Shout out to two other never-again mechanics: Gotcha, from the silver-bordered sets, for discouraging any form of interaction both in gameplay and IRL; and Ante, for being literally illegal.
I do feel like that is a great way to run Un-sets. Although I love Uncommander and uncube draft. They are a great way to play fun magic with a group of buds.
@@abigailcollins8443and it is worse off for it, IMO. The older Un sets had effects that *cared* about border color, and would result in one Un set interacting with another in interesting ways. Unfinity... just doesn't :S
Epic would be far better if it snowballed. Long ago, when it first came out, my playgroup tested it by making it provide you one more copy every turn and that added flexibility or power made it so that all of them truly felt you had cast a single game ending spell but gave the opponents just enough time to maybe find a solution before the card advantage was simply too great.
Braid of Fire is one of the most interesting cumulative upkeep cards I’ve ever seen. It was released in Coldsnap in 2006 and its effect has you adding one red mana for each age counter on it during your upkeep. This was, of course, balanced around the mana burn mechanic before that rule got removed in 2009. Nowadays, it’s quite easy to abuse by running Vedalken Orrery so you can cast all the spells you want for the turn during your upkeep or by running Horizon Stone so you can stockpile the extra mana it generates
When I played as a kid, Banding was still around, and we all had our own ideas as to how it interacted with flying, protection from a color, etc. It was basically an argument waiting to happen whenever someone played a creature with Banding.
Islandhome is responsible for one of the most interesting formats of magic: forgetful fish. It's a mirror of mono blue tempo where you share an 80 card deck with 10 very special creatures: Dân Dân, a 4/1 fish with islandhome. The mechanic is important because the way to kill the fish while playing mono blue is to change de type of terrain.
@murlocaggrob2192 it's literally the exact same thing but it's certain creatures instead of all your creatures, similar to lords in tribal decks vs all around anthem effects
@murlocaggrob2192 not to mention on the wiki the term "bands with others" doesn't get it's own post and it's instead in the same post as banding because they're exactly the same mechanic
Some more entries: Fateseal - manipulating your opponent's top cards causes too much of a feelsbad, and allows too much control of the game state Haunt - they've said the memory issues were bad, and the fact the cards worked differently when first cast vs when the haunt triggered was also an issue Horsemanship - literally flying with a different name and no reach equivalent, originally made as the flying replacement in the [real-world ancient China] sets of Portal block (yes, I know about the new Knight that gives Knights horsemanship, that one-off card was just a flavorful way to print a card that functionally said "Knights you control are unblockable") Surge - WotC _really_ dislikes putting words relating to other formats in sets aimed at 1v1 formats, so Surge mentioning "teammate" relegates it to only Two-Headed Giant sets (this is why there's never any "this can be your commander" on non-creature cards that aren't in EDH pre-cons) Storm - the very reason the Storm Scale exists, it is the very signpost of "overpowered mechanic that can _never_ come back" (excluding one-offs in Eternal-only supplemental products) Provoke - honestly I'm not really sure why this mechanic was entirely retired Mechanics that were made obsolete by newer ones that played better: Chroma - replaced by Devotion, even though Chroma also worked with cards in other zones Fear - replaced by Intimidate, which was then replaced by Menace Regenerate - replaced by "this gains Indestructible until end of turn" Sunburst - replaced by Converge since the latter is more widely usable and more flavorfully generic ("sunburst" is specific to Mirrodin) Small note on Banding: it did have some beneficial effects, such as the controller of a Band decided how combat damage was divided amongst the band. So in your example of Benalish Hero and Storm Crow being blocked by Grizzly Bears, the attacking player could decide how to have the Bears deal its 2 damage, instead of the Bear's controller deciding.
One part about banding you missed: let's say I attack with 10 creatures in a band and you block with a 10/10 with deathtouch. I could have it deal 10 damage to just one creature even if the one creature was a 1/1. I could have it deal 10 damage to a 1 toughness creature. That's another reason banding was stopped being printed it's super OP. Obviously on block if you decide how the damage would be delt and put it all on a 1/1 then in response they give it trample you are screwed as it will trample over but blocking with 1 banding and a 1/1 usually results in the banding being an immortal blocker which you can give say lifelink without risking losing the lifelink on block.
I could see haunt returning if they just make the cards do something different. Like, "Haunt. The haunted creature has flying." is almost exactly like the distub Spirit Auras we got in Crimson Vow.
WotC hasn't publicly admitted to Eminence being a mistake, even though literally everyone everywhere knows it is a mistake. Thus, they can make the occasional underpowered one-off with it. Most of the mechanics in the video or my other comment were admitted design mistakes, and thus will most likely never get even a single random one-off card, no matter how weak.
Gavin did a video and said the biggest Eminence issue is with Edgar Markov (said it's the biggest mistake card he made) and to a lesser extent Inalla. He didn't mind Ur-Dragon's reduction or Arahbo's stat buff.
Missing some pretty big ones. Like Ante and Storm. Ante being illegal to reprint, and storm being one of the most broken mechanics in Magic's history. There's a reason why the "Storm Scale" has it's name
Storm is very much a one in a thousand type mechanic. I imagine there'll be some more eventually but that's just how storm is. It lies dormant until a cute design is found.
@@EspeonGaming0 Aeve, Progenitor Ooze, Crow Storm (I know it’s an Un card but still), Fiery Encore, Galvanic Relay, Spreading Insurrection, and while Thousand-Year Storm doesn’t use the keyword, it basically gives your instants and sorceries Storm.
I think the word “worst” should be in the video title. Top 10 Mechanics that will never come back makes me think of Storm or Dredge (except for companion)
the thing is wotc totally still prints storm and dredge cards. not in standard of course, but they still try to push the boundary with mechanics like storm and dredge in supplemental sets because those mechanics have so much history and are so evocative. when a new storm card gets printed in, say, a commander precon, people pay attention and discuss wildly. i cant say the same about rampage
Thing is... we get more Storm and Dredge cards every once in a while. Modern Horizons, some commander products like Commander Legends. But like, theyre never gonna print another card with landhome, lol
Banding was actually pretty good in Limited. Especially when blocking. One single bander wildly changes what happens when your opponent attacks you. Albeit at some risk - if they killed your single bander after blockers were declared you could be screwed. Banding never saw much Constructed play - but that was because it doesn't do anything unless you have at least 2 creatures and your opponent has at least 1 creature. In Constructed decks with constant removal of creatures, and some decks playing little or no creatures, that was far from guaranteed to happen.
Banding is complicated, but it's definitely not a bad ability! It's just that the creatures that do have banding are quite weak in general. If you added banding to many of the more playable creatures today, people would respect the strength of banding a lot more.
If they do banding, they need to give it a real Reason to use it. For example: "Creatures that band with this gain flying" lets you decide if the evasion is worth the downside of making it one attacker. A 6/1 banding creature could survive blockers with help. Or conversely a 0/6 banding could protect your low toughness attackers.
@@calemr There's already a powerful reason to use banding, it breaks combat math in half even on just a 1/1 with no other abilities. Whether attacking or blocking, the player with a banding creature get to chose how damage is dealt to creatures in that band, which is a powerful form of evasion without any extra help. If your opponent blocks with a 7/7 you can put all 7 damage on another random 1/1 in the band. You have a bunch of 1/1's vs. their 5/5? You get to trade off one for one. Banding isn't overpowered in competitive constructed by any means, due to the general de-emphasis on creature combat, but it crushes hard in limited or more casual constructed games. A lone keyword singlehandedly makes every one of your bodies better, and every one of your opponent's bodies worse.
Back in the beginning Banding was one of those odd abilities that really messed with combat trades, a Crusade or Holy Strength really could throw a spanner into it, it just got power crept out as people got better at theory crafting and the mana cost of creatures with it seemed to remain higher than a lot of other ability like Prot From or various evasions
I'm pretty sure you forgot Clash from the plane of Lorwyn. It was horribly random just like Ripple was. There are also several mechanics that were "fixed" but would pretty much never appear in the original form, like Chroma (which turned into Devotion).
When you explained how Banding is too complicated to explain, you made it far less complicated. When Blocking as a band you need one Banding creature and any number without. The description given was for attacking as a band. (And to block a flyer every creature needs flying)
Honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if Companion came back with a focus on Commander. The mechanic can be an interesting fix to Partner, which seems to be too good. The requirements would have to be very specific though. It would also be nice if the requirements refered to your Commander so you dont feel like you have to do a deck check. I could see something like "Companion - Your Commander must chare a creature type with this creature and must also have First Strike." This is just a basic example.
No - that's actually just way too easy to build around. It should still apply to the entire deck, but should directly reference your commander so it can't be used in Legacy and Vintage. Like just modify the mechanic to be Commander Companion where it fits the original idea, but requires your commander to exist for it to work.
