Big thank you to Nord VPN for sponsoring this video! Go to NordVPN.com/kenobi to get a 2-year plan at a huge discount plus 4 months free. It’s risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!
Do you surf the world wide webs at your local school or internet café? Have you just had a dial up modem installed in your home? Do you worry about the MyDoom virus or an ICQ messenger hack destroying your brand new BBC Micro? What about DARPA spies, or AOL selling your search history? Dont be a spaz. If you're a super sharp, hip, modern dude like me, use Nord VPN! 💪👴👍
Coincidentally, some of the big media streaming services are becoming a bad example of VPN use, given many sites like Netflix attempt to block connections made with VPNs. Sometimes they have difficulty recognizing the connection as VPN connections, but I get blocked for trying to access some sites like Netflix while using a connection in the same State in the U.S.A. VPNs are way more valuable than the ability to access media not shown in your local area, so I suggest you get one anyway, but media sites are a poor example of their use lately.
It would be a good idea to mention that using these services violates the Steam Subscriber Agreement, and could potentially put accounts at risk of getting banned. Especially Circuit Vpn services are configured to change a user's IP region.
Chronicles in my opinion was the moment that WotC screwed up - not because they printed it, but because they backed off. It wasn't that they printed Chronicles that was the problem. It's that they responded to the feedback of a tiny number of players as if those players were the only ones that mattered. Chronicles was great if you were a new player. Sure, your cards didn't look as cool as the neat black bordered cards, but you at least got to own them. It was like WotC printed their own proxies.
I think the problem back then was not so much chronicles, it was chronicles and the sets coming out where shite. Revised was a joke in powerlevel compared to ABU (and 4th was even worse) fallen empires and homelands both rival for the worst set in magics history. Ice age was pretty meh as well.
@@daftwulli6145 I think that the panic that set in at WotC at that time was responsible for how they react to Chronicles. Let's face it, Legends was reasonably well received but hasn't stood the test of time and contains many of the worst cards ever printed, The Dark was also weak and only had a few cards that proved fun, and Ice Age, Fallen Empires and Homelands really only furthered the problem as WotC struggled to find their identity and figure out how to design cards. Magic was not well understood at a theoretical level at that time, people were only beginning to talk in terms of "card advantage" and the Sligh deck and real understanding of mana curves were in the games future. Wizards was entirely uncertain as to what power level the game needed to be fun, and at the time thought even Serra Angel was too good. Had they put out well received product the probably wouldn't have panicked and created the reserve list, but Chronicles came in the midst of a long string of disasters for WotC. I'd argue that in a lot of ways Mirage block and Tempest block were some of the best sets they'd ever produce, and had Chronicles came during that happy period it probably would have been very different.
@@celebrim1 Excuse me ? Legends has quite a few cards that made it into vintage and legacy. How many current sets can say that ? It was a pretty strong set overall. Did it have some bad cards ? Well yea, so has every set of mtg ever. It was worlds above fallen empires, homelands and ice age.
Kamigawa seemed to not be well received at it's time, but overtime people fell in love with it. Also love how this video came out the day after Neon Dynasty announcement
I’m very worried about the new set. It feels less about wotc actually caring for what the fans liked/cared about kamigawa and wanting to do the plane right and more about wotc wanting a slice of the cyberpunk/anime trends and just so happened to have kamigawa in their back pocket. I’m sure mechanically it can’t be as poorly thought out (no more over costed spirits and bushido cards) but just really shallow aestheticsof the cyber punk genre and Asian culture. I was not a fan of how they handled Kaladesh and Neon Kamigawa could end up like it with the flavour being highly questionable at best, horrifically off putting at most.
It was never kamigawa that sucked. It has some bangers. It is that it came out right when “modern” started which caused some problems. It had too much mechanical impetus from a time when a mechanical theme would be dropped immediately. Nowadays, if your set does something weird, or is based on underused or brand new types you get commander products and the next few core sets and masters style premiere sets have some backup. You didn’t get that at the time.
Kamigawa's biggest flaw for it not being "well received" was also due in part to the fact that the playerbase was at a very low point in time thanks to Affinity dominating literally every event at the time to an extent that no other deck in history has, despite having several bans issued against it's cards. Mirrodin is the actual set/block that nearly killed magic.
You're wrong. After the golden age of Magic (Tempest, Urza's, Masques, Invasion) people were EXHAUSTED from playing more than they'd ever been playing the game before. That time was a frenzy. It might not have ever ended if it wasn't for Odyssey, a block so boring, insipid, soulless, derivative and mechanically shallow literally everyone stopped caring overnight. (My club went from 58 to 4 players) then Magic was a black hole all the way until Mirrodin. For some reason, everyone decided to come back for Mirrodin. Which is funny since you're trying to claim it "killed" Magic. In fact it was the third biggest reclamation bubble of lost players after Urza's Saga and Ravnica.
@@Vinterloft I have literally the opposite experience. I started in Ice Age but didn't really get going competitively until Invasion bloc. Odyssey and Onslaught was *insanely* popular in my area specifically for its simplicity, and there was an *immediate* crash in player counts when Eighth Edition hit and changed the card frames to the more modern look. The player counts attending FNM's and other events didn't really recover until Ravnica, at least in my area.
