I like the Nephilim, ever since I learned about them I've been intrigued, I'm building a deck that includes all five of them. And I like their non-cohesive look to each other and I feel that it embodies what the MTG salvation wiki says about them " They were there only to humble; living, walking examples of the world's vastness, diversity, unpredictability, danger, wonder, horror, and complexity beyond comprehension."
@@1ogic948 unfortunately no, it never got out of the planning stage as I realized it wouldn't work very well :/ the Nephilim are still a favorite of mine though :]
While I understand that not having a unifying design might not help, I do like the idea that while they are all the same type of creature, they have their own unique look
It's interesting that Abe would get so offended by including "real world faith". There's a lot of references to real world faith all throughout the game, especially in the Arabian Nights or "Egyptian" sets
@@erik_arman not to mention demons with sacrifice based mechanics, devils and djins. I dont think its bad to exploit those ideas as long as you add something uniqie to them. I mean theros and amonketh are as close as you get to mythology from real life
@@LevantWasTaken Because 4-color cards represent the idea of lacking a certain color. Something that is white, blue, black, and green is often better described as missing red.
I kind of like the design choice to make them all incredibly different from one another. I'm not very well versed in the Ravnica lore but if they were some sort of ancient gods in spirit form and were released onto the plane, maybe they simply took the shape of the first thing they came into contact with.
Honestly since the introduction of guilds of ravnica I’ve really found the nephilim enjoyable from a flavor perspective, in ravnica there’s an inherent unity in all of the colors, each combination fills their role and does what they need to do within the city but the nephilim with their inherently janky design and lack of unity between many jumbled colors I think makes them feel more alien, more terrifying and more of the threat they were meant to be. Ravnica is a plane that I think means a lot for unity vs chaos, each guild is in a pact and fulfills a role but they all have an inherent division, I think the chaos the nephilim offer shakes that up in a way that really compliments the setting and makes it a lot more interesting
I think crucifixion should be a white enchantment tho. Killing someone because their power threatens your status quo, and turning them into a martyr? Thats more white than me
"took offence that wizards would take living faiths" Angels, demons, wrath of God, crusade, literally hundreds of faith cards based on current religions.
Not to mention other living faiths. Large parts of Kamigawa being heavilly inspired by Shinto, parts of Arabian nights (although that might be closer to folktales and such than religion). We've got demons and angles and what have you already, and the older editions even had direct bible quotes on the cards. I don't see the reason to take offense with the nephilim specifically, nor do I get the reason to take offense at all. It's just saying "this part of you religion is cool, we're going to repurpose it for this creative work". What's the problem?
As a Hebrew speaker I can say that it's etymology in Hebrew isn't actually all that unclear - the root "n.f.l" has a meaning of falling, and the translation "fallen one" is probably the most accurate. Weirdly, wizards went with the plural form of the word. "nephil" is singular, "nephilim" is plural. Great videos! Also, they originate in Judaism, but are also part of Christianity.
So i study the bible. And play mtg. Nephilim is a strange topic. It appears in some renditions of the bible and not others... personally i believe the whole thing is a false doctrine. Gen 6 is where they come into play. The kjv does not mention nephilim. Its the kjv i have come to trust as an accurate translation. The account goes as follows. there were GIANTS (some translations has giants appears as nephilim here) on the earth in those days and also after that, when The sons of God saw the daughters of men.... and bore children to them, the same which were the mighty warriors of old, men of renown... now i should really have copy pasted that to avoid this paraphrase but it will suffice... so to make nephilim here we have to interpret this to mean the sons of God are angelic beings and the daughters of men are human women making a hybrid offspring... the issue is the bible says in hebrews 1 vs 5 that God never called an angel his son. Furthermore every other mention of the sons of God can be shown to mean believers in the one true God. So what we really have is saved men marrying the daughters of infidels. It is a lesson about marrying within the Christian community. And the way its worded it actually says the giants were here before these unions took place. People just believe what they want now adays. Theres no vigor to root out false doctrine. Nephilim sell alot of books
@@RichieDubbz kjv is more of an adaptation, a lot of original terms were lost. You need to speak the original language (hebrew?) if you really want to avoid the false interpretations
My feeling is since they were the Old Gods of Ravnica, then they shouldn't look similar. They're probably from a time when Ravnica was still forming, like primordial Earth. The fact that they had also been snacking on dragon corpses probably made them look even weirder. As for Commander sets, I really hope they don't do ally colors, they get enough love as is. They don't need any more.
I was thinking that too! They ARE messy and weird and confusing and have no clear through-line and while I understand why that's disappointing, I personally don't think any other way of designing would feel more appropriately antedeluvian. They're randomly retrieved chunks of a whole bizarre world that doesn't exist anymore, they SHOULDN'T be sensible to you.
Yeah, I was just thinking that they make perfect sense as the primeval forces back from when the world was first being formed/constructed/etc. The old gods. You get both Cthulhu influences from their bizarre shapes and all, and then other influences to their design from their natures as either being shaped while the world still was, or by being representative of extremely primeval concepts/elements (Glint Eye is literally a cycle of creation and destruction, of knowledge if nothing else, Dune-Brood the land itself, Witch-Maw for magic, which is obviously a primeval force in basically all M:tG settings, etc.) but in a highly abstract sense, reflected in their strange and abstract forms. Probably made worse by the fact that they're basically had to start putting themselves back together and all.
Always a shame with another religious person gets offended over something like this. The Nephilim are an Old Testament Oddity that the majority of Christians know nothing about, learning about the Nephilim cards got me to read up on them and I thought it was just really cool! Sure Greek Mythology isn't a 'living religion' now, but that's another instance where taking inspiration from an original source and putting some spins on it is just cool and lets Magic keep going. I always could remember what all the Nephilim do and their names, though sometimes I had a little difficulty in remembering all of their respective colors. I feel what unified them as a cycle was the very 'awkwardness' that you described and said applies to each one. They were bizarre and alien, making them wholly unique and I am all for uniqueness.
What's really funny is that the guy apparently got triggered by the Nephilim, which as a concept are pretty much non-existant in Christianity and rather fringe in Judaism, but did he also have a problem with Magic's heavy reliance on lavish visual depictions of scantily-clad angels? Jesus. But you're right, the very concept of Nephilim is pretty interesting.. Aactually, that reminds me of something, Sam mentioned the similarity between one of the Nephilim and certain visual elements of Spirited Away. What I find interesting is that the Book of Enoch which provides insight into the story of the Nephilim has also been heavily referenced in the Neon Genesis Evangelion series (along with other Dead Sea Scrolls). To me, MTG Nephilim are aesthetically and conceptually a wee bit similar to the NGE Angels (Glint-Eye actually looks like one) - weirdly-looking, mysterious creatures, each of them unique and different from its "brethren", wreaking havoc for unknown reasons.