The following lists count non-reserved cards. 10. The most valuable forecast card is Pride of the Clouds. And not gonna lie, a creature token creator every turn is VERY good. As for buyback, it's either Whim of Volrath (a niche color and basic land type hate card), or if we go by modern borders, it's Wurmcalling (big wurm tokens all the time). 9. Intimidate's most valuable card is Mikaeus, the Unhallowed (No Mercy on humans and an auto reanimator and buffer in one package), and fear's Wort, Boggart Auntie (Goblin recycler, anyone?). 8. Dauthi Voidwalker is the most valuable shadow card. But it's a good stealer card that has shadow, and not proof shadow is a good mechanic. 7. Rampage should be mixed with menace or force-blocking mechanics, and even then, it becomes a dull mechanic. 6. Banding is proof that a flavorful mechanic can end up becoming too convoluted. And I had seen better takes on that idea too on custommagic. 5. The best cumulative upkeep card is Braid of Fire. All upsides ever since mana burn is obsolete. Also, echo does the idea better too. 4. You know the mechanic's off when the best card is the one that gives the ripple keyword with relentless cards like Relentless Rats. 3. Funny how white, considered the weakest color as of now, has the best epic card. 2. You know the keyword's bad when it's defunct. And a showcase of how Wizards GREATLY overestimated creatures back then. 1. The idea of a commander in constructed is fun. But that means you also changed the whole way you play Magic. There's a reason why removing the extra deck in Yu-Gi-Oh! can change the gameplay as well.
IDK, the -home mechanics might be tweaked to work, like adding a conditional effect to the creature that mimics Blood Moon for their home or something like that (besides having high power/endurance compared to the mana cost)
11:18 - 11:35 The thought of casting a million squirrels or shadowborn apostles immediately made me smile. Then 7 seconds later you shatter my dreams with one sentence.
I think that miracle was the fixed version of epic where you'd get an AMAZING card if it was your top deck and could swing the game in your favor. They just needed to avoid decks built around stacking the top card and drawing on the opponent's turn
Miracle always felt like a misguided mechanic. The concept behind it was the fantasy of topdecking a literal miracle, and one draw winning you the game. But lots of cards already DO that if the circumstances are right. That's already a thing that happens organically in magic. They didn't need a keyword to artificially push it.
Combination of trample and rampage feels like it was designed to be a lethal threat when combined with lure effects . You can lure all your opponent's chaff into blocking rampaging creature, and then it will trample all over them into opponent's health.
Banding was simple to learn, use, and useful. I learned it as a 13yo in 1995 and had no problem. Use a low CMC creatuure with banding as a 'meatshield' in attack or defense -- especially if there was an attack or defense trigger that you wanted to activate from the 'shielded' creature.
I have to imagine something like Ante is on an internal banlist, because it seems like the most obvious contender for #1 here, even above dexterity cards.
ante is a bit obvious because if ante were a real thing then Magic would have been considered a gamble game, with LOTS of issues like being forbidden to underage ones
Honestly I'd bet they'll eventually come out with a new Companion card in some Modern Horizons-style set in several years. It just seems like the type of mechanic some designer is going to spend a ton of time working on to see if they can be the ones to 'fix' it.
Companion has a ton of interesting design options, the main issue was being a portly v balanced mechanic. Imo Lutri is a great example of a companion with a restriction that feels meaningful but can also be worth building around. Unlike many other mechanics that have little ability to do much with, companion absolutely could be good
I played a lot at the times with or against rampage, fear, shadow (it was my main deck for a long time by the way), banding, cumulative upkeep and islandhome. The only troublesome one was banding, because almost nobody understood it. I don't know if the rules say that, but the advantage of it was that you could assign how damage was distributed among the creatures of the band (not the adversary, as normal), at least it was how people played. If it actually works like this, this is useful sometimes, because you can turn your weenies into a fatty to force an exchange of creatures or band battering ram with something else to keep striking the opponent that only has weenies or walls. I miss magic before mirrodin. Now everything seems average to high power level. Tried to return to magic a few years ago and met an RG agro infect deck. No way old decks could pair with that, and that's not even overpowered by "modern format" standards.
Lutri shouldn't be on the EDH banlist. Just prevent him from being the Companion due to its redundant Companion rule. They prevented Yurion from being used as a companion for the exact opposite reason that Lutri is. Personally, I don't think EDH should allow for any Companions as you are now playing a 101 card deck with effectively 2-3 commanders that have guaranteed access to the player. I wish they'd print a Lutri that is 1:1 to Lutri, Spellchaser, only without Companion.
Banding is actually very good when blocking, since it allows you to spread out damage however you want. So if your opponent attacks with a 5/5, you can block it with a two 2/2s and a 1/1 with banding and assign ALL the damage to the 1/1. Or five 1/2s, and assign 1 damage to each. I believe Benalish Hero saw at least a tiny bit of constructed play, and the Banding mechanic is just generally strong in limited. If it was on better creatures, we might have a different view of it!
banding broken on blocking you can shut off trample dmg During the combat damage step, if an attacking creature is being blocked by a creature with banding, or by both a [quality] creature with “bands with other [quality]” and another [quality] creature, the defending player (rather than the active player) chooses how the attacking creature’s damage is assigned. That player can divide that creature’s combat damage as they choose among any creatures blocking it. This is an exception to the procedure described in rule 510.1c You can choose not to deal the excess damage from trample if you don’t want to. This works because trample is an optional keyword ability. Additionally, you can simply assign all the trampler's damage to the blocking creature even if it is over lethal damage. i use this to piss of green decks in edh Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts+Hundred-Handed One+Cathedral of Serra and/or Unholy Citadel your welcome for a way to agravite the living shit out of elf players
Banding could actually come back. There are no cards where Banding is explained on the card. WOTC could change what Banding does and not have to errata any cards.
A card that makes rather good use of the Cumulative Upkeep ability in commander imo is Hibernation's End. While not being the most powerful by any means it is extremely flavorful and also quite useful in creature focused strategies that run a lot of value pieces.
There's also Herald of leshrac. Cumulative upkeep:gain control of target land you don't control. Then, when you sacrifice, your opponents get their land back.
Lovely! Next video idea: ways to repair / rethink unplayable / forgotten mechanics. Like: a creature with Plainshome and "W, TAP: Gain 1 life for each Plains on the field" ; a druid creature with cumulative upkeep 1 and "G, TAP: Each player adds GG for each age counter on this creature. Nobody lose that mana at the end of phases and subphases. Activate only during your main phases." Also, Absorb was considered way too broken, such that appears only in Lymphatic Sliver and very few other cards
I think "protection" is a good honorable mention. It's on some really good cards but it hasn't been printed on like any in years. There's this one newer card that gives a creature "hexproof from spells and abilities of a chosen color and it can't be blocked or dealt damage by creatures of the chosen color" which is just non-keyword protection...
I think Rampage/Bushido could come back on something like a piece of equipment, where it gets to combine with some other effect. Itll never be a common mechanic again, but its not really inherently broken or anything and does allow some funky strategies that care about the buffs the mechanic will provide.
A big problem with bushido, IMO, is that a lot of its cards could have their bushido treated as always on and Still be only decent at best. For example, Ronin Cavekeeper would be a vanilla 6/5 for 6, which is trash. Stick it on well statted cards, or stuff with "When this creature deals combat damage to a player" abilities, and it'd be useable.
I feel like there could be some other companion card as a one-off for commander. Something like “your deck contains no instants and sorceries” which would be way more fair than stuff that kaheera enables
Banding is actually quite useful when used correctly. I couldn't figure out why so many people were unable to understand how it worked. I mean, it really isn't that complicated. While banding while attacking isn't as powerful as while blocking, it can be useful when dealing with a larger blocker. Example: Defending player has a 2/4 Giant Spider in play. You have a 2/2 vanilla flyer and a 2/2 flyer with banding. If you attack with the two as a band, and the defending player blocks with the giant spider, you can assign one damage from the spider to each of the two attacking creatures while dealing four to the spider, killing it, but sparing both of your creatures. BTW -- Banding while blocking is not the same as while attacking as you described it to be. While attacking, yes -- one or multiple banding creatures can band with a single non-banding creature. However, only one creature with banding is required when blocking alongside any number of banding or non-banding creatures to be able to use the ability and apply the damage as the player wishes.
For cumulative upkeep, there's the card braid of fire that was just bonkers with that mechanic, which the cost was to add red mana per turn and would increase as you went on. Funny how this is never mentioned in these videos
Braid of Fire was created when Mana Burn was still in play. Since all of that Red Mana was only available during your upkeep, if you didn't use it, you took damage for each unspent Red Mana at the end of the phase. So, at the time -- it actually sucked.
I think that there could be space for Companion as a Commander-only mechanic, since in other formats, it basically gives you a nerfed version of a Command Zone. Companion (or a retrain of it) could be like a one-sided version of things like Partner or Background, where if any deck meets certain requirements then it can run the Companion as a second Commander. Of course two of the existing Companions would be left behind by this, since they weren't designed with Commander rules in mind. No Commander deck can run Yorion, with the strict limit on deck size, but 99.9% of Commander decks with UR in them could run Lutri (if it wasn't banned) because it's a singleton format barring Relentless Rats shenanigans. If the idea were to be revisited, it would probably be best with a new cycle of Companions that were actually designed for it.
while i agree cumulative upkeep was a bit of a failure, it certainly still has strong cards, i think notably Mystic Remora and Braid of Fire both still seeing some play in a few formats as remora is a great early game counter to punishing certain decks an braid of fire for mana for combos or getting that extra mana for a turn.