@@Vinterloft I'd actually say mirrodyn kind of represented both the best and the worst of MTG. It did initially indeed create a resurgence in MTG, but at the same time it was also the sole reason as to why Kamigawa was made in such a way that it was a whole lot less powerful. Technically, MTG needs another similar set/block to push down on the insane powercreep that's been going on. Not to mention kamigawa was gradually becoming beloved because of its story rather than the cards themselves.
@@Vinterloft absolutely me and my buddies started in 2000 right after urzas and it was awful we all quit playing and didn't start again until late onslaught early mirrodin and we all loved it
@@Vinterloft In my part of the world (Midwest U.S.), players weren't as jazzed with Odyssey or Onslaught as they were Invasion and what came before, but overall play and tournament attendance was still high. Mirrodin Affinity in the winter of 2003-04 halved (or more) the Standard FNM scene and enthusiasm. Players HATED Affinity. I'd argue that, outside of Pre-Releases, most of the players I played against in card shops and tournaments were more hardcore, as the casuals abandoned ship. Things never really recovered until Ravnica.
@@PSYCOMMUnist hardly, i stopped playing arena, like 50% of the playerbase. I only play pauper and commander. The further from wizards, the better magic feels.
@@skillganon606 Anyone paying attention at the backstage of Magic hates him. Most of the broken cards of the game were designed by him, in all the formats, including vintage and legacy. The guy is on crack, he is poisonus for the game. No matter how much he likes it, the more control he gets over a set, the more repulsive the meta becomes. Thats easy to see given how much it powerspiked in the last 2 years. Dominaria was super tonned down, because Richard Garfield was involved, everything else was a burning pile of overpowered shit.
With kamigawa I get the arguments for why people disliked it. Standard players blamed kamigawa for nothing having cards that could compete against Mirrodin and affinity (I’m sure this has never happened before or since. Cough cough Urza Saga. Cough cough eldraine) and then Ravinca came out and everyone lost their minds and called that the savior because it was multicolour (like invasion block) but not totally foreign in the references like kamigawa was with its shinto inspired creatures and spellls). Basically kamigawa standard paid for the sims of mirrodin and overshadowed by the adoration for Ravinca limited players hated Jitte and the entirety of saviors because saviors had a lot of idiotic things going on like handsize matter cards combined with sweep which basically helped rendered games into being unplayable. I believe that was truly the worse thing about the block because betrayers and champions were more than solid sets (jitte aside). That said, of all the “””bad””” sets ever made in magic, kamigawa aged the best. So many cards from the block would go on to define eternal formats and especially for commander, it was the greatest boon for commander since original Legends. Its flavour is wholly unique and wonderful and I hate magic players for being so closed minded and dismissive
Agreed, that’s why I’m tentatively excited for kamigawa neon dynasty. I really liked the flavor of old kamigawa and I hope the cyberpunk theme dosen’t ruin that.
I mean…. Jitte and Kiki jiki were good in commander once. But that doesn’t mean most of the cards are pretty trash. A 5 drop samurai with bushido 1…. Wow so cool
I'm struggling with building a decent Samurai commander deck, there's just so many underwhelming cards of their type, which is a bit of a shame. (Fingers crossed that the upcoming one really won't be a huge stylistic departure, I don't want to mix in any cybered-up lightsaber stuff with my cool classy dudes)
What's funny is I was stoked for Chronicles and so were a lot of people when it came out. Legends was very difficult to buy and Chronicles made most people believe that if they missed a set or it was not available that we would be able to get the good cards as reprints later. By making Chronicles white-border, it meant that the original cards were still better. The fact that is caused the reserve list is the worst thing about Chronicles, certainly, but at the time of release, Chronicles was probably the greatest set for players and a lot of game stores that were unable to get their hands on early Magic. And when they say it "tanked" the secondary market, it took some of the Elder Dragons from $20 down to $3-$4. Nothing was worth more than about $100-$200 in Magic at the time.
Sadly people who saw the game as a potential goldmine similar to baseball and other collectibles were probably pissing in their pants that abur cards would’ve all been devalued next and now their efforts have paid off lovely for them. Their investments are secure even if it means no one else gets to play with original duel lands or old janky legendary legends cards anymore unless they like proxies. Gotta make sure that Black lotus reaches 6 digit figures someday. Parasites, all of them.
I bought a box of Saga back in the day. I got a cradle, yawg will, time spiral, sanctum etc and I was extremely disappointed because I didn't get a Serra Avatar. It was a ridiculously good box.
that's hilarious seeing as Serra Avatar is seen as one of the worst mythics reprinted in Dominaria Remastered, and it doesn't even have reserve list cards to compete.
I think it's important to bring up that Kamigawa wasn't well received MECHANICALLY. Lore/art-wise it was beloved. Making it very much worth returning to.
The art was certainly competent. Mostly. But to claim it was anything but a thinly-veiled moneygrab towards the Japanese market is facetious at best. It is Magic's #1 most soulless set ever.
My beef with Nyx being in here is that it just didn't really go that far into what it was supposed to do, setting-wise. Previous sets in the bloc established the Nyx esthetic already, with the star-studded elements, and I believe it should have been all about that, even on cards that aren't also enchantments. Just for the esthetic of it. Also, actually involving one of the five gods the set had in the story would certainly have been a nice bonus. But yes, it could have been rolled into the previous set to have a two-set block. I just don't like single sets on a story perspective. Like, what happened in the return to Theros? Even though it's a more extreme case because that's the point where Wizards was like "fuck story it doesn't bring in the cash money". And then they made too much happen in Ikoria which was, kinda similarly to Kaldheim, really feeling like two or three sets compressed in a single one. Magic you so crazy sometimes
Nyx holding on the constellation mechanic and it not being in the entire "enchantment matters" block was a mistake. Otherwise it felt kind of forgettable or a bit mind numbing with overstaying or visit to the plane.