The Nephilim are totally similar to NGE Angels. Beings that are as seemingly cosmic and unknowable as they are supposedly deep and directly tied to Humanity. Too far yet too close. Just all around really cool and odd, like I said, they are a unified cycle because their shared trait was that awkward bizarrness as opposed to a shared cost, mechanic, name or card type. A flavor cycle.
00Clank even worse is that literally the previous block was Kamigawa, which pulled directly from Shinto faith! Abe doesn't talk about this though, probably because it's not western
Nephil are curious to get annoyed about considering theyre extinct and mostly a footnote in the faiths that record them. Angels and Demons are still a very real thing, yet that dude has no problems with them??
Can we use the names of these for naming 4-color decks until Wizards makes 4-color clans or something? It bothers me that a deck like Jeskai black could also be called Mardu blue, Esper red, and Grixis white. Instead of calling it Jeskai black, it could be called Yore-tiller control.
Personally, I kinda feel like their clunkiness goes hand in hand with the lore. They’re explicitly stated to be the raw, chaotic embodiments of the world of Ravnica. They represent the world without any order, to an even lesser extent than the Gruul clans because at least they have goals and general hierarchy.
I bet the guy at StarCityGames didn't care about Kamigawa deliberately ripping off half of the Shinto religion, Theros doing the same with Greek mythology, djinns (important figures in Islamic theology) being featured throughout MtG's hystory and "Army of Allah" and "Jihad" being actual, playable cards from Arabian Nights. But hey, the beliefs of others are just kooky fairy tales, am I right? *sarcasm* BTW great quality work as always, Sam.
The original article has been removed, but I remember the StarCityGames guy saying that he was ok with angels and demons being in MtG because they were, in his opinion, "generic" (a.k.a. featured in multiple cultures and myths). Apparently, his problem with the Nephilim stemmed from the fact that they were specific/exclusive to his own religion/beliefs, and that's why he was offended. Still BS tho. Everything in Kamigawa is specific to Shinto and Japanese mythos, but I still didn't see him complain about it.
nintendoleo Agreed, Christians are fairly ridiculous when they don't realize how much they're pleading for special treatment. All mythology is fair game for Magic. There are still believers in Greek, Egyptian, and Norse gods and you don't see them complaining. I hope they do a Christianity inspired set, we can see three turn delayed regeneration, Hexproof Clerics, and Wrath of God can get reprinted. On the flipside I'd actually love to see a heavy science inspired set. That would be awesome!
Science world: Just izzet and simic, maybe throw in some skaabs What all would go into CHristian world? Angels, demons, clerics, nephilim, leviathan, etc?
Caleb Martin I did find it kinda hard to think of anything terribly interesting to put into Christan world. Lots of religious hierarchy.... I think The Dark was set in a fairly Christianity inspired setting. As for a science set, I'd like to see space and stats and deep physics, quantum gravity theory, black holes and fundamental particles.
After binging (again) a bunch of your videos I just have to thank you from moving from wacky random images to more serene visual equivalency of your voice. Thank you for one of the best MTG channels in UA-cam.
Ink-Treader was actually a crucial piece of one of my first decks, which focused on Heroic style triggers and targeting/targeted effects. Having a few cards like Inky and Precursor Golem to magnify the single-target effects to multiple creatures was fantastic, and it's the only Nephilim card I remember to this day.
I actually really like them. They are an embodiment of the colors they represent so they have to be a little weird and awkward. Also, one of their unifying aspects is their naming scheme, their names are all comprised of two words representing the color identity of a color pair. It takes a bit of searching before you really see which words represent which color pairs, but I think this was the reasoning behind it when they invented them. Since Ravnica is so big on it's color pairs.
@@Flamingpangolin 2:38 "Witch-maw looks terrifyingly similar to the river spirit in spirited away" double Uhmm... For clarity: No face is not the river spirit
Giants are also referred in Finnish sites, names, items and poems. Things like iron ore found on lakes being named 'Giant's Buttons', if directly translated from Finnish, reference to an ancient building site with only rocks remaining in the foundation being called 'Giant's Church' and also there was a giant character Kullervo, a tragic character and descendad of his murdered family, which the murderer's own family took him in, ending up in all sorts of drama in Kalevala, sort of a national epic.
And the wonky weird and stupendous education of random magic topics continues! Thank you Sam for all your hard work - these quality videos I'm sure are time consuming to make and I definitely appreciate it :)
I'm a big fan of the nephilim cycle. It's interesting that Alesha, Who Smiles at Death was featured in the video, because she is an interesting engine to bring out the nephilim (except for Ink-Treader Nephilim and Dune-Brood Nephilim). I've personally done reasonably well with Glint-Eye and Witch-Maw in this deck. I also have another deck that doesn't use Alesha and has four of the five nephilim in the deck (Ink-Treader is just not that useful even when you manage to get it out with an empty board...). See...the thing about the nephilim is how much they love Knight of New Alara. All of the sudden, the nephilim all have a minimum p/t of 5/5. Used in conjunction with the 2 CC, three color Alara creatures, you have a decent beatdown deck with just a little support and some mana fixing. It's not gonna win you any tournaments...but it sure is fun to play with.
0:56 Where was his outrage when Arabian Nights and Kamigawa were entire blocks based around other people's faiths? And why wasn't he offended by the angels? What's the difference?
@@haingis Yes, I found it. But I don't see why Nephilim can't also move into general myth and legend. Most Christians and Jews probably don't care about the Nephilim and I doubt they play a central role in his own religious beliefs. I know taking parts of someone culture to sell a product is seen as disrespectful, that's why some people get offended at cultural appropriation, but taking something as irrelevant as the Nephilim and making them cool isn't very harmful.
@@cutecommie Can confirm, them using Angels is far more upsetting than the Nephilim. Heck even in the Bible the Nephilim are a footnote at best. The fact he is more upset about the Nephilim being used IN NAME ONLY is confusing.
After playing with a Golos Myr/Nephilim tribal commander deck for over a year now, I actually can recite all five of the nephilim's names and effects by heart. Yes, I am proud of myself.
Witch-Maw is absolutely inspired by the Spirited Away creature, in both illustration and function. A monster that grows, uncontrollably, and then tramples through opposition like a torrent?