Forecast could be great, but the payoff in the current state of the game would have to be so drastically powerful for the cost of showing your cards to your opponent that it might just be impossible to balance safely.
The biggest drawback with Forecast cards is the severe timing restriction of only being able to use it in your upkeep, so it becomes a guessing game about your card draws. Shadow creatures can be good for attacking, and you can use normal creatures to block. With banding, apart from the rules complexities, most creatures with banding were over costed for their power/toughness. With CU, it sometimes was applied to cards that it shouldn't have been, where either normal upkeep or no upkeep would be better, such as Firestorm Hellkite. Jotun Grunt is an interesting case, as sometimes it would be better if it was just upkeep, but other times that CU could be an advantage. Braids of Fire has a CU whose disadvantage was removed by the elimination of the mana burn rule. Whilst many cards with CU are bad, also many of them had the CU to balance a very powerful ability.
You forgot the one beneficial cumulative upkeep: braid of fire. It is horrifying. It's cumulative upkeep is to generate one red mana per age counter. It was made during the mana burn era, so it did have a possible consequence. Maybe.
@@zackkelley2940 every time I have ever seen him hit a table he's been instantly dead. Waaaaaaaaaaay too much heat on one card lmao. Folks already hate land destruction, they are REALLY gonna hate land theft. Plus he dies when he cant take 4+ lands, and gives them all back. Braid just infinitely produces red mana.
@@VCV95 There's solutions to both of those, but, yes, it DOES get a lot of hate. That said something like Drana and Linvala plus Kormus Bell and Urborg tend to be easier anyway.
Ten controversial judgement calls in tournaments (if you can find that many) I love the story of the player who played Pithing Needle, naming "Borborygmos" instead of "Borborygmos Enraged", and the judge ruled "No Take-Backsies". The player claimed his play was valid since Enraged was "implied".
Rampage combos perfectly with any "all creatures able to block target creature this turn do so" effects like Taunting Arbormage's ETB kicker effect. This turns a creature into a pseudo board wipe vs one opponent.
I think you're being a bit too harsh on Rampage/Bushido, it's an underutilized and interesting design space, especially for limited. It's not a great mechanic nor a mainstay but rampage feels like something we could see more of on green and red cards, it might not help push for more damage but it does changes the maths and can actually synergies with other things. Banding is also not as bad as you made it out to be, it's certainly complex AF but it allows you to decide how combat damage is assigned which has many uses, from protecting important creature in the band, to ignore blocking when combined with trample and passing by getting through a deathtoucher.
You say never come back, I saw MH3. I actually really like how these sets revisit old ideas and give them modern updated cards. For exampe, piercing rays for forecast, Recruit the Worthy for buyback etc
So Companion would be like if you could cheat out really powerful Extra Deck monsters by just having any materials for it in your deck. Not having to use any Spell cards, go through any combos, getting materials on the field or in the hand, just "I summon Baronne de Fleur".
Top 10 creatures most like a Yu-Gi-Oh boss monster. Two off the top of my head are Kozilek, the Great Distortion (omni-negate that discards cards to negate) and Visara the Dreadful (taps to destroy creature).
IIRC, didn’t banding allow an attacker to decide how damage was divided between banded creatures at one point? I thought that was the major draw-though it’s been literal decades since I read the gameplay examples from the MTG manual that explained banding.
There was a red enchantment with cumulative upkeep I don't think people ever talk about when mentioning the keyword, which is technically if not broken at least really powerful right now. It was a 2 cost card from ice age with cumulative upkeep - Add a Red Mana to your mana pool. Originally, if you had unspent mana in your pool at the end of the turn, you took damage, but they removed that rule at some point, so that card now just becomes an exponentially bigger and bigger mana source for raml with no side effects.
I mean it's funny that you made Companion the top slot when they did straight up re-print all of the ten Companions for MOTM limited and it was just kind of a funny side thing alongside all the other funny side things going on in that format. OFC part of it was a place to reprint the errata-ed companions /somewhere/ but I really don't think given the clear intent to still have it be /used/ in the most recent format that it's 'never coming back', they'd likely just change the conditions for why it's used. All of the companions printed had a 'deck building' requirement, but the while the rules state it's conditional on deckbuilding, all of the individual cards also allude to it, and I think it'd be easy to exclude that specific aspect and print companions where the text could very easily be something more like 'You control 5 or more enchantments' or 'You have exactly 13 land cards in your graveyard' or even a simpler cost like 'Sacrifice 3 artifacts', at which point you can pay the 3 and put it in your hand.
The home keyword would be great if the mechanic allowed the blocking of that landwalk. "Oh? Your forestwalk is attacking me? I'll block with my foresthome"
There's a much shorter way to word banding, but Mark Rosewater just hates it so much that he insists it's too complicated when in reality he's printed much more complicated mechanics many times. Here's the short way: "Combat damage which could be assigned to this is assigned by its controller. When this attacks, you may choose one other attacking creature. Anything which blocks either also blocks the other." Bringing back banding is one of the things on my list of "things which could bring me back to Magic again."
@@calemr The reason it would get me back in is because it would be a symbol that they've fundamentally changed their design philosophy. It's the one mechanic I know for sure Mark Rosewater would never bring back under his current thinking.
@@clearlypellucid first of all you've already reduced the band down to only 2 creatures with the line "when this attacks, you may choose one other attacking creature" and you have no rules for how a band is formed or how it works on defense. You also haven't accounted for the fact that a band on offense requires all but one thing to have banding and defense it requires the inverse. You've phrased it conceptually but that's really easy to do. Banding's entire problem is that its actual legal rules text is way more lengthy than paraphrasing it conceptually because you have to account for every little aspect of it.
Back in the days, i overkilled so many people with the craw giant enchanted with a lure... I usually put all damage on the lowest health blocking creation, and blam 5+2X damage on the opponent. Lure was really insane in green. (and yes, the deck also had basilisk...). Aaaah, i do not understand why the UA-cam algo suggest this video as i stopped this game almost 30 years ago but it was fun to remember, thank you!
Oh, there won't be 2 years before companion will be back. Mark those words. They won't be as easy to play as they are now but I hope for Zada with "your deck has only instant or sorcery spells" :)
The Rebel/Mercenary mechanic is probably less likely to return than Cumulative Upkeep. Sure it may not be a keyword, but it is still a mechanic, and Cumulative Upkeep, while unlikely, could still be a possibility for cards with a very strong ability that they don't want to be able to last very long if it isn't interacted with, like the Fish is.
Companion was a horrible idea. It seemed like someone at WotC saw the success of Commander and said "Hey, I know! Let's put commanders in standard!" This, of course, completely ignored the fact that Commander was balanced around having a larger 100 card deck made completely of singletons because having a commander for a 60 card constructed deck would be broken. Then they were completely shocked to discover that 60 card constructed decks being able to run a commander was, in fact, broken.
Cumulative upkeep exist: Most people: "This is garbage." Jon Irenicus players: "Phyrexian Soulgorger, mah boi. Im going to make you a star!" Zedruu players: "Illusions of Grandeur and Thought Lash are my favorites."
I get what you're saying on rampage but when the those cards came out "Lure" was a relatively common card to use with that craw giant. You could put a lure on it and attack to have every creature your opponent had block, allowing you to choose who you'd kill with all that pump. Was fun and made it so your opponent would attack/tap/ stall with first strikers. Rampage was fun back during 5th.
EDIT/Addon: It would be cool to see a creature with rampage and mence. When it attacks it gets pumped, blocking, it doesn't, when you want to try nuke it with red, easy to remove. Makes a smaller creature easy to remove but scary when it attacks.
I've read about banding but don't get why it's so bad/disliked. You can choose whether to put creatures in a band and aren't there some cases where it could be a benefit, like blocking one big creature without losing any of yours?
I had mentioned that I wanted to go back to Lorwyn because tribal was an awesome mechanic, someone said that it was a dead mechanic that they wouldn’t bring back. Idk didn’t seem to op and it didn’t seem terrible.
I disagree that the companion mechanic is unredeemably bad, It is just that most companions released were either overpowered or too easy to put in your deck (or both). A good example of a companion done right is Obosh, it is powerful but quite restrictive. The companion mechanic has 3 very positive effects on the game: -When both players run out of cards it gives them something to do more than being in top deck mode -When you get mana flood it gives you something to do with your mana. -It makes new decks appear that would not exist otherwise (for example: big Obosh red in Modern) Wotc just has to be VERY careful next time they decide to make companions, but it is theoretically possible to make this mechanic good.
i have to say rampage sounds gameplaywise like a neat mechanic. like questing beast has for example "cant be blocked by creatures with power 2 or less" which just denies you the ability to throw 2/2 in its way completely. But rampage 1 would mean you can throw 2/2 in but you get only diminishing return for it so it can be sometimes worth to do so even if its inefficient.