I think Kaldheim would've really benefited from a 2 set if not a 3 set block. (Also could've avoided the unintentional side effect of vorinclex being leaked and ruining his actual reveal)
I remember back in the day I played Maze's End TurboFog at FNM. Now the only reason I did it was because I was in High School and it was the only deck I could just throw together and actually stand a chance, without throwing more money than I had at the game. Good times... Oh and Dragon's Maze has the creature with what might be the best Type Line ever, Melek, Izzet Paragon with "Weird Wizard"
Hymn to Tourach, the pump knights, goblin grenade, Aeolipile (yes, there was a point where this was a decent card), plus a pretty cool story about each color at war with itself. FE was weak, but it was better than fucking Homelands (I bought sooo many Homelands back in the day...because it was the only set that came out for like half a year before Alliances)
@@zachmiles1289 For low density of quality cards, nothing beats Legends. It was a HUGE set with 10% of high-profile playables, and the rest was the most stinking garbage, with nothing in between. People at the time were fascinated by the introduction of legends and multicolored, and by that 10% of great cards, so it didn't feel like a terrible experience (plus, you didn't have to draft it, luckily), but if we analyze it today, it might just be the worst set ever.
6:20 oddly enough, not the case. At a couple of stores I've been to, dragon's maze packs are specifically held FOR chaos drafts because of the fixing they provide, with a dual land guarenteed and -at least 3 cluestones per pack- cluestones. Chaos drafts tend to be multicolor piles while you try to find some cards that synergize with each other so the fixing they provide is welcomed.
@@mathewevans9706 true, ikoria might have overtaken dragon's maze now. Last time I chaos drafted in paper Ikoria wasn't out yet. There's more bombs, but less crystals than cluestones
Serrated Arrows was especially useful during that time period because there were a lot of "pump knights" and Whirling Dervishes running around in constructed.
I had forgotten the minimum of five of each set. Four Serrated Arrows in the sideboard was a must have for some if not most. I think I even maindecked an Ihsan's Shade. I think Autumn Willow was the only other Homelands card I ever played.
Back when I was a kid I was so excited about Chronicles, finally I would be able to get some of those awesome Arabian Nights, Antiquities and Legends (and it was when I collected my playset of Tron lands), but it left a deep scar on MTG. Homelands was bad… just bad but I think Fallen Empires was the first crappy expansion
I loved Chronicles when it came out, It repreprinted some cards from the 4 sets that came out before I got in the game. Fallen Empires was bad, unless you played black. But Homelands, yeah... only good card was Autumn Willow. And Wall of Kelp, but that card would be trash for another 20 years.
Yeah I started playing right as Fallen Empires came out, so I didn't know those cards were crap at the time. Right now I struggle to remember a single one. Chronicles was awesome. Being able to get some of those early cards I missed was amazing. My friends and I were players, so I never heard the backlash from the collector community. When I came back to Magic after 20 years and heard about the reserved list, I was disappointed I didn't hold on to the cards of my youth! Not for collectible reasons, but that it would be so difficult to get my hands on old favorites.
I'm super stoked for the new Kamigawa set. The old block had my favorite art (unfortunately, on a trash card) in Betrayers of Kamigawa. Horobi's Whisper captured the colors I expect to see in the Neon Dynasty.
I started playing during a down trend in magic, my first set was lorwyn and I was hooked. So I think that even if the set is lower powered, it can still grab new players that don't know what a "good set" is.
Agreed. It also matters a lot less to commander players. If a set is weak after a high powered one then maybe I won't buy as much but I'm still there for flavor and maybe janky commander stuff.
Lorwyn slaps, even if most of its cards aren't that strong, they're so fun (in edh at least) and I adore the art and flavor Although I hear draft was rough since wotc hadn't figured out tribes tbf
I started in Lorwyn as well and I still love that set. While it might not be as powerful card for card I find the creature synergies to overcome a lot of that. You don't need great cards if enough cards are doing things to boost others you have. But I also played Merfolk as a new player and wrecked the dorms with that deck.
Kamigawa was great from some angles (flavor, uniqueness in mechanics, memorable) and absolutly terrible from others (overcosted, insular, parasidic) and is still my favorite set.
Champions was ok. The follow-up sets were quite bad. The "cards in hand matter" is a very bad design because it encourages players not to take game actions because their cards only work if they have enough in hand. You don't want to put Rending Vines in your deck, go ham, and then face a key artifact only to find you can't remove it because your kill spell needs you to have 4 cards in your hand at that point and you only have 2.
