie deck into the stratosphere against top decks. I had adults looking at this card going, "HUH? WHAT EVEN IS THIS?" - not even when I played it, but when it started killing things.
I wasn't playing magic at the time when this came out, but I remember a friend of mine constantly complaining about Jitte for years, and then later his ire switched to JTMS.
It would be interesting to see whether Lost Jitte is as much a bomb in its limited format as the OG Jitte was in its format. I encountered it only once in OTJ, but it seemed to really take over the match.
I had a friend who ran a Rafiq of the Many EDH deck and it seemed like he got Jitte on him 9 out of 10 games. Rafiq is already a problem, but Rafiq with Jitte is insane and if nobody was able to deal with it by the time it got back around to his turn, he'd just start smashing every face in sight.
This card was in a preconstructed Rat Deck sold in stores and I really wanted it, but one of my MTG playing friends bought the last ones from the store before I had a chance. I still do not own a Jitte.
The two mana thing would have been waaaay more broken. That's two mana per charge counter, so that's fucking 4 mana for any deck from one swing that goes through . People would find a way to infinite that pretty quickly
I just categorize arguing with people confident that it’s pronounced “jight” the same way I do WoW players who insist it’s a HURTHstone and D&D players who like to double down on their declaration of a “coup de gras”
Maybe it was in "you have to play with it to know how good it is" territory in constructed, but in sealed, I walked into the prerelease desperately hoping I'd open one and fearing my opponents doing so. It was immediately obvious from the spoiler that it was the best card in the format by miles-- we'd just gotten off of a format where things like Sword of Fire and Ice and Loxodon Warhammer were just insanely good, and this format had far less (indeed, almost no-- this was during a weird, brief era when white didn't get Disenchant anymore) artifact removal. So there was like a 60 percent chance your opponent had no way to remove it at all, and most of the remaining decks were hoping to draw a single card capable of dealing with it. Not great!
Looking at the effects it's a bit surprising we haven't seen a card called Umezawa's Charm, because that's more or less what this card does, it gives you manaless casts of a very versatile modal spell.
@@joshuastark6712 Wait, really? I completely forgot about it then 💀💀💀💀💀 god MH1 was so long ago... Maybe if it costed a single B it would be more notable 😅
@makenshao9886 Ye, tbf tho, Diet Disfigure, Diet Giant Growth, Diet Healing Salve isn't bad for being your choice of three 1cc spells for 2 lol. Charms are super fun to analyze power-level for thanks to modality lol.
With all the Proliferate and counter adding abilities today, think about how good this can be today??? You don't even have to even have a creature or equip it to use two of its abilities. You can play it along say an Energy Chamber and other types of cards and just use the abilities and control other creatures and your life for free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm a little surprised you didn't mention how the "damage no longer uses the stack" rules change made this card significantly worse. I guess it's still a good ca d after the changes but before the changes it was broken. Attack, opponent blocks, you get 2 charge counters, damage goes on the stack, remove 2 charge counters to buff your creature and nerf the opponents. Now yours survives for combat and theirs doesnt
This card made me quit magic for a year back in 2005, white weenie decks were unstoppable! Latern kamis, suntail hawks first strike stuff smh, the only card I never wanna see unbanned.
Such a demoralizing card. Once it connected one time and it got counters, the game was practically over. It was impossible to keep up with. Even if you manage to destroy it, every deck has four copies so the next one isn't far behind.
It also has a secret fourth mode, where you can deal psychic damage to your opponent by pronouncing "Jitte" wrong over and over
no matter how many times I hear one of these M:tG youtubers say the name, "Jee-tay" still sounds Ferengi to me
imma call it jit for every fight me
The biggest memory I have of how in demand the Jitte was is that there were Rat's Nest decks out of stock for £7.50 next to unsold "Rat's Nest minus Jitte" for 50p.
Also made the other rare in the pre-con (Patron of the Nezumi) super easy to get ahold of. I also own a lot of Kamigawa swamps.
me watching north 100 still seeing jitte singlehandedly win games
Always get a like for a North 100 Shoutout
huh?