Quick mention of Horsemanship! Is basically the same thing as Shadow, but even fewer cards have it, so essentially all of those cards are unblockable. Also any ice lands mechanics are a mess
When Rampage came on the scene a very popular card at the time made it function, Lure. Drop a Lure onto that Craw Giant and that can be a lot of damage, especially if you have a Berserk in hand. Anyone that says banding is a bad ability has obviously never played with or against it. If creatures with landhome were also unblockable against said land type it would have made for a better ability. Another bad thing about landhome is that it turns Magical Hack into a kill spell.
Bands With Other is worse than you described here. It doesn't let you band a creature that had the ability and a creature that fits the characteristic, it only lets you band with other creatures that share the ability. For example, a creature with "bands with other bears" wouldn't be able to band with a Grizzly Bears. It would be able to band with that Grizzly Bears if the bears had "bands with other bears".
I doubt we'll ever see snow-covered landwalk again. Not unless Wizards decide to revisit Ice Age yet again. There were some setups that made Rampage worth while but they depended on the Lure enchantment (All creatures able to block target creature must block target creature.) there was also an instant that did the same thing for that round only, but I don't remember what it was called.
Banding isn't bad as a whole. Banding is terrible on offense but pretty spectacular on defense. It completely cancels out trample and makes attacking into a board with banders a nightmare--there's a lot of board states on which no way you can make a profitable attack because the defender has such a massive advantage if he has a few banders. With a indestructible creature, you can ensure that you never lose anything in combat and always take out the opponent's best attacker (and if that creature tramples, never take any damage). You have the rule wrong--on defense, you can band one bander with *any* number of non-banders. The above, the fact that it works different on offense and defense is a problem because it's completely unintuitive but even if you fix that, the mechanic is really strong in limited because of what it does to combat. The only thing that holds it back is that creatures of the time were terrible; if you put that on anything good, it gets really obnoxious and grinds the game to a halt quickly.
Epic completely removes one of the fundamental aspects of MTG: hidden information. Knowing exactly what your opponent is going to do every turn kills so much fun.
These were a fun list, and the choices do make sense, but there are a few other Keywords I guess I expected to see here, and didn't. They are keywords I like, and so of course I'd want Wizards to use again, so not seeing them here can let me dream, but based on what they do, I just expect that we'll see little to no revisits again. Infect, Level Up, and Eminence. I think we can agree that Infect is gone for good? They invented a new mechanic, Toxic, to sub in for it, but they HAD to invent a who new mechanic, even when FINALLY revisiting the place Infect came from, because Infect couldn't just come back, along with Phyrexian mana. Level Up...okay, it's not a good mechanic, but I liked D&D a lot more than I liked MtG, for a long time, and since Wizards owned both, it felt neat. Since creatures die all the time, I liked the option of getting more profit from them if they survived, and it wad better than having to acquire a second card, like an Equipment, slot it in, draw it, play it, and attach it, then protect it, too. Sure, the LU creature took the progress with them, while the Artifact stayed after their death, but that made it different. It's not great, but I still really like Lighthouse Chronologist and Joruga Treespeaker. Eminence. We all know why it's not coming back, for the most part; the lack of interactivity irritates people, as does the free starting Enchantment-analog, but I learned to love the mechanic in my own limited play group. I'm a more reserved, slow game, avoid conflict-type; I want to build up a major presence before I commit, as early attacks garnered retaliation, and I could marvel others with my deck stalls, so that could hurt. More than that, though, our group seemed to REALLY target Commanders. Maybe it's the right call, but literally every time someone played theirs, it was probably going to die, and then Commander tax made it an uphill battle, no matter how necessary, or not, your Commander was to the deck strategy. I didn't attack often, but still got attacked when I'd play my leader, to the point there were times I could almost just pick it for color identity, and then nor plan to use it, and then the four Eminence decks came down. I love Wizards, and I love Dragons, so these were easy purchases, and then Eminence gave me an extra perk, that my destructive opponents couldn't stamp out. I get that it can irritate players, even while things like Emblems continue to persevere, but for my own experience, I liked it, and it made the game better for me.
Honestly Forecast, Intimidate, Shadow, and Rampage are all things that could do well in a commander or Modern Horizons product. Forecast is one that has potential outside of commander or MH but it really needs support to bring it up. Something like cost reduction, able to do it on other upkeeps, or even something like when you cast it after you used Forecast something happens. It would also help if it had better effects. There are ways to make it better it just needs something more than nothing. Intimidate, Shadow, and Rampage could be used sparingly for great effect but need specific cards to thrive. Companion should never have been in standard, should have only been used in commander and should have been balanced better. I do like the idea but some the cards were broken. If you really think about it the problem was Lurrus and Yorion not the others. Out of the 10 of them: 2 were broken taking over the game, 3 saw some play but not much outside of standard, and the rest either saw rare niche play or never were played. The mechanic at first was fine but had problematic cards which soured the mechanic.
surprised you didn't mention that lurrus was so broken it was the first ban in vintage in years and it forced the commander rules committee to ditch their shortcut on using the vintage ban list
@@jayredharpstudios9672 yep, Lurrus was, for a time, banned in Vintage for power level because the way companion works meant that restricting it would have had literally zero effect on how format warping it was
Interesting how so many people do not understand Banding and think it's bad to use based on the impacts to attacking. However, banding is best used in defense to allow the damage to be directed to a source that is immune.
Islandhome was intended to be used along with an effect like Phantasmal Terrain to change an opponent's land into an island. The real problem was that even when you went out of your way to try and do this, the cards weren't worth it.
I am designing a deck that abuses cumulative upkeep cards (and other such counter based cards) by making a deck with solemnity. They all cumulative upkeep cards never cost a thing. The other way around is to skip the upkeep. There are ways around it, so gonna be fun.
I was in the process of making a Relentless Rats EDH deck where more then half of the deck is just Relentless Rats the rest is rat support and a copy of Thrumming Stone that gives your spells Ripple 4. Sadly never finished the deck and it was more of a one hit wonder.
One companion Lutri the spell chaser had to be pre emptively banned in commander as his companion requirement was basically play commander I.E. only one copy of each none land card in the deck. So basically he would have been am auto include in any blue/red deck.
Cumulative Upkeep is the least of Juju Bubble’s problems. You could give it Braid of Fire’s beneficial cumulative upkeep, and it would still be stone unplayable.
Shout out to two other never-again mechanics: Gotcha, from the silver-bordered sets, for discouraging any form of interaction both in gameplay and IRL; and Ante, for being literally illegal.
Silver boder is literally just Acorn Icon now. Only diff is they can pick and choose which cards get it easier in an Un- set
I do feel like that is a great way to run Un-sets. Although I love Uncommander and uncube draft. They are a great way to play fun magic with a group of buds.
@@abigailcollins8443and it is worse off for it, IMO.
The older Un sets had effects that *cared* about border color, and would result in one Un set interacting with another in interesting ways.
Unfinity... just doesn't :S
I feel like these lists have an unwritten rule about not counting the joke sets.
Ngl the gatcha mechanic feels very similar to to the traps in the first zendikar block
Epic would be far better if it snowballed. Long ago, when it first came out, my playgroup tested it by making it provide you one more copy every turn and that added flexibility or power made it so that all of them truly felt you had cast a single game ending spell but gave the opponents just enough time to maybe find a solution before the card advantage was simply too great.
Cumulative Epic :D
Cumulative Epic. We combined 2 bad mechanics and made one super mechanic!
the mentioned epic card still gets played in some enchantress blood moon prison decklists
maybe if epic didnt lock you out of casting other spells but maybe was just a recurring upkeep cost, that might fix the issue.
@@archwing3441 two minuses make a plus.
Braid of Fire is one of the most interesting cumulative upkeep cards I’ve ever seen. It was released in Coldsnap in 2006 and its effect has you adding one red mana for each age counter on it during your upkeep. This was, of course, balanced around the mana burn mechanic before that rule got removed in 2009. Nowadays, it’s quite easy to abuse by running Vedalken Orrery so you can cast all the spells you want for the turn during your upkeep or by running Horizon Stone so you can stockpile the extra mana it generates
When I played as a kid, Banding was still around, and we all had our own ideas as to how it interacted with flying, protection from a color, etc. It was basically an argument waiting to happen whenever someone played a creature with Banding.
"OK, listen. We agreed on the banding rules last time. So let's be peaceful now."
Islandhome is responsible for one of the most interesting formats of magic: forgetful fish. It's a mirror of mono blue tempo where you share an 80 card deck with 10 very special creatures: Dân Dân, a 4/1 fish with islandhome. The mechanic is important because the way to kill the fish while playing mono blue is to change de type of terrain.
Fun fact about banding, it's the only mechanic that has an 11 on the storm scale
Banding doesn't, "Bands with other" does.
Storm?