@@JD-gk7eh I wouldn't go that far. Betrayers gave us the most beloved mechanic of the Kamigawa block with ninjutsu, The baku and genju were all pretty decent, the shoal cycle holds up pretty well, and there was good continued support for the mechanics of champions. Saviors is harder to defend for sure, but I think that is less the mechanics designs as it is just the balancing being even more wrong. Channel is a perfectly fine mechanic, the Sweep spells were also alright mechanically (but way over cost), and the set has a lot of great one off cards that still see play in formats where they are legal. I agree that the wisdom mechanic flowing through the block was a bad one and hits against one of Rosewaters 20 lessons “Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win.” But even those could have been fine had the costing of them been more balanced. Rending Vines I think is a perfect example. Had that spell cost 2 or maybe even 1 it would essentially have played like a Fatal Push, an early game removal that gets worse as the game goes on.
Oh and saviors gave us the best designed bad card ever with One with Nothing. A card that so many people keep trying to find a ways to make it good even through it is just a bad card.
@@SilverAlex92It might be the highest selling but i would bet on most of the sales being from players who wanted to make sure they had the cards should they see play and get expensive, personally i can say that this is why i bought it. Had the commander RC/Cag voted to ban them before release I would bet on it having sold a lot less than it did
The marketing of that era was definitely dubious. I was in a long break from the game at that time, and I remember some friends telling me about "cards from the future" (the time spiral timeshifted shenanigans) and a "lost ice age set". A lot of facepalms around the table that evening.
Ahhh the good old days of born - the excitment of knowing you'll have to make the deck out of two boosters instead of 3, maybe adding 1 card for the deck. At our LGS the chant "come on Brimaz, one time!" became standard for the set :P
Theros (the first set) was pretty solid with heroics and monstrosity. And then the next sets after had off putting mechanics like bestow….. and tribute….. inspired. The only really redeemable aspects of the 2 other sets besides the couple of busted cards like courser if kruphix was basically the multicolor gods to chase after.
It's weird to hear revisionist history about Kamigawa because It decimated the local scene and caused me to quit playing magic for almost a decade. I've heard multiple card store people make the joke that covid is bad for business but not quite as bad as Kamigawa.
Same here alot of my friends and me all stopped playing after mirrodin block I didn't play again until artifacts made a comeback in 08 I loved the shards block and it got me back in
I had left Magic for a short while during the disappointment that was Homelands and came back during the Urza era. I was stunned, *stunned* at how powerful cards had become. I mean when you compare the absolute best cards from Homelands and the most filler cards of Urza you can't use words like power creep. This was power incarnate.
Dear God, Homelands was bad. But I think Fallen Empires is right there with it. I know this because I started playing right after Empires released and I could buy boosters for $ .50 a piece. Which new player and teenager I was, seemed like a great deal. So if you need a deep spawn... Hit me up, I guess?
You left the objectively worst set for the MtG economy and secondary market off the list entirely and that was Fallen Empires. Fallen Empires single handedly killed 90% of the secondary market. At Dragon Con '94 Garfield promised there would never be a black border card in a WalMart. Not only did they break that promise but by suddenly jumping from a 65M card print run for the Dark to a 350M card print run for Fallen Empires, they flooded the market and killed all but the largest secondary market dealers.
I was today years old when I realized Gaea's Cradle has a bare faerie buttocks in the art. Now that I think of it I don't think I've ever seen the card in person.
I would argue that Fallen Empires should be on this list. MTG was just starting to take off and Revised was doing great! Coming on the heels of Legends and The Dark WoTC produced a metric assload of Fallen Empires cards and flooded the market with them And they were absolute dog shit. Like Homelands level shit but without any kind of a story. Just shit. Stores couldn't sell them and they were left sitting on piles of booster boxes. The overproduction and underselling probably did a lot of damage at the time. I know it drove me off of MTG for a couple of years until I got back in around Mirage.
I was sure Fallen Empires was going to be number two on the list (Chronicles being number one), but it was a set you had to be there for to really understand the impact. Before Fallen Empires, you went to game stores to get your cards -- during Fallen Empires, you could buy packs *anywhere* and I do mean anywhere. I remember seeing packs of Fallen Empires at gas stations like 7-11. From a present day perspective where buying packs from the likes of Walmart is commonplace, back then this fundamentally changed not only the relationship between Wizards and hobby stores, but also the player base perspective of Magic. Unless you were there when it happened, it's tremendously difficult to explain. Also, like you said, the set was absolute garbage and overprinted to amounts I don't think have ever been seen since. All the alternate art should have been a fun addition, but in reality no one wanted one copy of these horrendous cards, much less forcing collectors to hunt for all the variants. It was truly a set that failed on so many levels it deserved a mention.
@@Nightenstaff I still harbor a deep reflexive hate for spore counters and saprolings. They were freaking everywhere and just sucked. At least with Legends and the Dark, even not-good cards would have something flavor-wise or mechanically unusual at the time that made the card something you’d maybe think about playing, and made buying a pack feel worth it. With FE, the mechanics were so weak and repetitive, and the set so omnipresent, that getting packs felt actively painful and pointless for the first time I can remember.
Skullclamp wasn't killing the game at the time. Affinity is what nearly killed the game. Skullclamp wasn't in standard long enough to make a big enough impact, but Affinity was, and didn't go away Ravnica released, and Mirrodin rotated out. Affinity drove FNM turnouts to points that many LGS couldn't even hold an event because there weren't enough people. I remember my local LGS at the time went from 20 people on average for FNM, to "hey guys, you're all in top 4". Affinity made up over 90% of the field, and if you weren't playing it, you basically said "I like loosing more than winning". Even larger events were severely impacted by Affinity's dominance of nearly every format. Kamigawa was largely ignored outside of drafting and block, because standard and extended were still dominated by Affinity. It was a nightmare of a time to play.