I actually had a fun gimmick deck based around Ink-Treader Nephilim. I don't remember the name of the card, but there was a red instant that allowed you to gain control of target creature and give it haste, until end of turn. Casting this on your own Ink-Treader allowed you to take control of every creature in play. Was pretty hilarious.
It's interesting that the children of angels and humans, the things that likely inspired Hercules, Ulessess and the rest, should become such different things when used as fiction material. In mtg, strange, arwkwad tooth things, in 40k, giants building brass towers, demanding worship.
Imma just say that the nephilim looking different from eachother is very clearly not a fault. No-one thinks its odd if the current gods in a given setting have diverse looks, the same should stand for old gods. The nephilim are not a unified group like the eldrazi, but are grouped together only by incident
hey you guys forgot about one part of the colour pie, the plate it sits on, colourless! I have a colourless commander deck and it's amazing what u can do when you don't have to worry about coloured costs.
I remember building a White, Blue, Red deck that splashed some green that centered around Ink-Treader Nephilim specifically. It was filled with enters the battlefield creatures, 4 Sunforgers, and a bunch of 1 shot instants that were 4 mana or less that had white, red, or both in their costs {Sunforger specific} with the most important being Ghostway. I would do something like Lightning Helix the Nephilim then immediately following it with Ghostway to wipe the field. One of the creatures I would use was the Izzed Chronarch so I'd use it's ability to rescue the Ghostway. A second Chronarch would let me rescue something else.
naphilim in hebrew comes from the word nephila or nophel witch means fall or someone that falls, so i find the "fallen ones" to be the most accurate. but anyway great video as always sam keep on the good work :)
I remember Ink Treader as he was a fun deck build of tossing spells at it and using it as a strange board wipe or card draw thing. I could path it to get tons of land if I have more creatures than my opponent. I could lightning helix him for a messload of life or Electrolyze for card draw. It just required a mess load of mana fixing and expensive lands to make it semi efficient but still fun to play.
I think it would be cool to see 4-color cards that act as counters to several of the abilities of the color they do not contain. For example, one part of the blue-green-red-black card could be that it prevents your opponents from gaining life, which is a mainly white ability.
I'd love to see the next magic set be focused on Nicol Bolas being a planeswalker, and either fighting Ugin in Khans block, or terrorizing Ravnica, with "redeemed" nephilim fighting him to protect the land.
I played with a guy at an LGS who we let use Ink-Treader Nephilim as his commander. At one point I Chaos Warped it, which caused every creature on the board to be Chaos Warped too!
I heard the "colors align" like power rangers comment and i immediately thought of Atraxa aha. It's amusing to find avideo like this ling after the 4 color decks came out, especially since they also had two 2 color allies as partners in the same release.
As someone who plays the nephilim cycle in one of my 5c edh decks, I can confirm their weirdness. At best, most people know about Ink Treader Nephilim as the "instant and sorcery one" and often enough remember that it copies the targeted spell for all possible targets. That said, no one seems to know the other 4 from each other. As for me, well I'd never looked close enough at the art of them to see that they are indeed different. I was legit surprised lol. As a final thought, Ink Treader is also famous for being "the only 'playable' one" (such as it is) sooo...there is that
A friend of mine had Mark Rosewater 'errata' his copies of the nephilim into legendary and sign the cards, so we let him have them as commanders. the decks are all interesting :)
I just wanna say 2 things: 1) I for one have taken the time to memorize the nephilim's abilities, but I always struggle associating the colors and names because I'm awful at names. 2) I might be alone in this, but I'm hella glad he nephilim are ncohesive and nonsensical. All 5 do incredibly different things, all 5 are totally different creatures/commanders, and all 5 of them look hella rad in all their different ways. Nephilim is best creature type.
While difficult, it is possible to showcase what a four color card can be without an emphasis on what is missing, and Commander 2016 did just that. The key is to determine what a 3 color combination looks like and imagine what splashing the fourth color does. For example: Breya, Etherium Shaper - What happens when Esper artifacts play with red? We already have mono red and blue/red artifact fun. Grixis artifacts is also a thing with Mishra. As a result, the green-less deck is the perfect fit for a four color artifact theme. Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis - Taking Bant's system of honor and the military structure of Boros by adding red; taking the group hug of Zedruu and adding green; and/or by taking the primal power of Zoo (Red/green/white) and adding the clever and calculating nature of blue... no matter which reason you have for this combination, you should be very happy with this commander. The only commander I didn't like was Yidris. It feels forced and unfocused. It could have been so much more. For me at least, I am thankful that it isn't in a color combination I care about.
Paul Gaither the way Wizards made the 4-Color Legends is focus on what the missing color works against. Breya was missing Green because Green doesn't like Artiface. Atraxa was missing Red because Red doesn't plan it's progress and acts on impulse. Gay Couple was missing Black because it's Selfish and doesn't help unless it's getting more in return. Willy Wallace is missing Blue because Blue plans and prepares. Yidris is missing White because white is about Order.
1:52 So uh....question. If they were supposed to be old gods of Ravnica, and they were worried about how easy they were to cast...why wouldn't they make them Legendary then bump the cost to allow them to be that strong? It makes very little sense to make them regular creatures to begin with, and mechnanically you'd never want more than one on board regardless. To call their design awkward is an understatement.
maybe for 4 mana cards like the Nephilim, instead of trying to make each of the 4 represented colors stand out, they should have tried to use those 4 colors to emphasize the one that was missing. Incompleteness could have been a good starting point for the creatures, while still opening room up for more weird abstract designs.
i did not know the detail of where they came from (old gods of ravnica) or where they went (struck down by the guild masters), though a friend of mine helped me decipher the deeper meaning if their effects glint-eye: lacks whites selflessness dune-brood: lacks blues sense of thought ink-treader: lacks blacks greed witch-maw: lacks reds impulsiveness yore-tiller: lacks greens life/death cycle deciding one or two effects based on a lack of a color is much easier than four effects focused on the present colors
When you know what all the nephilim and what they do: Witch gets big in a way similar to heroic. Dune creates little guys when it deals combat damage. Ink makes for stack madness by copying every intsoc that targets it for each other target. Yore reanimates things from the graveyard when it attacks. Yep, that's pretty much it. All four nephilim. Nothing else to talk about. Let's move on. (I know about glint: I just don't like it).