@@Amber-vn2le that's 10
@murlocaggrob2192 it's literally the exact same thing but it's certain creatures instead of all your creatures, similar to lords in tribal decks vs all around anthem effects
@murlocaggrob2192 not to mention on the wiki the term "bands with others" doesn't get it's own post and it's instead in the same post as banding because they're exactly the same mechanic
Some more entries:
Fateseal - manipulating your opponent's top cards causes too much of a feelsbad, and allows too much control of the game state
Haunt - they've said the memory issues were bad, and the fact the cards worked differently when first cast vs when the haunt triggered was also an issue
Horsemanship - literally flying with a different name and no reach equivalent, originally made as the flying replacement in the [real-world ancient China] sets of Portal block (yes, I know about the new Knight that gives Knights horsemanship, that one-off card was just a flavorful way to print a card that functionally said "Knights you control are unblockable")
Surge - WotC _really_ dislikes putting words relating to other formats in sets aimed at 1v1 formats, so Surge mentioning "teammate" relegates it to only Two-Headed Giant sets (this is why there's never any "this can be your commander" on non-creature cards that aren't in EDH pre-cons)
Storm - the very reason the Storm Scale exists, it is the very signpost of "overpowered mechanic that can _never_ come back" (excluding one-offs in Eternal-only supplemental products)
Provoke - honestly I'm not really sure why this mechanic was entirely retired
Mechanics that were made obsolete by newer ones that played better:
Chroma - replaced by Devotion, even though Chroma also worked with cards in other zones
Fear - replaced by Intimidate, which was then replaced by Menace
Regenerate - replaced by "this gains Indestructible until end of turn"
Sunburst - replaced by Converge since the latter is more widely usable and more flavorfully generic ("sunburst" is specific to Mirrodin)
Small note on Banding: it did have some beneficial effects, such as the controller of a Band decided how combat damage was divided amongst the band. So in your example of Benalish Hero and Storm Crow being blocked by Grizzly Bears, the attacking player could decide how to have the Bears deal its 2 damage, instead of the Bear's controller deciding.
One part about banding you missed: let's say I attack with 10 creatures in a band and you block with a 10/10 with deathtouch. I could have it deal 10 damage to just one creature even if the one creature was a 1/1. I could have it deal 10 damage to a 1 toughness creature. That's another reason banding was stopped being printed it's super OP. Obviously on block if you decide how the damage would be delt and put it all on a 1/1 then in response they give it trample you are screwed as it will trample over but blocking with 1 banding and a 1/1 usually results in the banding being an immortal blocker which you can give say lifelink without risking losing the lifelink on block.
i mean, horsemanship just returned. They just printed a new card that hda horsemanship like a month ago
I could see haunt returning if they just make the cards do something different. Like, "Haunt. The haunted creature has flying." is almost exactly like the distub Spirit Auras we got in Crimson Vow.
I'm sad there is no more provoke mechanic. Make MTG hearthstone again!
Horsemenship already came back in the knight pre con
I can imagine if this was made a few months ago Eminence would have made the list. Never say never 😄
WotC hasn't publicly admitted to Eminence being a mistake, even though literally everyone everywhere knows it is a mistake. Thus, they can make the occasional underpowered one-off with it.
Most of the mechanics in the video or my other comment were admitted design mistakes, and thus will most likely never get even a single random one-off card, no matter how weak.
Gavin did a video and said the biggest Eminence issue is with Edgar Markov (said it's the biggest mistake card he made) and to a lesser extent Inalla. He didn't mind Ur-Dragon's reduction or Arahbo's stat buff.
And Storm
@@gabrote42 There were new storm cards in both MH1 and MH2. I totally expect them to make more Storm cards in the future.
@@bobzour Ah, right, this is "return at all". I was thinking about the Storm Scale, which is "return in standard".
Missing some pretty big ones. Like Ante and Storm. Ante being illegal to reprint, and storm being one of the most broken mechanics in Magic's history. There's a reason why the "Storm Scale" has it's name
Storm does get one off printings though. Ante isn’t worth mentioning because it’s just illegal.
Aside from Chatterstorm, what new storm card was printed recently? Not reprint. Original Printing
@@NotSoSerious69420 So does Shadow. The video maker's just not that great at this.
Storm is very much a one in a thousand type mechanic.
I imagine there'll be some more eventually but that's just how storm is. It lies dormant until a cute design is found.
@@EspeonGaming0 Aeve, Progenitor Ooze, Crow Storm (I know it’s an Un card but still), Fiery Encore, Galvanic Relay, Spreading Insurrection, and while Thousand-Year Storm doesn’t use the keyword, it basically gives your instants and sorceries Storm.
I think the word “worst” should be in the video title. Top 10 Mechanics that will never come back makes me think of Storm or Dredge (except for companion)
Companion, dude. Its not about worst, even if most wont come back because they are bad
the thing is wotc totally still prints storm and dredge cards. not in standard of course, but they still try to push the boundary with mechanics like storm and dredge in supplemental sets because those mechanics have so much history and are so evocative. when a new storm card gets printed in, say, a commander precon, people pay attention and discuss wildly. i cant say the same about rampage
I was totally expecting those 2 to make it to the list
Thing is... we get more Storm and Dredge cards every once in a while. Modern Horizons, some commander products like Commander Legends. But like, theyre never gonna print another card with landhome, lol
Banding was actually pretty good in Limited. Especially when blocking. One single bander wildly changes what happens when your opponent attacks you. Albeit at some risk - if they killed your single bander after blockers were declared you could be screwed. Banding never saw much Constructed play - but that was because it doesn't do anything unless you have at least 2 creatures and your opponent has at least 1 creature. In Constructed decks with constant removal of creatures, and some decks playing little or no creatures, that was far from guaranteed to happen.
I still use banding in my commander Defender Deck. Fortified Area All walls have banding and +1/0
@@zombiesatethevideostar1695 Nice!
Banding is complicated, but it's definitely not a bad ability! It's just that the creatures that do have banding are quite weak in general. If you added banding to many of the more playable creatures today, people would respect the strength of banding a lot more.
If they do banding, they need to give it a real Reason to use it.
For example:
"Creatures that band with this gain flying" lets you decide if the evasion is worth the downside of making it one attacker.
A 6/1 banding creature could survive blockers with help. Or conversely a 0/6 banding could protect your low toughness attackers.
@@calemr There's already a powerful reason to use banding, it breaks combat math in half even on just a 1/1 with no other abilities. Whether attacking or blocking, the player with a banding creature get to chose how damage is dealt to creatures in that band, which is a powerful form of evasion without any extra help. If your opponent blocks with a 7/7 you can put all 7 damage on another random 1/1 in the band. You have a bunch of 1/1's vs. their 5/5? You get to trade off one for one.
Banding isn't overpowered in competitive constructed by any means, due to the general de-emphasis on creature combat, but it crushes hard in limited or more casual constructed games. A lone keyword singlehandedly makes every one of your bodies better, and every one of your opponent's bodies worse.
Back in the beginning Banding was one of those odd abilities that really messed with combat trades, a Crusade or Holy Strength really could throw a spanner into it, it just got power crept out as people got better at theory crafting and the mana cost of creatures with it seemed to remain higher than a lot of other ability like Prot From or various evasions
Banding is *nuts*. You win every combat forever if you have it on your side just due to how you get to decide how all damage gets distributed.
Banding is great on the block, but useless on the attack.
I'm pretty sure you forgot Clash from the plane of Lorwyn. It was horribly random just like Ripple was. There are also several mechanics that were "fixed" but would pretty much never appear in the original form, like Chroma (which turned into Devotion).
When you explained how Banding is too complicated to explain, you made it far less complicated. When Blocking as a band you need one Banding creature and any number without. The description given was for attacking as a band. (And to block a flyer every creature needs flying)
I still miss Rampage and Banding Gorilla Berserker was a reliable hitter because it was typically unblockable back on the day.
I remember playing a rampage deck back in the day with lure, rancor, and regeneration. It was insane
It's funny because I remember just playing Lure so that nothing else could be blocked.
Honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if Companion came back with a focus on Commander. The mechanic can be an interesting fix to Partner, which seems to be too good. The requirements would have to be very specific though. It would also be nice if the requirements refered to your Commander so you dont feel like you have to do a deck check.
I could see something like "Companion - Your Commander must chare a creature type with this creature and must also have First Strike." This is just a basic example.
No - that's actually just way too easy to build around. It should still apply to the entire deck, but should directly reference your commander so it can't be used in Legacy and Vintage. Like just modify the mechanic to be Commander Companion where it fits the original idea, but requires your commander to exist for it to work.
Dipping out
@@jerryturgin6583 how would they play it in vintage if it has a very specific commander restriction? Lol
@@greyaye8565 is that not exactly what I said? Lmao
Dipping out
The following lists count non-reserved cards.
10. The most valuable forecast card is Pride of the Clouds. And not gonna lie, a creature token creator every turn is VERY good. As for buyback, it's either Whim of Volrath (a niche color and basic land type hate card), or if we go by modern borders, it's Wurmcalling (big wurm tokens all the time).
9. Intimidate's most valuable card is Mikaeus, the Unhallowed (No Mercy on humans and an auto reanimator and buffer in one package), and fear's Wort, Boggart Auntie (Goblin recycler, anyone?).
8. Dauthi Voidwalker is the most valuable shadow card. But it's a good stealer card that has shadow, and not proof shadow is a good mechanic.
7. Rampage should be mixed with menace or force-blocking mechanics, and even then, it becomes a dull mechanic.
6. Banding is proof that a flavorful mechanic can end up becoming too convoluted. And I had seen better takes on that idea too on custommagic.