@@hyperchord Umezawa's Jitte is still a staple in the Canadian Highlander format, which the UA-cam show North 100 Showdown showcases. It's great, you should go watch it.
Still in the Vintage cube as well
You forgot to mention Umezawa's Charm from modern horizons 1, a instant charm with each jitte ability.
One thing to note is that there were a lot of strong less creature centric decks in Jitte's time in Block/Standard (by the end of its Standard run, countertop was a thing). In Block, there no good dual lands, but some of the best ramp spells ever printed. So those ramp decks became dominant, as aggro decks ended up being limited to one color, whereas it cost nothing for the ramp decks to go multicolor. The Aggro cards for Black Hand included the likes of Takenuma Bleeder and Sink into Takenuma. White aggro doesn't look as bad today, but still was heavily reliant on Charge Across the Araba. On the other hand, the most dedicated ramp deck could consistently hardcast Myojin of Seeing Winds (Though most didn't go that hard into ramp and tended to prefer that 6-7 mana range). Kami-Rav might've fixed the land issue, but aggro decks were still playing the likes of Skyknight Legionnaire. At the same time, cards like the guild signets and remand and the like were in common supply and you had your pick of acceptable boardwipes from Wrath of God, Kagemaro, Wildfire, and smaller ones like Pyroclasm.
Essentially, Jitte was allowed to stay because there was concern that aggro in those formats might not exist at all without it. Post-Mirrodin, Kamigawa formats tended to enable decks that had the ability (but not necessarily the intention) to go to very skill intensive, grindy late games, and Jitte helped aggros decks to play in that area.
One of the most interesting equipment designs even many years later, made more interesting by being of a high power level.
A flawed design though, as it was actually intended for the Jitte's creature to deal combat damage to an opponent. But they fkd up.
The dumbest decision I ever made was trading away a Jitte I pulled from a booster I cracked back then, because I didn't have Toshiro Umezawa and my friend did.
i never pulled a Jitte (was too young to recognize its Power anyway), but i pulled a Toshiro Umezawa and traded it away because i back then i wasn't playing black and had no use for that card. Reading it today i'm like "damn, i could use this in my Tor Wauki Commander"
I’m glad you explained it because I never got the power of this card originally. Just bad reading comprehension and lack of understanding on how it actually worked. Definitely appreciate it now!
Just like Merchant Scroll, this card is a great card in an amazing set!
No
I was there, back when 25€ was the most someone would pay for a card in Standard. People ran Jittes in combo decks just to counter opposing Jittes due to the old legend rule. It was insane. Jitte was incredible (still is). Among the best cards for limited ever.
I remember how excited I was finding a random Rat precon in stock at Kmart back in the day
to me, the biggest trip-up of assessing this card is the charge counters - they go on the equipment, not the creature. i played a release booster draft where someone opened a jitte and got *passed* a jitte (yeah... a lot of people didn't understand jitte's power), and they correctly assessed the card and included both. playing against their deck, my first read was "huh, ok" and then i killed their equipped creature after one combat exchange. and then when i saw the charge counters still on the card, i'm like "huh?" and the other person offered the card for reading again, and then i had this sudden sinking feeling that i still clearly remember, as i suddenly had a realization that i had no real answer to this and the game was going to spiral out of control.
Jitte battles were especially intricate with damage on stack, and this is why some sacrificing creatures (Sakura Tribe Elder) was so powerful. It can block an opposing X/1 wielding Jitte, kill it, AND don't add counters to it.
Sultai Deathblade was my favorite deck. Slapping Jitte on True-Name was lights out.
9:05 the Orzhov decks lands are incorrect. I loved that deck back in the day so I had to say something lol
You are by far my favorite MtG caster. Thank you for all the work that you do
Glad you enjoy it!
This card is the sole reason I bought the most recent secret lair that featured it. Great video, as always!
I remember getting this card in the pre-release... I had to read the card a few times to make sure I was reading it right, it seemed too good. Such a strong card! It was truly a bomb in limited.