I know, old video, but now we are back on Ravnica and Nicol Bolas is plotting something. Would he be wanting to resurrect/enslave/consume/ do something about the Nephilim and we are gonna see them in this block's third set? What if 2019 commander decks are new versions of the Nephilim
i think what unites the nephilim is the fact that they are so different from each other. Kinda how "god can take any form" the fact they are so weird makes them unite under the banner of weirdness. Thats why i love them lol. They stand out so much its hilarious to me.
Defining a 4-color card based on the color it's NOT does not necessarily mean weakness. Imagine the Yore-Tiller Nephilim being a void for all things green. It might eat opponent's lands or interfere with big creatures or tokens. Dune-Tiller could prey upon card draw effects and counterspells. Things like that.
really hoping when we go back to Ravnica these creatures show their heads as Legendary monstrosities that the guilds begin worshipping while the Guildpact was away. They become immense and powerful and rival the Commander 2016 pre-cons in terms of viability and usage.
Sam! Can you do a lore episode on the zombies from Theros? Gray merchant of Asphodel stuck out to me immediately from a design standpoint when the block first came out.
If they wont make the nephilim legendary, why not give them the "llanowar elves => elvish mystic" treatment. Just make a new cycle that is exactly the same as the nephilim cycle but legendary, with different names and maybe a different tribe.
@@nine1690 To avoid that one person at the table who is salty and won't let one player use a nephilim. Also, having your commander in the command zone and the 99 would be funny.
As far as unofficial EDH commanders go, Ink-Treader is by far the most powerful of the bunch. It's ability has only ever been printed on other cards in severely nerfed forms. Any instant or sorcery that targets Ink-Treader gets copied to target each creature it could target. Alternate versions of this ability typically appear more like Zada, only hitting your own creatures, and in red exclusively. On top of the extra colors adding more/better access to things that zada can already do, like turning 1 mana cantrips into mass draw spells, it also opens a world of possibilities for ways of dealing with opponent creatures too. Targeted removal becomes a wrath. But more interesting, Threaten effects become Insurrections. This makes for particularly nasty combos, like gaining control of every creature on the board, attacking with them, then exiling them and gaining life equal to their total power, for 4 mana (Threaten, Swords to Plowshares). The effect also interacts interestingly with a lot of niche spells. Dovescape makes massive amounts of doves for you and always prevents what targets Ink-Treader from actually hitting while still working on the rest of the board. Nivmagus Elemental allows you to selectively target creatures, while growing the elemental. The hunted creatures flood the board with creatures to take. I have an Ink-Treader deck and normally with a group I'm allowed to bring it out a few times then it gets banned. I've had people tell me they'd be fine with any other nephilim and if the nephilim were legendary, Ink-Treader would be banned. I think thats possible. Its an extremely powerful commander against any creature focused deck, and has ways of handling non-creature focused decks pretty well.
I like the Nephilim, ever since I learned about them I've been intrigued, I'm building a deck that includes all five of them. And I like their non-cohesive look to each other and I feel that it embodies what the MTG salvation wiki says about them " They were there only to humble; living, walking examples of the world's vastness, diversity, unpredictability, danger, wonder, horror, and complexity beyond comprehension."
completely agree. :p they are so weird and awesome
Just imagine nephilim in the vaccine buddy.
They always felt like they came from Kamigawa to me
This is a really old comment, but did anything come of the deck?
@@1ogic948 unfortunately no, it never got out of the planning stage as I realized it wouldn't work very well :/ the Nephilim are still a favorite of mine though :]
While I understand that not having a unifying design might not help, I do like the idea that while they are all the same type of creature, they have their own unique look
I think the mostly non-uniform design is on purpose as they are ment to embody vastness
It's interesting that Abe would get so offended by including "real world faith". There's a lot of references to real world faith all throughout the game, especially in the Arabian Nights or "Egyptian" sets
@@erik_arman not to mention demons with sacrifice based mechanics, devils and djins. I dont think its bad to exploit those ideas as long as you add something uniqie to them.
I mean theros and amonketh are as close as you get to mythology from real life
"Men of Faith" like Abe specialize in trotting out their tired statements. Its a persecution complex.
If you paid attention, he said a living faith, aka one still widely practiced
@@Staplesthegreat So are you saying people should curate themselves so as not to offend the religious sensibilities of Christians? Fuck. That. Noise.
@@Staplesthegreat angels and demons seems to still be common in christianity
Fun fact: Magic has almost 3 times as many five colour cards as four color cards
Fun fact: 5 colours are five times more then 1 colour.
Yeah. Why would you need a 4 colour card? 5 colour cards make more sense
Huh.
well they r so much less useful
@@LevantWasTaken Because 4-color cards represent the idea of lacking a certain color. Something that is white, blue, black, and green is often better described as missing red.
I kind of like the design choice to make them all incredibly different from one another. I'm not very well versed in the Ravnica lore but if they were some sort of ancient gods in spirit form and were released onto the plane, maybe they simply took the shape of the first thing they came into contact with.
4:29
Suddenly, Commander 2016.
only took a year. hooray!
Suddenly no one at my LGS plays 4 color decks except two people (my friend and I) He plays breya and I play Breya and Voltron Atraxa
XToverdrive agreed super friends decks are trash i even hate seeing narset super friends needs to be take extra turns and attack steps
I ran superfreinds with no extra turns (Doubling season + Clever impersonator kinda helps PWs prevail)
Bryan Lariviere the right way to play her is take extra turns and combats without any planed walkers in the deck at all
Honestly since the introduction of guilds of ravnica I’ve really found the nephilim enjoyable from a flavor perspective, in ravnica there’s an inherent unity in all of the colors, each combination fills their role and does what they need to do within the city but the nephilim with their inherently janky design and lack of unity between many jumbled colors I think makes them feel more alien, more terrifying and more of the threat they were meant to be. Ravnica is a plane that I think means a lot for unity vs chaos, each guild is in a pact and fulfills a role but they all have an inherent division, I think the chaos the nephilim offer shakes that up in a way that really compliments the setting and makes it a lot more interesting
1:08 What's next, a Legendary creature named Gideon...
If you only knew...
And Crucifixions don't belong to Christians. They are a faith-neutral execution method. I do want that black enchantment now.
That gave me the most shit eating grin...
I think crucifixion should be a white enchantment tho. Killing someone because their power threatens your status quo, and turning them into a martyr? Thats more white than me
@@steelcladCompliant That would be very funny.
"took offence that wizards would take living faiths" Angels, demons, wrath of God, crusade, literally hundreds of faith cards based on current religions.