5. The best cumulative upkeep card is Braid of Fire. All upsides ever since mana burn is obsolete. Also, echo does the idea better too.
4. You know the mechanic's off when the best card is the one that gives the ripple keyword with relentless cards like Relentless Rats.
3. Funny how white, considered the weakest color as of now, has the best epic card.
2. You know the keyword's bad when it's defunct. And a showcase of how Wizards GREATLY overestimated creatures back then.
1. The idea of a commander in constructed is fun. But that means you also changed the whole way you play Magic. There's a reason why removing the extra deck in Yu-Gi-Oh! can change the gameplay as well.
IDK, the -home mechanics might be tweaked to work, like adding a conditional effect to the creature that mimics Blood Moon for their home or something like that (besides having high power/endurance compared to the mana cost)
11:18 - 11:35
The thought of casting a million squirrels or shadowborn apostles immediately made me smile. Then 7 seconds later you shatter my dreams with one sentence.
I think that miracle was the fixed version of epic where you'd get an AMAZING card if it was your top deck and could swing the game in your favor. They just needed to avoid decks built around stacking the top card and drawing on the opponent's turn
Miracle always felt like a misguided mechanic. The concept behind it was the fantasy of topdecking a literal miracle, and one draw winning you the game. But lots of cards already DO that if the circumstances are right. That's already a thing that happens organically in magic. They didn't need a keyword to artificially push it.
Combination of trample and rampage feels like it was designed to be a lethal threat when combined with lure effects . You can lure all your opponent's chaff into blocking rampaging creature, and then it will trample all over them into opponent's health.
Banding was simple to learn, use, and useful. I learned it as a 13yo in 1995 and had no problem. Use a low CMC creatuure with banding as a 'meatshield' in attack or defense -- especially if there was an attack or defense trigger that you wanted to activate from the 'shielded' creature.
I have to imagine something like Ante is on an internal banlist, because it seems like the most obvious contender for #1 here, even above dexterity cards.
ante is a bit obvious because if ante were a real thing then Magic would have been considered a gamble game, with LOTS of issues like being forbidden to underage ones
Also, it's not a keyword, and it seems like they were gunning specifically for keywords.
@@marcoottina654 To say nothing of gambling being illegal in a lot of jursidictions.
Honestly I'd bet they'll eventually come out with a new Companion card in some Modern Horizons-style set in several years. It just seems like the type of mechanic some designer is going to spend a ton of time working on to see if they can be the ones to 'fix' it.
Companion has a ton of interesting design options, the main issue was being a portly v balanced mechanic. Imo Lutri is a great example of a companion with a restriction that feels meaningful but can also be worth building around. Unlike many other mechanics that have little ability to do much with, companion absolutely could be good
I played a lot at the times with or against rampage, fear, shadow (it was my main deck for a long time by the way), banding, cumulative upkeep and islandhome. The only troublesome one was banding, because almost nobody understood it. I don't know if the rules say that, but the advantage of it was that you could assign how damage was distributed among the creatures of the band (not the adversary, as normal), at least it was how people played. If it actually works like this, this is useful sometimes, because you can turn your weenies into a fatty to force an exchange of creatures or band battering ram with something else to keep striking the opponent that only has weenies or walls.
I miss magic before mirrodin. Now everything seems average to high power level. Tried to return to magic a few years ago and met an RG agro infect deck. No way old decks could pair with that, and that's not even overpowered by "modern format" standards.
Lutri shouldn't be on the EDH banlist. Just prevent him from being the Companion due to its redundant Companion rule. They prevented Yurion from being used as a companion for the exact opposite reason that Lutri is. Personally, I don't think EDH should allow for any Companions as you are now playing a 101 card deck with effectively 2-3 commanders that have guaranteed access to the player. I wish they'd print a Lutri that is 1:1 to Lutri, Spellchaser, only without Companion.
Banding is actually very good when blocking, since it allows you to spread out damage however you want. So if your opponent attacks with a 5/5, you can block it with a two 2/2s and a 1/1 with banding and assign ALL the damage to the 1/1. Or five 1/2s, and assign 1 damage to each.
I believe Benalish Hero saw at least a tiny bit of constructed play, and the Banding mechanic is just generally strong in limited. If it was on better creatures, we might have a different view of it!
banding broken on blocking you can shut off trample dmg
During the combat damage step, if an attacking creature is being blocked by a creature with banding, or by both a [quality] creature with “bands with other [quality]” and another [quality] creature, the defending player (rather than the active player) chooses how the attacking creature’s damage is assigned. That player can divide that creature’s combat damage as they choose among any creatures blocking it. This is an exception to the procedure described in rule 510.1c
You can choose not to deal the excess damage from trample if you don’t want to. This works because trample is an optional keyword ability. Additionally, you can simply assign all the trampler's damage to the blocking creature even if it is over lethal damage.
i use this to piss of green decks in edh
Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts+Hundred-Handed One+Cathedral of Serra and/or Unholy Citadel
your welcome for a way to agravite the living shit out of elf players
I suggested this topic a bunch. Glad to finally see it.
Banding could actually come back. There are no cards where Banding is explained on the card. WOTC could change what Banding does and not have to errata any cards.
A card that makes rather good use of the Cumulative Upkeep ability in commander imo is Hibernation's End. While not being the most powerful by any means it is extremely flavorful and also quite useful in creature focused strategies that run a lot of value pieces.
There's also Herald of leshrac. Cumulative upkeep:gain control of target land you don't control. Then, when you sacrifice, your opponents get their land back.
Lovely!
Next video idea: ways to repair / rethink unplayable / forgotten mechanics.
Like: a creature with Plainshome and "W, TAP: Gain 1 life for each Plains on the field" ; a druid creature with cumulative upkeep 1 and "G, TAP: Each player adds GG for each age counter on this creature. Nobody lose that mana at the end of phases and subphases. Activate only during your main phases."
Also, Absorb was considered way too broken, such that appears only in Lymphatic Sliver and very few other cards
I think "protection" is a good honorable mention. It's on some really good cards but it hasn't been printed on like any in years. There's this one newer card that gives a creature "hexproof from spells and abilities of a chosen color and it can't be blocked or dealt damage by creatures of the chosen color" which is just non-keyword protection...
Rampage wouldn't be bad as a combat trick. It's situational but if it were to come back that would be the way
"Thrumming Stone is not a viable strategy."
Laughs in Dragon's Approach
I think Rampage/Bushido could come back on something like a piece of equipment, where it gets to combine with some other effect. Itll never be a common mechanic again, but its not really inherently broken or anything and does allow some funky strategies that care about the buffs the mechanic will provide.
A big problem with bushido, IMO, is that a lot of its cards could have their bushido treated as always on and Still be only decent at best.
For example, Ronin Cavekeeper would be a vanilla 6/5 for 6, which is trash.
Stick it on well statted cards, or stuff with "When this creature deals combat damage to a player" abilities, and it'd be useable.
Rampage was reprinted on General Marhault Elsdragon! I'm personally a common victim of Marhault+Lure shenanigans
The only problem with Bushido is that the cards it was printed on are trash it's why it got bad reputation.
I feel like there could be some other companion card as a one-off for commander. Something like “your deck contains no instants and sorceries” which would be way more fair than stuff that kaheera enables
Banding is actually quite useful when used correctly. I couldn't figure out why so many people were unable to understand how it worked. I mean, it really isn't that complicated.
While banding while attacking isn't as powerful as while blocking, it can be useful when dealing with a larger blocker. Example: Defending player has a 2/4 Giant Spider in play. You have a 2/2 vanilla flyer and a 2/2 flyer with banding. If you attack with the two as a band, and the defending player blocks with the giant spider, you can assign one damage from the spider to each of the two attacking creatures while dealing four to the spider, killing it, but sparing both of your creatures.
BTW -- Banding while blocking is not the same as while attacking as you described it to be. While attacking, yes -- one or multiple banding creatures can band with a single non-banding creature. However, only one creature with banding is required when blocking alongside any number of banding or non-banding creatures to be able to use the ability and apply the damage as the player wishes.
For cumulative upkeep, there's the card braid of fire that was just bonkers with that mechanic, which the cost was to add red mana per turn and would increase as you went on. Funny how this is never mentioned in these videos
Braid of Fire was created when Mana Burn was still in play. Since all of that Red Mana was only available during your upkeep, if you didn't use it, you took damage for each unspent Red Mana at the end of the phase. So, at the time -- it actually sucked.
@@ripvanwinkle9648 there were many applications for it, actually, including paying for other cumulative upkeeps, using instants, etc.
I think that there could be space for Companion as a Commander-only mechanic, since in other formats, it basically gives you a nerfed version of a Command Zone. Companion (or a retrain of it) could be like a one-sided version of things like Partner or Background, where if any deck meets certain requirements then it can run the Companion as a second Commander.