I started playing shortly before the Guilds of Ravnica release and I still have PTSD of this card. The only other card I remember being so dominant against me was Jace the Mind Sculptor .
Same here on the ptsd, I almost broke my phone when I seen the thumbnail of this video
This is my favorite series on your channel. Keep up the great content!
Being a Commander player only anymore, I can say this card is very underrated. Every deck could play it, but I very rarely see it. It's so useful and it can be an all star in many decks. My Vhal+Clan Crafter deck very much loves it.
I don't know if it's possible, but it would be cool to see a top 10 limited bombs!
He already made that list about a year ago.
@@abrahamwarner4408 Oh yeah, he did 2 years ago, and apparently I already watched it haha
I love this content keep em coming!
I still use the jitte in legacy death and taxes to this day!
I love this series! Gives a really cool perspective on the eras of magic I never got to play in.
Huh, that's super interesting about a modal ability not being able to be both mana and non-mana. I had never really thought about it before this, but that isn't something that's in the game despite it being definitely something that, from a design instead of rules perspective, seems like it would be fully on flavor and normal. Little things like that are why I love this channel.
I remember having Jitte in my first Betrayers sealed pool. It didn't even make the cut because at first read, it looked too clunky. It wasn't until a week or so later that I realized just how busted it was.
I hate Lost Jitte, solely because the art clearly depicts a dagger with an edge and a sharp point, and lacking an edge or point is essentially the only defining feature of a jitte
While I get the annoyance, it fits Toshi who doesn't care about the rules and needs the point to carve kanji.
Honestly, if you made it so the mana ability could only be activated as an instant (another fix to the problem of it being a mana ability)...itd be way more busted than it ended up being. "You need other stuff to spend it on" is a silly reason to say it's less powerful, since you also need something to give -1/-1 to for the ability it ended up being. And 2 mana is a lot more powerful overall than giving something -1/-1 (which itself isn't even a whole 1cmc effect usually - 1 mana buys you -2/-2 at least).
I felt like a genius when I was a kid and bought a playset of Umezawa's Jitte for cheap early in Kamigawa's release. Took my cheap white weenie deck into the stratosphere against top decks. I had adults looking at this card going, "HUH? WHAT EVEN IS THIS?" - not even when I played it, but when it started killing things.
One of the cards most emblematic of how difficult card evaluation is. Even today you see people say this card is bad
I run jitte in my Toski commander deck and it puts in work
I wasn't playing magic at the time when this came out, but I remember a friend of mine constantly complaining about Jitte for years, and then later his ire switched to JTMS.
It would be interesting to see whether Lost Jitte is as much a bomb in its limited format as the OG Jitte was in its format. I encountered it only once in OTJ, but it seemed to really take over the match.
I had a friend who ran a Rafiq of the Many EDH deck and it seemed like he got Jitte on him 9 out of 10 games. Rafiq is already a problem, but Rafiq with Jitte is insane and if nobody was able to deal with it by the time it got back around to his turn, he'd just start smashing every face in sight.
This is still a card I look at and can't believe it's good.
Umezawa's Jitte WAS so good that I bought two of them a month ago and run them in two new builds
This card was in a preconstructed Rat Deck sold in stores and I really wanted it, but one of my MTG playing friends bought the last ones from the store before I had a chance. I still do not own a Jitte.
Maybe I'm the only one with this blindspot, but I'd love to see a "How Good Was Bitterblossom?" feature.
The two mana thing would have been waaaay more broken. That's two mana per charge counter, so that's fucking 4 mana for any deck from one swing that goes through . People would find a way to infinite that pretty quickly
Its funny how lost jitte kind of does what the original design of umezawas jitte did, except its now cheaper to play and equipt.
That was the point.
It was good enough that you could buy the starter deck, sell the Jitte, and make your money back
I'm hoping people find a way to break lost jitte in standard or historic right now.