It seems that he is not offended by those because angels, demons and gods can be found in many religions but Nephilim is only a jewish thing.
Not to mention other living faiths. Large parts of Kamigawa being heavilly inspired by Shinto, parts of Arabian nights (although that might be closer to folktales and such than religion). We've got demons and angles and what have you already, and the older editions even had direct bible quotes on the cards.
I don't see the reason to take offense with the nephilim specifically, nor do I get the reason to take offense at all. It's just saying "this part of you religion is cool, we're going to repurpose it for this creative work". What's the problem?
@@liu3chan also catholic. Its Christian in general
@@Commando______3377 Don’t forget about Jihad
@aydooknow Sadly.
As a Hebrew speaker I can say that it's etymology in Hebrew isn't actually all that unclear - the root "n.f.l" has a meaning of falling, and the translation "fallen one" is probably the most accurate. Weirdly, wizards went with the plural form of the word. "nephil" is singular, "nephilim" is plural. Great videos! Also, they originate in Judaism, but are also part of Christianity.
+
their race is still called: The Nephilim race.
With the plural and not:
The nephil race.
Unlike Humans( plural) and The human (singulair) race.
I only just now realised who this was. Damn.
So i study the bible. And play mtg. Nephilim is a strange topic. It appears in some renditions of the bible and not others... personally i believe the whole thing is a false doctrine. Gen 6 is where they come into play. The kjv does not mention nephilim. Its the kjv i have come to trust as an accurate translation. The account goes as follows. there were GIANTS (some translations has giants appears as nephilim here) on the earth in those days and also after that, when The sons of God saw the daughters of men.... and bore children to them, the same which were the mighty warriors of old, men of renown... now i should really have copy pasted that to avoid this paraphrase but it will suffice... so to make nephilim here we have to interpret this to mean the sons of God are angelic beings and the daughters of men are human women making a hybrid offspring... the issue is the bible says in hebrews 1 vs 5 that God never called an angel his son. Furthermore every other mention of the sons of God can be shown to mean believers in the one true God. So what we really have is saved men marrying the daughters of infidels. It is a lesson about marrying within the Christian community. And the way its worded it actually says the giants were here before these unions took place. People just believe what they want now adays. Theres no vigor to root out false doctrine. Nephilim sell alot of books
@@RichieDubbz kjv is more of an adaptation, a lot of original terms were lost. You need to speak the original language (hebrew?) if you really want to avoid the false interpretations
My feeling is since they were the Old Gods of Ravnica, then they shouldn't look similar. They're probably from a time when Ravnica was still forming, like primordial Earth. The fact that they had also been snacking on dragon corpses probably made them look even weirder.
As for Commander sets, I really hope they don't do ally colors, they get enough love as is. They don't need any more.
I was thinking that too! They ARE messy and weird and confusing and have no clear through-line and while I understand why that's disappointing, I personally don't think any other way of designing would feel more appropriately antedeluvian. They're randomly retrieved chunks of a whole bizarre world that doesn't exist anymore, they SHOULDN'T be sensible to you.
Yeah, I was just thinking that they make perfect sense as the primeval forces back from when the world was first being formed/constructed/etc. The old gods. You get both Cthulhu influences from their bizarre shapes and all, and then other influences to their design from their natures as either being shaped while the world still was, or by being representative of extremely primeval concepts/elements (Glint Eye is literally a cycle of creation and destruction, of knowledge if nothing else, Dune-Brood the land itself, Witch-Maw for magic, which is obviously a primeval force in basically all M:tG settings, etc.) but in a highly abstract sense, reflected in their strange and abstract forms.
Probably made worse by the fact that they're basically had to start putting themselves back together and all.
Always a shame with another religious person gets offended over something like this. The Nephilim are an Old Testament Oddity that the majority of Christians know nothing about, learning about the Nephilim cards got me to read up on them and I thought it was just really cool! Sure Greek Mythology isn't a 'living religion' now, but that's another instance where taking inspiration from an original source and putting some spins on it is just cool and lets Magic keep going.
I always could remember what all the Nephilim do and their names, though sometimes I had a little difficulty in remembering all of their respective colors.
I feel what unified them as a cycle was the very 'awkwardness' that you described and said applies to each one. They were bizarre and alien, making them wholly unique and I am all for uniqueness.
What's really funny is that the guy apparently got triggered by the Nephilim, which as a concept are pretty much non-existant in Christianity and rather fringe in Judaism, but did he also have a problem with Magic's heavy reliance on lavish visual depictions of scantily-clad angels? Jesus. But you're right, the very concept of Nephilim is pretty interesting..
Aactually, that reminds me of something, Sam mentioned the similarity between one of the Nephilim and certain visual elements of Spirited Away. What I find interesting is that the Book of Enoch which provides insight into the story of the Nephilim has also been heavily referenced in the Neon Genesis Evangelion series (along with other Dead Sea Scrolls). To me, MTG Nephilim are aesthetically and conceptually a wee bit similar to the NGE Angels (Glint-Eye actually looks like one) - weirdly-looking, mysterious creatures, each of them unique and different from its "brethren", wreaking havoc for unknown reasons.
The Nephilim are totally similar to NGE Angels. Beings that are as seemingly cosmic and unknowable as they are supposedly deep and directly tied to Humanity. Too far yet too close.
Just all around really cool and odd, like I said, they are a unified cycle because their shared trait was that awkward bizarrness as opposed to a shared cost, mechanic, name or card type. A flavor cycle.
00Clank even worse is that literally the previous block was Kamigawa, which pulled directly from Shinto faith! Abe doesn't talk about this though, probably because it's not western
Nephil are curious to get annoyed about considering theyre extinct and mostly a footnote in the faiths that record them. Angels and Demons are still a very real thing, yet that dude has no problems with them??
What's funny is Neopagans basically makes Egyptian, Norse, and Greek deities worshipped all the time. Now what separates them from Christianity?
Can we use the names of these for naming 4-color decks until Wizards makes 4-color clans or something? It bothers me that a deck like Jeskai black could also be called Mardu blue, Esper red, and Grixis white. Instead of calling it Jeskai black, it could be called Yore-tiller control.
Could be cool
I know this comment is a year old but I love it. I will now refer to 4 color decks specifically as their Nephilim names. Thanks for the idea!
I've always called them nono red or nono blue
I know this is two years old, but even then, this has always been a thing.
I think they should make new names, like what they did in Khans for the wedges (prior to Khans there were already names used for wedges)
I've been learned so hard. Bless your silky soft voice sir!