Of course two of the existing Companions would be left behind by this, since they weren't designed with Commander rules in mind. No Commander deck can run Yorion, with the strict limit on deck size, but 99.9% of Commander decks with UR in them could run Lutri (if it wasn't banned) because it's a singleton format barring Relentless Rats shenanigans. If the idea were to be revisited, it would probably be best with a new cycle of Companions that were actually designed for it.
while i agree cumulative upkeep was a bit of a failure, it certainly still has strong cards, i think notably Mystic Remora and Braid of Fire both still seeing some play in a few formats as remora is a great early game counter to punishing certain decks an braid of fire for mana for combos or getting that extra mana for a turn.
Forecast could be great, but the payoff in the current state of the game would have to be so drastically powerful for the cost of showing your cards to your opponent that it might just be impossible to balance safely.
The biggest drawback with Forecast cards is the severe timing restriction of only being able to use it in your upkeep, so it becomes a guessing game about your card draws.
Shadow creatures can be good for attacking, and you can use normal creatures to block.
With banding, apart from the rules complexities, most creatures with banding were over costed for their power/toughness.
With CU, it sometimes was applied to cards that it shouldn't have been, where either normal upkeep or no upkeep would be better, such as Firestorm Hellkite.
Jotun Grunt is an interesting case, as sometimes it would be better if it was just upkeep, but other times that CU could be an advantage.
Braids of Fire has a CU whose disadvantage was removed by the elimination of the mana burn rule.
Whilst many cards with CU are bad, also many of them had the CU to balance a very powerful ability.
You forgot the one beneficial cumulative upkeep: braid of fire. It is horrifying. It's cumulative upkeep is to generate one red mana per age counter. It was made during the mana burn era, so it did have a possible consequence. Maybe.
See also Herald of Leshrac.^^
@@zackkelley2940 every time I have ever seen him hit a table he's been instantly dead. Waaaaaaaaaaay too much heat on one card lmao. Folks already hate land destruction, they are REALLY gonna hate land theft. Plus he dies when he cant take 4+ lands, and gives them all back. Braid just infinitely produces red mana.
@@VCV95 There's solutions to both of those, but, yes, it DOES get a lot of hate.
That said something like Drana and Linvala plus Kormus Bell and Urborg tend to be easier anyway.
They just printed new forecast cards in MH2.
Ten controversial judgement calls in tournaments (if you can find that many)
I love the story of the player who played Pithing Needle, naming "Borborygmos" instead of "Borborygmos Enraged", and the judge ruled "No Take-Backsies".
The player claimed his play was valid since Enraged was "implied".
Rampage combos perfectly with any "all creatures able to block target creature this turn do so" effects like Taunting Arbormage's ETB kicker effect. This turns a creature into a pseudo board wipe vs one opponent.
I think you're being a bit too harsh on Rampage/Bushido, it's an underutilized and interesting design space, especially for limited. It's not a great mechanic nor a mainstay but rampage feels like something we could see more of on green and red cards, it might not help push for more damage but it does changes the maths and can actually synergies with other things.
Banding is also not as bad as you made it out to be, it's certainly complex AF but it allows you to decide how combat damage is assigned which has many uses, from protecting important creature in the band, to ignore blocking when combined with trample and passing by getting through a deathtoucher.
You say never come back, I saw MH3. I actually really like how these sets revisit old ideas and give them modern updated cards.
For exampe, piercing rays for forecast, Recruit the Worthy for buyback etc
Astonished that Storm didn't top the list, since the design team literally named their internal "this will never come back" scale the Storm Scale.
Funny enough, several Storm cards have been printed since the Storm Scale was introduced.
@@SalmiakkiAficionado Have they?
Was this in Standard?
So Companion would be like if you could cheat out really powerful Extra Deck monsters by just having any materials for it in your deck. Not having to use any Spell cards, go through any combos, getting materials on the field or in the hand, just "I summon Baronne de Fleur".
No, Companion is like having Sphere Mode or Nibiru in your side deck and being able to topdeck it once whenever you need it.
There is no way Ante is coming back.
Top 10 creatures most like a Yu-Gi-Oh boss monster. Two off the top of my head are Kozilek, the Great Distortion (omni-negate that discards cards to negate) and Visara the Dreadful (taps to destroy creature).
IIRC, didn’t banding allow an attacker to decide how damage was divided between banded creatures at one point? I thought that was the major draw-though it’s been literal decades since I read the gameplay examples from the MTG manual that explained banding.
There was a red enchantment with cumulative upkeep I don't think people ever talk about when mentioning the keyword, which is technically if not broken at least really powerful right now.
It was a 2 cost card from ice age with cumulative upkeep - Add a Red Mana to your mana pool. Originally, if you had unspent mana in your pool at the end of the turn, you took damage, but they removed that rule at some point, so that card now just becomes an exponentially bigger and bigger mana source for raml with no side effects.
I mean it's funny that you made Companion the top slot when they did straight up re-print all of the ten Companions for MOTM limited and it was just kind of a funny side thing alongside all the other funny side things going on in that format. OFC part of it was a place to reprint the errata-ed companions /somewhere/ but I really don't think given the clear intent to still have it be /used/ in the most recent format that it's 'never coming back', they'd likely just change the conditions for why it's used.
All of the companions printed had a 'deck building' requirement, but the while the rules state it's conditional on deckbuilding, all of the individual cards also allude to it, and I think it'd be easy to exclude that specific aspect and print companions where the text could very easily be something more like 'You control 5 or more enchantments' or 'You have exactly 13 land cards in your graveyard' or even a simpler cost like 'Sacrifice 3 artifacts', at which point you can pay the 3 and put it in your hand.
Disagree about Shadow (since WOTC still makes cards with Shadow) and Companion (with the errata WOTC will eventually try to print some again).
I mean... Landhome just says "can't attack", if you put a good passive effect on the card alongside it, it could be a good drawback
The home keyword would be great if the mechanic allowed the blocking of that landwalk. "Oh? Your forestwalk is attacking me? I'll block with my foresthome"
There's a much shorter way to word banding, but Mark Rosewater just hates it so much that he insists it's too complicated when in reality he's printed much more complicated mechanics many times. Here's the short way: "Combat damage which could be assigned to this is assigned by its controller. When this attacks, you may choose one other attacking creature. Anything which blocks either also blocks the other."
Bringing back banding is one of the things on my list of "things which could bring me back to Magic again."
I'm not sure why That would get you back in, but, otherwise I agree. Banding is not complicated. It's just a meme to claim it is.
@@calemr The reason it would get me back in is because it would be a symbol that they've fundamentally changed their design philosophy. It's the one mechanic I know for sure Mark Rosewater would never bring back under his current thinking.
This is a different effect though.
@@tinfoilslacks3750 It functions identically to banding in every way.
@@clearlypellucid first of all you've already reduced the band down to only 2 creatures with the line "when this attacks, you may choose one other attacking creature" and you have no rules for how a band is formed or how it works on defense. You also haven't accounted for the fact that a band on offense requires all but one thing to have banding and defense it requires the inverse.
You've phrased it conceptually but that's really easy to do. Banding's entire problem is that its actual legal rules text is way more lengthy than paraphrasing it conceptually because you have to account for every little aspect of it.
Back in the days, i overkilled so many people with the craw giant enchanted with a lure... I usually put all damage on the lowest health blocking creation, and blam 5+2X damage on the opponent.
Lure was really insane in green. (and yes, the deck also had basilisk...). Aaaah, i do not understand why the UA-cam algo suggest this video as i stopped this game almost 30 years ago but it was fun to remember, thank you!
Oh, there won't be 2 years before companion will be back. Mark those words. They won't be as easy to play as they are now but I hope for Zada with "your deck has only instant or sorcery spells" :)
Ok, small knee jerk reaction here, "fuck you , Umori the collector is playable. He is my bestest ooze commanding my mono green ooze tribal deck."
didn't shadow literally show up in MH2 on dauthi voidwalker? I think some of these mechanics might come back, although only rarely
does MTG have any keywords that lets creatures attack each other like in Yu-Gi-Oh? and is there way to make that effect stay permanently on the field?
Provoke (Onslaught block IIRC)
The Rebel/Mercenary mechanic is probably less likely to return than Cumulative Upkeep. Sure it may not be a keyword, but it is still a mechanic, and Cumulative Upkeep, while unlikely, could still be a possibility for cards with a very strong ability that they don't want to be able to last very long if it isn't interacted with, like the Fish is.
As the number one banding fan in the world, I expect its return *IMMEDIATELY.*
Companion was a horrible idea. It seemed like someone at WotC saw the success of Commander and said "Hey, I know! Let's put commanders in standard!" This, of course, completely ignored the fact that Commander was balanced around having a larger 100 card deck made completely of singletons because having a commander for a 60 card constructed deck would be broken. Then they were completely shocked to discover that 60 card constructed decks being able to run a commander was, in fact, broken.
Cumulative upkeep exist:
Most people: "This is garbage."
Jon Irenicus players: "Phyrexian Soulgorger, mah boi. Im going to make you a star!"
Zedruu players: "Illusions of Grandeur and Thought Lash are my favorites."
I get what you're saying on rampage but when the those cards came out "Lure" was a relatively common card to use with that craw giant. You could put a lure on it and attack to have every creature your opponent had block, allowing you to choose who you'd kill with all that pump. Was fun and made it so your opponent would attack/tap/ stall with first strikers. Rampage was fun back during 5th.