I just categorize arguing with people confident that it’s pronounced “jight” the same way I do WoW players who insist it’s a HURTHstone and D&D players who like to double down on their declaration of a “coup de gras”
Maybe it was in "you have to play with it to know how good it is" territory in constructed, but in sealed, I walked into the prerelease desperately hoping I'd open one and fearing my opponents doing so. It was immediately obvious from the spoiler that it was the best card in the format by miles-- we'd just gotten off of a format where things like Sword of Fire and Ice and Loxodon Warhammer were just insanely good, and this format had far less (indeed, almost no-- this was during a weird, brief era when white didn't get Disenchant anymore) artifact removal. So there was like a 60 percent chance your opponent had no way to remove it at all, and most of the remaining decks were hoping to draw a single card capable of dealing with it. Not great!
Hey that was quick
Looking at the effects it's a bit surprising we haven't seen a card called Umezawa's Charm, because that's more or less what this card does, it gives you manaless casts of a very versatile modal spell.
Actually, that exact card was printed in a Horizons set at 1B lol
@@joshuastark6712 Wait, really? I completely forgot about it then 💀💀💀💀💀 god MH1 was so long ago...
Maybe if it costed a single B it would be more notable 😅
@makenshao9886 Ye, tbf tho, Diet Disfigure, Diet Giant Growth, Diet Healing Salve isn't bad for being your choice of three 1cc spells for 2 lol. Charms are super fun to analyze power-level for thanks to modality lol.
My friend and I banned this card when we played each other because it was so miserable to play against. It's a slow death.
Jitte was so good that so many people would cheat it into there packs in limted.
Umezawa’s JITT
With all the Proliferate and counter adding abilities today, think about how good this can be today??? You don't even have to even have a creature or equip it to use two of its abilities. You can play it along say an Energy Chamber and other types of cards and just use the abilities and control other creatures and your life for free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After FTK, thus is the sec9nd one in this series, at least of those I remember, when I ask, could this play inDtandard today?
The Jitte gets the counters, not the creature wielding it
Umezawa’s J-EYE-T
Nice!
how good was? how good is, and still good
Still whooping ass with jit in legacy d&t.
Umezawa’s JITTI
It's a commander card now
Being a Commander player only anymore, I can say this card is very underrated. Every deck could play it, but I very rarely see it. It's so useful
Still use it in Merfolk
Okay great, but how good was Erhnam Djinn?
still seeing play in Legacy sporadically.
UA-cam short on archangels light!
🔥🔥🔥
I'm a little surprised you didn't mention how the "damage no longer uses the stack" rules change made this card significantly worse. I guess it's still a good ca d after the changes but before the changes it was broken.
Attack, opponent blocks, you get 2 charge counters, damage goes on the stack, remove 2 charge counters to buff your creature and nerf the opponents. Now yours survives for combat and theirs doesnt
Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think that's how it worked. You didnt get the trigger until the damage that was on the stack resolved
I want to pose this question to the comments: do you think Jitte would be fair in today's Modern?
i wished he closed the video asking "How good was Umezawas Jitte actually?" with "Busted.". Period :(
Man, the legend rules really were a mess for a long time...
How is this still banned in modern????
This is kinda like 2005's Orcish Bowmasters. Except it would probably be too clunky in Modern nowadays tbh.
Wait, did you somehow miss Hammer Time? If it was legal, it would be played alongside Sigarda's Aid, and it would be busted.
This card made me quit magic for a year back in 2005, white weenie decks were unstoppable! Latern kamis, suntail hawks first strike stuff smh, the only card I never wanna see unbanned.
now it's just pack filler in cube draft
Skullclamp was more dominant than jitte 😊
Such a demoralizing card. Once it connected one time and it got counters, the game was practically over. It was impossible to keep up with.
Even if you manage to destroy it, every deck has four copies so the next one isn't far behind.
Engagement.
its pronounced joot toot
Nope lol
This is egagement
Easy unban in modern
Jitte isn't good enough for current year Magic because it costs mana.
How does a video have 2 comments when the video's been up for 42secs?
EDIT: Answer - they're bots!
Your mom is a bot.
Magic: the commenting.
Nice to remember that a nearly perfect game has been run by morons for decades.
I f'kin HATED that card. Just hated it.....