+Raaanch let's just drink a White Russian to that.
Personally, I kinda feel like their clunkiness goes hand in hand with the lore. They’re explicitly stated to be the raw, chaotic embodiments of the world of Ravnica. They represent the world without any order, to an even lesser extent than the Gruul clans because at least they have goals and general hierarchy.
I bet the guy at StarCityGames didn't care about Kamigawa deliberately ripping off half of the Shinto religion, Theros doing the same with Greek mythology, djinns (important figures in Islamic theology) being featured throughout MtG's hystory and "Army of Allah" and "Jihad" being actual, playable cards from Arabian Nights. But hey, the beliefs of others are just kooky fairy tales, am I right? *sarcasm*
BTW great quality work as always, Sam.
nintendoleo Or the fact that there have been Biblical creatures like angels and demons in the game since the very beginning.
The original article has been removed, but I remember the StarCityGames guy saying that he was ok with angels and demons being in MtG because they were, in his opinion, "generic" (a.k.a. featured in multiple cultures and myths). Apparently, his problem with the Nephilim stemmed from the fact that they were specific/exclusive to his own religion/beliefs, and that's why he was offended.
Still BS tho. Everything in Kamigawa is specific to Shinto and Japanese mythos, but I still didn't see him complain about it.
nintendoleo Agreed, Christians are fairly ridiculous when they don't realize how much they're pleading for special treatment. All mythology is fair game for Magic. There are still believers in Greek, Egyptian, and Norse gods and you don't see them complaining.
I hope they do a Christianity inspired set, we can see three turn delayed regeneration, Hexproof Clerics, and Wrath of God can get reprinted.
On the flipside I'd actually love to see a heavy science inspired set. That would be awesome!
Science world: Just izzet and simic, maybe throw in some skaabs
What all would go into CHristian world? Angels, demons, clerics, nephilim, leviathan, etc?
Caleb Martin I did find it kinda hard to think of anything terribly interesting to put into Christan world. Lots of religious hierarchy.... I think The Dark was set in a fairly Christianity inspired setting.
As for a science set, I'd like to see space and stats and deep physics, quantum gravity theory, black holes and fundamental particles.
After binging (again) a bunch of your videos I just have to thank you from moving from wacky random images to more serene visual equivalency of your voice. Thank you for one of the best MTG channels in UA-cam.
these earlier videos were really the prototype, and I'm glad I shifted the tone, too.
Ink-Treader was actually a crucial piece of one of my first decks, which focused on Heroic style triggers and targeting/targeted effects. Having a few cards like Inky and Precursor Golem to magnify the single-target effects to multiple creatures was fantastic, and it's the only Nephilim card I remember to this day.
I actually really like them. They are an embodiment of the colors they represent so they have to be a little weird and awkward. Also, one of their unifying aspects is their naming scheme, their names are all comprised of two words representing the color identity of a color pair. It takes a bit of searching before you really see which words represent which color pairs, but I think this was the reasoning behind it when they invented them. Since Ravnica is so big on it's color pairs.
is nobody going to point out that No Face from Spirited Away is not the river spirit?
"he's even wearing a little mask like No-Face"
Uhmm...
@@Flamingpangolin
2:38
"Witch-maw looks terrifyingly similar to the river spirit in spirited away"
double Uhmm...
For clarity: No face is not the river spirit
Giants are also referred in Finnish sites, names, items and poems. Things like iron ore found on lakes being named 'Giant's Buttons', if directly translated from Finnish, reference to an ancient building site with only rocks remaining in the foundation being called 'Giant's Church' and also there was a giant character Kullervo, a tragic character and descendad of his murdered family, which the murderer's own family took him in, ending up in all sorts of drama in Kalevala, sort of a national epic.
And the wonky weird and stupendous education of random magic topics continues! Thank you Sam for all your hard work - these quality videos I'm sure are time consuming to make and I definitely appreciate it :)
+Roxaboxen90: Where Magic Lives hahaha. that may as well be my UA-cam bio. thanks, as always, Roxa!
Watching this in 2023..... cards have moved fast.
You took such a beautiful niche in the mtg-youtube-"thing". Man, love it :) greetings from switzerland :P
+Domelix thank you! I'm also very glad I found my stride :)
Hey, I remember the Ink-Treader Nephilim VERY WELL. I spent long hours pouring over card texts to refine a deck built around that guy.
I'm a big fan of the nephilim cycle. It's interesting that Alesha, Who Smiles at Death was featured in the video, because she is an interesting engine to bring out the nephilim (except for Ink-Treader Nephilim and Dune-Brood Nephilim). I've personally done reasonably well with Glint-Eye and Witch-Maw in this deck. I also have another deck that doesn't use Alesha and has four of the five nephilim in the deck (Ink-Treader is just not that useful even when you manage to get it out with an empty board...). See...the thing about the nephilim is how much they love Knight of New Alara. All of the sudden, the nephilim all have a minimum p/t of 5/5. Used in conjunction with the 2 CC, three color Alara creatures, you have a decent beatdown deck with just a little support and some mana fixing. It's not gonna win you any tournaments...but it sure is fun to play with.
lol at "the commander product each year"
0:56 Where was his outrage when Arabian Nights and Kamigawa were entire blocks based around other people's faiths? And why wasn't he offended by the angels? What's the difference?
Because religious people can be egocentric snobby hipocrites. Don't expect consistency.
he actually gave a reason for the angels if you pause and read.
@@haingis Yes, I found it. But I don't see why Nephilim can't also move into general myth and legend.
Most Christians and Jews probably don't care about the Nephilim and I doubt they play a central role in his own religious beliefs. I know taking parts of someone culture to sell a product is seen as disrespectful, that's why some people get offended at cultural appropriation, but taking something as irrelevant as the Nephilim and making them cool isn't very harmful.
@@cutecommie
Can confirm, them using Angels is far more upsetting than the Nephilim. Heck even in the Bible the Nephilim are a footnote at best. The fact he is more upset about the Nephilim being used IN NAME ONLY is confusing.
After playing with a Golos Myr/Nephilim tribal commander deck for over a year now, I actually can recite all five of the nephilim's names and effects by heart. Yes, I am proud of myself.
No-Face and the river spirit are two seperate characters.
Nephilims are one of my favorites for my all color decks. These guys with four Knights of New Alara are a nightmare to play against.
Witch-Maw is absolutely inspired by the Spirited Away creature, in both illustration and function.
A monster that grows, uncontrollably, and then tramples through opposition like a torrent?