@@MakeEmRageQuit The reason it wasn't in Standard very long is because the warped the entire format immediately. The whole meta changed and became x/1 tribal and it had to be banned to save the format.
Fallen empire, war of the spark, eldraine, ikoria, chronicles, and Arabian nights. Fallen empire was just doo doo , war eldraine and ikoria basically broke everything and signaled the beginning of the worst design philosophy wizards has ever adopted, chronicles lead to the reserved list and Arabian nights was a lore nightmare That's my six
Kamigawa was that kind of dog with an unlovable face gifted to you by your drunk pals as a joke. The first weeks you're contemplating whether or not to hand it off, but eventually you realize that you love the thing. It's still painful to look at, and it makes this sort of wierd squeaky bark when it sees the mailman, but you love it all the same because it has character.
Hey Vince! Probably know this, but to fix up your tiny greenscreen issue, try white lights from behind you close to the greenscreen pointed up to smooth out the shadows from your hands.
Interesting! I will try this next time! I was watching it back and wondering if I need to increase framerate when recording something I am going to key?
@@PleasantKenobi personally I think it's a combo of the light not being even with shadows and maybe a not completely flat greenscreen? Hard to say, obviously I don't know your production setup haha. A quick test with some backdrop floodlights that bounce off the ceiling (particularly good if it's a white ceiling) should help. I don't think it's frame rate since there'd be a more consistent flickering throughout, not just when your hands are in motion in front of the greenscreen. Then again it's been a few years since I'd been on a greenscreen set in any capacity so I could be wrong.
8th edition. Oh man I remember all the rage on the new borders and the color issue with artifacts looking white. To this day I still see the "current" or "Modern" borders as the "New" ones despite that they have been the standard longer and there are more cards in that style.
@@dreamakuma It's not terrible, but would have been better if the X was smaller. It's so big it looks like it imbalances the card. Also the modern frame doesn't help
Chronicles was $3 MSRP at a time when 4 was a bit much for a booster in ANY card game. Just remember, people were shocked that WotC priced Modern Masters 2013 at $10 per booster. Little did we know that that would not be the priciest pack out there made for a set only 7 years later at $103.
I actually started playing Magic around Dragon's Maze, and I honestly never saw any problems with it. It actually seemed like a really fun set and a cool setting. Chances are that if I had started playing magic in most other sets then I'd probably wouldn't have kept playing
I remember the limited format with Dragon's Maze being especially terrible. Each pack was guaranteed to have at least three Guildgates, two to three Cluestones, and at least one shock land. Sure it made your color fixing excellent, but the value of all the other cards didn't compensate for how many slots the fixing took up.
Chronicles was the greatest set of all time. The bad decisions that Wizards used it to justify didn't have to happen. Magic could have been an affordable and widely played game, but instead it retreated into an exclusive luxury business model and allowed itself to be overtaken by Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh
The "five cards per set" thing was only a rule for the 1996 pro Tour; a minimum of 5 from the core Set (4th edition), Fallen Empires, Chronicles, Ice Age, and Homelands. It was an interesting constraint, and a number of Homelands Cards saw active use in it (Granted, yes, mostly Serrated Arrows, butalso Autumn Willow, and Spectral bears; one of the most efficient creatures at the time, given the preponderance of necropotence decks) The gimmick was not reprised not because it was a bad gimmick, but simply because it was a prototype of Type 2 play; once that format was secured, there was no real need for it. Also Chronicles was $2.50 usd - which was a dollar cheaper than a 4th edition or ice age booster, but .75 more expensive than Fallen empires or Homelands; which is kinda weird, when you're getting 3 caerds less than 4th/ice age, but 4 cards MORE than FE/HL
As far as I'm concerned, I would agree with your view on Homelands and Chronicles. However, Urza's Saga (yes, there are some very powerful cards) really revitalized the Standard format (Type 2) after Mirage phased out-just imagine how strong and dominant pure Necro, NecroBloom, and Goblin or FireElves decks were at that time. Replenish, CounterRebel, Academy (which was soon banned), were all great decks, and players realized that it was amazing not to just wait for a 2-card combo on the table. But we also learned that MtG has so much more potential and options, allowing us to have fun without having to defeat opponents within 2-3 turns. So I would see it more as a learning curve and probably the beginning of what we see today in MtG (also in Commander): playing different cards, combining them in complex ways to trigger abilities and do amazing things. Magic!
I'm honestly surprised that Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch wasn't included. Eldrazi Winter was one hell of a time, and outside of the Eldrazi (IE: Ulamog, TKS, etc.), the BFZ and Oath block didn't really have any memorable cards. As far as "Almost Killed Magic" goes, I remember Modern arguably being at one of it's worst points during that time.
BFZ was my other "Modern" set alongside Throne that I started to consider, but ultimately cut because they will age and be remembered better than the more boring ones.
I think Kamigawa ages well because it, in theory, has some of the strongest effects in modern Magic. Splice essentially gives all your relevant spells a kicker for the splice cost while keeping a spell in hand, spiritcraft can trigger off almost everything in a deck designed for it, Shrines get out of hand after only a couple get on the board, effects that can completely shut an opponent down like Myojin of Infinite Rage or Erayo. Everything was just way over costed, had too difficult of requirements, or was too niche for it to stand on it's own. It's a Timmy and Johnny set where the cards slowly started finding their places. Although, I do think any Modern blocks not named Alara or Zednikar slammed between Mirrodin and original Ravnica would be doomed to feel bad in standard.