EDIT/Addon: It would be cool to see a creature with rampage and mence. When it attacks it gets pumped, blocking, it doesn't, when you want to try nuke it with red, easy to remove. Makes a smaller creature easy to remove but scary when it attacks.
I've read about banding but don't get why it's so bad/disliked. You can choose whether to put creatures in a band and aren't there some cases where it could be a benefit, like blocking one big creature without losing any of yours?
I had mentioned that I wanted to go back to Lorwyn because tribal was an awesome mechanic, someone said that it was a dead mechanic that they wouldn’t bring back. Idk didn’t seem to op and it didn’t seem terrible.
I disagree that the companion mechanic is unredeemably bad, It is just that most companions released were either overpowered or too easy to put in your deck (or both). A good example of a companion done right is Obosh, it is powerful but quite restrictive.
The companion mechanic has 3 very positive effects on the game:
-When both players run out of cards it gives them something to do more than being in top deck mode
-When you get mana flood it gives you something to do with your mana.
-It makes new decks appear that would not exist otherwise (for example: big Obosh red in Modern)
Wotc just has to be VERY careful next time they decide to make companions, but it is theoretically possible to make this mechanic good.
Lurrus was banned from Vintage for power level reasons, a feat no other card has accomplished. That cat was nuts.
I'm surprised Annihilator wasn't on the list, what a ridiculously powerful ability.
Annihilator needs the creature to stick around which is a pretty big ask these days
It just came back
i have to say rampage sounds gameplaywise like a neat mechanic. like questing beast has for example "cant be blocked by creatures with power 2 or less" which just denies you the ability to throw 2/2 in its way completely. But rampage 1 would mean you can throw 2/2 in but you get only diminishing return for it so it can be sometimes worth to do so even if its inefficient.
Quick mention of Horsemanship! Is basically the same thing as Shadow, but even fewer cards have it, so essentially all of those cards are unblockable. Also any ice lands mechanics are a mess
When Rampage came on the scene a very popular card at the time made it function, Lure. Drop a Lure onto that Craw Giant and that can be a lot of damage, especially if you have a Berserk in hand.
Anyone that says banding is a bad ability has obviously never played with or against it.
If creatures with landhome were also unblockable against said land type it would have made for a better ability. Another bad thing about landhome is that it turns Magical Hack into a kill spell.
Bands With Other is worse than you described here. It doesn't let you band a creature that had the ability and a creature that fits the characteristic, it only lets you band with other creatures that share the ability. For example, a creature with "bands with other bears" wouldn't be able to band with a Grizzly Bears. It would be able to band with that Grizzly Bears if the bears had "bands with other bears".
Oh man, I wouldn't be so sure about companion never coming back. They'll definitely try it again, thinking they can get it right this time.
I doubt we'll ever see snow-covered landwalk again. Not unless Wizards decide to revisit Ice Age yet again.
There were some setups that made Rampage worth while but they depended on the Lure enchantment (All creatures able to block target creature must block target creature.) there was also an instant that did the same thing for that round only, but I don't remember what it was called.
Banding isn't bad as a whole. Banding is terrible on offense but pretty spectacular on defense. It completely cancels out trample and makes attacking into a board with banders a nightmare--there's a lot of board states on which no way you can make a profitable attack because the defender has such a massive advantage if he has a few banders. With a indestructible creature, you can ensure that you never lose anything in combat and always take out the opponent's best attacker (and if that creature tramples, never take any damage). You have the rule wrong--on defense, you can band one bander with *any* number of non-banders.
The above, the fact that it works different on offense and defense is a problem because it's completely unintuitive but even if you fix that, the mechanic is really strong in limited because of what it does to combat. The only thing that holds it back is that creatures of the time were terrible; if you put that on anything good, it gets really obnoxious and grinds the game to a halt quickly.
I run banding in a few decks, it is a great anti-trample and can save a strong power creature with 1 toughness with a 1/1 token when attacking
I can imagine Rampage coming back in spirit specifically as an X pump spell. It's still not good, but I can imagine it.
general marhault elsdragon is a recent card with rampage!
Epic completely removes one of the fundamental aspects of MTG: hidden information. Knowing exactly what your opponent is going to do every turn kills so much fun.
These were a fun list, and the choices do make sense, but there are a few other Keywords I guess I expected to see here, and didn't. They are keywords I like, and so of course I'd want Wizards to use again, so not seeing them here can let me dream, but based on what they do, I just expect that we'll see little to no revisits again.
Infect, Level Up, and Eminence.
I think we can agree that Infect is gone for good? They invented a new mechanic, Toxic, to sub in for it, but they HAD to invent a who new mechanic, even when FINALLY revisiting the place Infect came from, because Infect couldn't just come back, along with Phyrexian mana.
Level Up...okay, it's not a good mechanic, but I liked D&D a lot more than I liked MtG, for a long time, and since Wizards owned both, it felt neat. Since creatures die all the time, I liked the option of getting more profit from them if they survived, and it wad better than having to acquire a second card, like an Equipment, slot it in, draw it, play it, and attach it, then protect it, too. Sure, the LU creature took the progress with them, while the Artifact stayed after their death, but that made it different. It's not great, but I still really like Lighthouse Chronologist and Joruga Treespeaker.
Eminence. We all know why it's not coming back, for the most part; the lack of interactivity irritates people, as does the free starting Enchantment-analog, but I learned to love the mechanic in my own limited play group. I'm a more reserved, slow game, avoid conflict-type; I want to build up a major presence before I commit, as early attacks garnered retaliation, and I could marvel others with my deck stalls, so that could hurt. More than that, though, our group seemed to REALLY target Commanders. Maybe it's the right call, but literally every time someone played theirs, it was probably going to die, and then Commander tax made it an uphill battle, no matter how necessary, or not, your Commander was to the deck strategy. I didn't attack often, but still got attacked when I'd play my leader, to the point there were times I could almost just pick it for color identity, and then nor plan to use it, and then the four Eminence decks came down. I love Wizards, and I love Dragons, so these were easy purchases, and then Eminence gave me an extra perk, that my destructive opponents couldn't stamp out. I get that it can irritate players, even while things like Emblems continue to persevere, but for my own experience, I liked it, and it made the game better for me.
Honestly Forecast, Intimidate, Shadow, and Rampage are all things that could do well in a commander or Modern Horizons product. Forecast is one that has potential outside of commander or MH but it really needs support to bring it up. Something like cost reduction, able to do it on other upkeeps, or even something like when you cast it after you used Forecast something happens. It would also help if it had better effects. There are ways to make it better it just needs something more than nothing. Intimidate, Shadow, and Rampage could be used sparingly for great effect but need specific cards to thrive.
Companion should never have been in standard, should have only been used in commander and should have been balanced better. I do like the idea but some the cards were broken. If you really think about it the problem was Lurrus and Yorion not the others. Out of the 10 of them: 2 were broken taking over the game, 3 saw some play but not much outside of standard, and the rest either saw rare niche play or never were played. The mechanic at first was fine but had problematic cards which soured the mechanic.
surprised you didn't mention that lurrus was so broken it was the first ban in vintage in years and it forced the commander rules committee to ditch their shortcut on using the vintage ban list
Wait, what?
@@jayredharpstudios9672 yep, Lurrus was, for a time, banned in Vintage for power level because the way companion works meant that restricting it would have had literally zero effect on how format warping it was
I have heard your voice somewhere before! Where is that please tell
Did they release another phasing card when I wasn't looking?
Interesting how so many people do not understand Banding and think it's bad to use based on the impacts to attacking. However, banding is best used in defense to allow the damage to be directed to a source that is immune.
Islandhome was intended to be used along with an effect like Phantasmal Terrain to change an opponent's land into an island. The real problem was that even when you went out of your way to try and do this, the cards weren't worth it.
No it wasn't, island home was a flavour first mechanic that existed purely to explain how water dwelling creatures existed on the battlefield.
I am designing a deck that abuses cumulative upkeep cards (and other such counter based cards) by making a deck with solemnity. They all cumulative upkeep cards never cost a thing. The other way around is to skip the upkeep. There are ways around it, so gonna be fun.
I was in the process of making a Relentless Rats EDH deck where more then half of the deck is just Relentless Rats the rest is rat support and a copy of Thrumming Stone that gives your spells Ripple 4.
Sadly never finished the deck and it was more of a one hit wonder.
One companion Lutri the spell chaser had to be pre emptively banned in commander as his companion requirement was basically play commander I.E. only one copy of each none land card in the deck. So basically he would have been am auto include in any blue/red deck.
Enduring Ideal is always so good in my Shrines commander deck. Its extremely versatile, as the Enchantments in that deck can do anything
Cumulative Upkeep is the least of Juju Bubble’s problems. You could give it Braid of Fire’s beneficial cumulative upkeep, and it would still be stone unplayable.
Dauthi voidwalker was printed like last year, wasn't it?
I can see Rampage being redesigned to give a +X for each creature or even each permanent on the opponent's side of the field.