Wowowow I thought I was the only one who noticed the striking similarity between Witch-Maw and hungry No Face!! I am in love
"Wearing a mask"
My guy, that's a face under its skin.
Sam, you are a great story teller and video creator! Your content is superb! Keep up the good work! You are my favorite youtuber!
+PogoProductions thank you so much. sweet avatar photo!
Young Peezy became my favorite card after I saw your deck techs and gameplay videos! He is just so great! So much value!!
its crazy how far you`ve come with your editing skills
This dude sounds like the Historia Civilis of Magic
Both are fantastic and informative with relaxing and concise voices
I actually had a fun gimmick deck based around Ink-Treader Nephilim. I don't remember the name of the card, but there was a red instant that allowed you to gain control of target creature and give it haste, until end of turn. Casting this on your own Ink-Treader allowed you to take control of every creature in play. Was pretty hilarious.
Well it's 2019 we're back in ravnica and all the guilds are banding together lol
Ok, I would actually love to see these guys return with a whole tribe of them, all working together so they can actually work in a deck
I wish there were legendary, I really want to use them as commanders
Okay the fact that you used footage from the original Jumanji in your video makes me soooo happy.
Nope! Its the damn Phyrexians again!
"There is no support currently for a four color commander deck"... Wizards listened... *And So The R&D Fever Dream That Is Atraxa Was Born!*
It's interesting that the children of angels and humans, the things that likely inspired Hercules, Ulessess and the rest, should become such different things when used as fiction material. In mtg, strange, arwkwad tooth things, in 40k, giants building brass towers, demanding worship.
Imma just say that the nephilim looking different from eachother is very clearly not a fault. No-one thinks its odd if the current gods in a given setting have diverse looks, the same should stand for old gods. The nephilim are not a unified group like the eldrazi, but are grouped together only by incident
hey you guys forgot about one part of the colour pie, the plate it sits on, colourless! I have a colourless commander deck and it's amazing what u can do when you don't have to worry about coloured costs.
I remember building a White, Blue, Red deck that splashed some green that centered around Ink-Treader Nephilim specifically. It was filled with enters the battlefield creatures, 4 Sunforgers, and a bunch of 1 shot instants that were 4 mana or less that had white, red, or both in their costs {Sunforger specific} with the most important being Ghostway. I would do something like Lightning Helix the Nephilim then immediately following it with Ghostway to wipe the field. One of the creatures I would use was the Izzed Chronarch so I'd use it's ability to rescue the Ghostway. A second Chronarch would let me rescue something else.
naphilim in hebrew comes from the word nephila or nophel witch means fall or someone that falls, so i find the "fallen ones" to be the most accurate. but anyway great video as always sam keep on the good work :)
1:00 ... angels were in alpha. This is hardly new.
Very well done Sam. I think you're the best new mtg personality.
I remember Ink Treader as he was a fun deck build of tossing spells at it and using it as a strange board wipe or card draw thing. I could path it to get tons of land if I have more creatures than my opponent. I could lightning helix him for a messload of life or Electrolyze for card draw. It just required a mess load of mana fixing and expensive lands to make it semi efficient but still fun to play.
I think it would be cool to see 4-color cards that act as counters to several of the abilities of the color they do not contain. For example, one part of the blue-green-red-black card could be that it prevents your opponents from gaining life, which is a mainly white ability.
I'd love to see the next magic set be focused on Nicol Bolas being a planeswalker, and either fighting Ugin in Khans block, or terrorizing Ravnica, with "redeemed" nephilim fighting him to protect the land.
Again you nailed it, great video
I played with a guy at an LGS who we let use Ink-Treader Nephilim as his commander. At one point I Chaos Warped it, which caused every creature on the board to be Chaos Warped too!
I heard the "colors align" like power rangers comment and i immediately thought of Atraxa aha. It's amusing to find avideo like this ling after the 4 color decks came out, especially since they also had two 2 color allies as partners in the same release.
As someone who plays the nephilim cycle in one of my 5c edh decks, I can confirm their weirdness. At best, most people know about Ink Treader Nephilim as the "instant and sorcery one" and often enough remember that it copies the targeted spell for all possible targets. That said, no one seems to know the other 4 from each other. As for me, well I'd never looked close enough at the art of them to see that they are indeed different. I was legit surprised lol.
As a final thought, Ink Treader is also famous for being "the only 'playable' one" (such as it is) sooo...there is that
I like the dunebrood one. If it was legendary, you could make a cool commander deck
A friend of mine had Mark Rosewater 'errata' his copies of the nephilim into legendary and sign the cards, so we let him have them as commanders. the decks are all interesting :)
That Joey Lawrence "Whoa" caught me off guard lol
idk I like the fact they all look so different. It makes it more un-nerving and makes them seem impossible to comprehend.
WAAAAAAIT A MOMENT 5:25 RIGHT NOW BOLAS IS RITA REPULSA!? i love all of it
I just wanna say 2 things:
1) I for one have taken the time to memorize the nephilim's abilities, but I always struggle associating the colors and names because I'm awful at names.
2) I might be alone in this, but I'm hella glad he nephilim are ncohesive and nonsensical. All 5 do incredibly different things, all 5 are totally different creatures/commanders, and all 5 of them look hella rad in all their different ways. Nephilim is best creature type.
Watching a old video be like wondering why he sounds so smol
I love me some ink-treader. Made a pretty fun deck revolving around him.
I love the quality of your videos. Very interesing too
+degzi thank you!
No worries. keep up the good work
While difficult, it is possible to showcase what a four color card can be without an emphasis on what is missing, and Commander 2016 did just that. The key is to determine what a 3 color combination looks like and imagine what splashing the fourth color does. For example:
Breya, Etherium Shaper - What happens when Esper artifacts play with red? We already have mono red and blue/red artifact fun. Grixis artifacts is also a thing with Mishra. As a result, the green-less deck is the perfect fit for a four color artifact theme.
Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis - Taking Bant's system of honor and the military structure of Boros by adding red; taking the group hug of Zedruu and adding green; and/or by taking the primal power of Zoo (Red/green/white) and adding the clever and calculating nature of blue... no matter which reason you have for this combination, you should be very happy with this commander.
The only commander I didn't like was Yidris. It feels forced and unfocused. It could have been so much more. For me at least, I am thankful that it isn't in a color combination I care about.
Paul Gaither the way Wizards made the 4-Color Legends is focus on what the missing color works against.
Breya was missing Green because Green doesn't like Artiface.