Homelands was actually more powerful but got nerfed prior to printing. That was referenced in an old printed interview. We need a Homelands Remastered featuring cut stuff and cards that have been made since then that reference stuff from Homelands. And maybe some reprint staples re-skinned for that set, with some new stuff.
They need to get rid of the reserve list. They promised they wouldn’t sell us singles and they’ve done that with secret lair. If they can break one rule they can break the other.
Chronicles is the best set with the worst legacy, not because its reprints were the wrong move - they were exactly the right thing, but people that try to treat this game like a stock market got upset, complained, and now legacy is unplayable for people without a gold-shitting donkey forever.
Playing Homelands sealed was a slog. I remember Feast of the Unicorn was one of my favorites just because it helped the game end. But I've never just given up on a set's sealed experience like I have with Fallen Empires. It's just so boring and not fun at all. There are actual good cards from that set at least, but I would never want to play limited with a box.
As someone who actually played actively during OG Kamigawa, it was really well received by players. The issue was it was coming in on the heel of Mirrodin block when massive amounts of players quit the game due to the sort of second combo-winter that made them emergency ban bunch of Mirrodin cards.
I started playing Magic during the revised addition and collected quite heavily of the expansion sets ie… Arabian nights, the dark, Legends, and ice age. I can tell you personally and completely agree that the Chronicles set was the worst. I bought a box and remember opening packs and was ticked off of all the reprints. Especially the elder dragons from Legends because I had them all from the Legends set.
Didn't put Fallen Empires on the list, but put Urza's Saga, that was literally the pinnacle of when Magic started to become popular around the world, not just America, and the set that made the game much more appeasing? Shaking my head in disgust. You gots to do your research better, mate.
There is a big difference between "worst sets" and "most damaging sets". I played seriously from 1995-2008, and here's my personal view: * Most damaging sets: Urza's Saga, Urza's Destiny, Mirrodin, Darksteel, Time Spiral Block#- these are all sets that seriously hurt sales (TSP was way too complicated for newer players) and/or tournament attendance. The utter absurdity of the Urza block in general and Mirrodin-era Standard Affinity made people quit playing altogether, or at least kept them away from events until the banhammers came down. And the last thing any gaming company and gaming stores want is low event attendance. * Worst sets: Homelands, Mercadian Masques, Kamigawa block. These were sets were most of the cards were utter dreck (Homelands), the theme and playstyle sucked (Kamigawa block) or both (Mercadian Masques). Interesting to note that both Masques and Kamigawa had to be powered WAY down because of the brokenness of their predecessors (Urza, Mirrodin). #- Personally, as a longtime player who got all the jokes, references and story beats, I absolutely LOVED Time Spiral Block, but I understand the overall issues with it.
As a child, the art of Kamigawa actually drew me in and I bought the preconstructed decks at the time. I didn't understand a thing because no one I knew played and rules weren't included but the art and flavor text filled me with questions and wonder.
As a child I played in Tempest, Urza's Saga, Masques and Invasion and because everyone else quit when Odyssey came out I did too. But I did pick up a couple of theme decks of Kamigawa on a whim at some point. I remember opening them (one was a snake themed one with uncommon legendaries) and remember exclaiming out loud "what the fuck is this shit" At least I got a Sensei's Divining Top
I started playing magic with Journey into Nyx, and while I still love my Grim Guardians and Nyxfleece Rams, in retrospect I'm glad the blocks are now two sets max
People harp on about Dragon's Maze being crap, but it has way more to it than people remember. For one, it was a small set, which means less chance for it to be as iconic as a full size set. Even given that, Dragon's Maze had all the following: Dragon's Maze [which is either great or awful depending on who you ask] Aetherling [Standard control finisher] Hidden Strings [Jank combo enabler] Crypt Incursion [Mill sideboard all-star] Pontiff of Blight [Commander win con for grindy black decks] Possibility Storm [combo piece] Advent of the Wurm [stellar meme card, saw Standard and fringe Modern play] Blood Baron of Vizkopa Master of Cruelties Notion Thief [Commander all-star, especially since a certain card got banned] Progenitor Mimic Render Silent Plasm Capture Sin Collector [saw Modern play] Unflinching Courage [played in Bant Bogles along with Geist of St. Traft... okay, that deck was admittedly miserable] Voice of Resurgence Beck // Call [saw play in Modern with Brain in a Jar and experimentation as a Glimpse replacement in Elfball] Breaking // Entering [Mill prior to Tasha's and the second set of Crabs being printed] Wear // Tear The packs had shocklands replacing the guildgate in packs at a rate of ~1/10 or something like that And, who could forget, it introduced the guild champions to EDH, most notably the following: Vorel of the Hull Clade [counters commander] Varolz, the Scar-Striped [also saw fringe Modern play with Death's Shadow] Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts [annoying stax-y control commander] Tajic, Blade of the Legion [i.e. Worldslayer tribal] Ruric Thar, the Unbowed [amazingly toxic Stompy/Chumbo tribal commander] Melek, Izzet Paragon [popular UR Spells commander prior to Mizzix's printing] Lavinia of the Tenth [underrated hatebears/control commander] While JOU is less defensible, your description doesn't do justice to its impact. Beyond Mana Confluence, it also introduced Keranos God of Storms [sideboard tech in Modern in Twin and some other places], Eidolon of Blossoms [enchantress all-star], Eidolon of the Great Revel [Modern burn all-star], and Eidolon of Rhetoric [since powercrept out of its sideboard slot]. It did a bunch of fun things in Standard and fringe stuff in other formats too with cards like Doomwake Giant, Brain Maggot, Ajani's Presence, Banishing Light [bad O-ring], Legonna-Band Trailblazer, jank all-star Nyx-Fleece Ram, Dictate of Erebos, Dictate of Kruphix [Modern turns], Twinflame [Dualcaster Mage combo piece], Disciple of Deceit [rogue combo brewer favorite], and Pharika God of Affliction. I think Darksteel is my least favorite Modern legal set from a card quality standpoint. All the best cards from it - Retract, Arcbound Ravager, Skullclamp, Sundering Titan, the first two Swords, Trinisphere, Darksteel Citadel and Blinkmoth Nexus, Serum Powder, Spire Golem [in old Pauper, more that the decks it was played in were miserable], Mycosynth Lattice, Aether Vial, Chittering Rats, Death Cloud, Reshape, Echoing Truth - are miserable to play against and beyond those the set doesn't have much to offer. It even has the most toxic of the OG Kaldra pieces. I think the only two cards I would be sad to see go if the entire set was wiped are Genesis Chamber and maybe Whispersilk Cloak.
The set and story might have both been lackluster, but I still say the Journey into Nyx trailer is the best trailer Wizards have ever done. Go watch it on UA-cam. The part at the end where Erebos is like "Resign yourself to your glorious fate. I am coming... to claim my prize." gives me chills every fucking time. Such a great trailer.
As a young player with little money, Urza made me zone put of Magic. Those cards were so powerful that all my hard earned cards were now so underpowered that I lost all the time to players with access to the new stuff.
The Urza's bannings caused the most ire with Memory Jar in Urza's Legacy. It was banned inside the first month of release, while many stores and players were still opening product, sometimes getting a useless banned card as a rare. WotC issued an offer to exchange Legacy boosters for Memory Jars, which may be why Rosewater and friends got that ultimatum.
Kamigawa felt like a kneejerk reaction to try and drag L5R players back to MTG. L5R was going through a popular period at that time. It's adds in scry magazine took punches at MTG. It also portrayed the mythological Japanese theme in a more interesting way. Anyways, that's all I remember about Kamigawa. Desperately trying to get L5R players back to MTG. It makes me wonder if the clamoring for going back to Kamigawa was mostly players who didn't play it the first time. Sort of like how the clamoring to play WoW classic seemed to come from those who missed it the first time. I mean I didn't play Kamig either but that's because I was all in on L5R instead.
Ah, Kamigawa. I started my Magic journey with Champions and as I only ever played kitchen table casual, for years I refused to play any card that wasn't from the Kamigawa Block. At high I had at least a dozen different Kamigawa Decks. The green black preconstructed Spirit deck was my first deck ever. Until today I love my Samurais, my Orochi and green black soulshift. And I still try to bring out the Unspeakable some times. Neon Dynasty was the heaviest punch WotC could ever deal to me. Not only didn't they return to the Kamigawa I love, they made it nearly impossible to ever do so. In the means of flavour all the medieval shinto-budhistic charme has vanished. I'm heavy into cyberpunkt and would have loved Neon Dynasty, if only it would've taken place on any other plane. And mechanically the - in my very own opinion - best things from Kamigawa are lost, too. No more bushido, soulshift and arcane splicing. All these mechanics could've profited greatly from new, slightly better cards. But with Kamigawa changed to Neon Dynasty, it will never happen. Broke my heart somehow and continues breaking it whenever I think about it.
When I was a dumb kid (instead of the dumb adult I am now) I kinda enjoyed Homelands, but mainly for the fact that the world of the set felt more interconnected than in previous sets. Cards/characters referenced each other a lot, you had the whole Sengir estate (with its own carriage, gate, bats and crazy granny), Chandler + Joven and his tools, and I might've had a little crush on Autumn Willow('s card). Early hexproof! But yeah, it was SO BAD.
I really loved how the characters were quoted on each other's cards and how, as you say, interconnected it all was. I really wanted to play a lot of the cards when they came out but even then we knew they were bad and my super casual terrible self even figured that out.
When Chronicles released, we had a MASSIVE local panic and sell-off among many of the die-hard players who had been playing since Beta/Unlimited. Like an absolute fool, I sold into that panic. The cards I sold then would buy a house now, full stop. Did I mention "absolute fool?" But at the time I was convinced the fad was over, the market was doomed, and I would never play Magic again. Here I am, 25 years later, telling this sad tale as I get ready to build a new Propser Commander deck tonight after work.
That's fair there were a lot of knee jerk reactions back then like the reserve list that basically makes it impossible for younger players to play eternal formats.
Kamigawa was awful. I had a shop during this block and nearly went out of business due to how it was received. Tge drafters wanted to play the core set. Thank God for Rav.