Atraxa was missing Red because Red doesn't plan it's progress and acts on impulse.
Gay Couple was missing Black because it's Selfish and doesn't help unless it's getting more in return.
Willy Wallace is missing Blue because Blue plans and prepares.
Yidris is missing White because white is about Order.
Would be awesome to see the new Commander Product for 2019 also in Ravnica. I mean Standart will host the Guildo until next year
excellent choice of music
1:52
So uh....question. If they were supposed to be old gods of Ravnica, and they were worried about how easy they were to cast...why wouldn't they make them Legendary then bump the cost to allow them to be that strong? It makes very little sense to make them regular creatures to begin with, and mechnanically you'd never want more than one on board regardless. To call their design awkward is an understatement.
I can now never see Nicol Bolas as anything other than Rita Repulsa. Thanks for that🤣
the charm of these Nephilim comes from how chaotic is their flavor and design
4:25 Tell that to my Atraxa, Praetors' Voice deck.
I can say that I have never seen any of these cards before!
maybe for 4 mana cards like the Nephilim, instead of trying to make each of the 4 represented colors stand out, they should have tried to use those 4 colors to emphasize the one that was missing. Incompleteness could have been a good starting point for the creatures, while still opening room up for more weird abstract designs.
Omnath says hello... They probably shouldnt make 4c cards.
i did not know the detail of where they came from (old gods of ravnica) or where they went (struck down by the guild masters), though a friend of mine helped me decipher the deeper meaning if their effects
glint-eye: lacks whites selflessness
dune-brood: lacks blues sense of thought
ink-treader: lacks blacks greed
witch-maw: lacks reds impulsiveness
yore-tiller: lacks greens life/death cycle
deciding one or two effects based on a lack of a color is much easier than four effects focused on the present colors
When you know what all the nephilim and what they do:
Witch gets big in a way similar to heroic.
Dune creates little guys when it deals combat damage.
Ink makes for stack madness by copying every intsoc that targets it for each other target.
Yore reanimates things from the graveyard when it attacks.
Yep, that's pretty much it. All four nephilim. Nothing else to talk about. Let's move on. (I know about glint: I just don't like it).
With the 3rd Ravnica block, would be nice to see a remake/return to these guys
The 4 color card cycle
I find that awesome it's great that they took inspiration from living faiths and not just mythos from say Greek or roman mythology
Your videos are always really really great!!!
+Pitcrain thank you!
I'm interested to see how many EDH playgroups use them as generals. Personally, I don't mind at all.
super interesting flavor articles. keep it up!
+Magic Learning thanks Travis! I appreciate it, man.
+TheMagicManSam for sure man. your content is great. im trying to get there
I know, old video, but now we are back on Ravnica and Nicol Bolas is plotting something. Would he be wanting to resurrect/enslave/consume/ do something about the Nephilim and we are gonna see them in this block's third set?
What if 2019 commander decks are new versions of the Nephilim
The Nephilim were all killed
It's official. The new Commander 2016 line up is four color. They have a place at the EDH tables!
woohoo!
TheMagicManSam one of them
two.
now I will have the music "go go guild rangers" stuck in my head
i think what unites the nephilim is the fact that they are so different from each other. Kinda how "god can take any form" the fact they are so weird makes them unite under the banner of weirdness. Thats why i love them lol. They stand out so much its hilarious to me.
Defining a 4-color card based on the color it's NOT does not necessarily mean weakness. Imagine the Yore-Tiller Nephilim being a void for all things green. It might eat opponent's lands or interfere with big creatures or tokens. Dune-Tiller could prey upon card draw effects and counterspells. Things like that.
The lore for this is so fucking much I'd need months to go through the whole thing.
really hoping when we go back to Ravnica these creatures show their heads as Legendary monstrosities that the guilds begin worshipping while the Guildpact was away. They become immense and powerful and rival the Commander 2016 pre-cons in terms of viability and usage.
Greeting from Commander 2018, I can say that they finally found their purpose in Ramos, Dragon Engine.
Sam! Can you do a lore episode on the zombies from Theros? Gray merchant of Asphodel stuck out to me immediately from a design standpoint when the block first came out.
It's two years later and we are back in Ravnica; perhaps we see their return in the third block?!
I used to have a collection of them. I'm not sure what happened to my collection over the years lol... too many cardboard to go through
I don't even play magic but the art work and the monster designs are incredible. They remind me of dark souls monsters
I swear, the next "grouping" will be four colors. It may not be Nephilim, but it will be there.
If they wont make the nephilim legendary, why not give them the "llanowar elves => elvish mystic" treatment. Just make a new cycle that is exactly the same as the nephilim cycle but legendary, with different names and maybe a different tribe.
Why do that when you can just houserule
@@nine1690 To avoid that one person at the table who is salty and won't let one player use a nephilim. Also, having your commander in the command zone and the 99 would be funny.
As far as unofficial EDH commanders go, Ink-Treader is by far the most powerful of the bunch. It's ability has only ever been printed on other cards in severely nerfed forms. Any instant or sorcery that targets Ink-Treader gets copied to target each creature it could target. Alternate versions of this ability typically appear more like Zada, only hitting your own creatures, and in red exclusively. On top of the extra colors adding more/better access to things that zada can already do, like turning 1 mana cantrips into mass draw spells, it also opens a world of possibilities for ways of dealing with opponent creatures too. Targeted removal becomes a wrath. But more interesting, Threaten effects become Insurrections. This makes for particularly nasty combos, like gaining control of every creature on the board, attacking with them, then exiling them and gaining life equal to their total power, for 4 mana (Threaten, Swords to Plowshares). The effect also interacts interestingly with a lot of niche spells. Dovescape makes massive amounts of doves for you and always prevents what targets Ink-Treader from actually hitting while still working on the rest of the board. Nivmagus Elemental allows you to selectively target creatures, while growing the elemental. The hunted creatures flood the board with creatures to take.
I have an Ink-Treader deck and normally with a group I'm allowed to bring it out a few times then it gets banned. I've had people tell me they'd be fine with any other nephilim and if the nephilim were legendary, Ink-Treader would be banned. I think thats possible. Its an extremely powerful commander against any creature focused deck, and has ways of handling non-creature focused decks pretty well.
I like these video essays
The irony in that Article is him bringing up a new legendary named Gideon and we got a planeswalker instead.
I feel like there's this mystical thing about these nephilim. I want more stuff on these guys
I want like an awesome battle that shows the size and power of these guys. Some kinda animation thing