Mirrodin was considered a game killer because of the power level and equipment etc etc etc, lorwyn for the introduction of planeswalkers, scars of mirrodin block for introducing the infect mechanic, zendikar rising block (cant remember which exact set off the top of my head) for eldrazi winter, modern Masters for breaking the "spirit of the reserve list", modern horizons for printing cards specifically to change or ruin depending on who you ask the older formats of the game, Eldritch moon for the fuse cards. Magic players are bonkers
The only times magic was in danger of getting killed was Chronicles and Fallen Empires as far as I'm aware, but that wasn't because of what players thought, it was because of marketing. For me personally Eight Edition followed by the Mirrodin and Kamigawa blocks is when I completely lost interest. The card design was very unappealing in the early stages of the new design, standard was a joke, the card economy made no sense where all the value of the sets was in less than 5 cards. It took me all the way until Zendikar release to be interested in Magic again, that's how bad those blocks were in my experience.
I disagree in a few small ways: - Journey into Nyx was a fine set. The constellation mechanic was great, and there were a decent number of tournament cards. Born of the Gods was the clunker. It had Courser of Kruphix and not much else. Inspired and Tribute were very meh mechanics. People were angry that we had to wait until the last set to get an "enchantment matters" mechanic. - Saviors of Kamigawa is the real culprit. Champions and Betrayers had some good cards, like Top and Jitte. Many people also loved the CCC and CCB draft formats. Saviors gave us Kataki, Pithing Needle and trash. Sweep was terrible, Channel was forgettable, Epic was interesting but the execution was bad. - As for Chronicles, if you look back any card reprinted in Chronicles and compare it to its OG printing, the OG cards are worth much much more. The prices may have tanked at the time, but they've all recovered and then some. Also, I think glossing over how broken Mirrodin (and Darksteel) were is a bit of a disservice, as apparently that timeframe led to a big exodus of players.
Urza's Saga, Chronicles/Fallen Empires/Homelands are the only times in which Magic's existence felt in danger. I was a very new player during Urza's Block, so I didn't experience the problems very much. Still, the block itself represented a design philosophy that, had it continued, would have run Magic into the ground. Chronicles followed by Fallen Empires and HOmelands (roughly) represented two different but concurrent threats. Chronicles in making the bottom drop out of the singles market. (I do think this was kind of a good thing though because the singles market bubble wasn't a good thing) Players felt betrayed by WotC making so many valueable cards worthless. And magic was still young enough where its base wasn't strong enough to support repeats of this. Fallen EMpires and HOmelands were very underpowered and overprinted. Fallen Empires has more good cards than Homelands by a mile, but they're mostly very easy cards to pull from packs. So there was no incentive to buy packs. HOmelands was ever lower powered and for the same reason people didn't want to buy cards. Regarding Kamigawa block: the sets mechanics were narrow and underbaked. The flavor was amazing and I've met many people who loved the flavor of Kamigawa but disliked the cards. Combine that with the fact that Betrayers gave us Umezawa's Jitte, a card that dominated the post-ravager standard for a loooong time and was mostly boring and terrible to play against and you can see the issue. But nah, it didn't kill magic or come close to it.
Kamigawa was not well received, because of the power. They introduced a Pacifism that costed an extra mana, while in Mirrodin spells did not cost mana at all.
@@dreamakuma probably closer to 4. I should have said I stopped buying cards, but I played type 1 after that only. I sold off all my cards except 1 box of decks and good rares. Cripes I had so many 500 count boxes of cards at one point. I also played the win95/98 game as it was basically type 1 on your pc and had the ability to connect to a friend.
It wasn't a set that killed MTG for me, it was the development of prices that killed it for me. At some point it was not worth it to keep up anymore, in my eyes. now, I just play a draft here and there if I am at my legs and they are one person short.
Regarding Kamagawa, Rosewater said the original set was not well recieved at the time it came out. In the past several years, however, so many players requested it they decided to give it another go.
AFAIK, Kamigawa had a lot design problems (it was underpowered compared to Mirrodin and the upcoming Ravnica, mechanics were too parasitic, and they filled it with artifact-hate cards to try fight affinity) but players LOVED the flavor (it was the first set based on a real-life setting).
Someone didn’t play in the Legion’s pre-release and it shows. A set with all creatures is brutally unfun to play and I promptly quit Magic at that pre-release.
For context, Kamigawa didn't almost kill Magic. Mirrodin Block (specifically the Affinity deck spawned from it) decimated Standard before Kamigawa ever arrived, making sure that whatever followed it would look bad.
Yet Mirrodin was a big upward swing for playerbase head count. You need to realize, Odyssey and Onslaught were a huge (maybe the biggest ever) downward spiral for the game. Mirrodin showed that if a block is flavourful enough, balance issues can be forgiven. Just a shame Wizard's couldn't replicate the Masques formula of fixing the broken block before it with Kamigawa. In Urza's/ Masques standard, the best deck (Rising Waters) was overwhelmingly made up of cards from Masques. This was not the case with Mirrodin/ Kamigawa, not even close
I bought two boxes of Homelands in 2008 because a) it seemed interesting to draft, and b) it was 1/3 of the price of the sets in rotation at the time. Most of the cards went straight into a binder. On current re-sale prices for those cards, I've actually made a decent profit. I did similar for Weatherlight too, but that set has some much nicer cards in it.
I started with RTR, and I thought Blood Baron was awesome when I was a kid. I just loved that it could become a 10/10 flier with crazy abilities, and I immediately loved the whole theme of Ravnica, so I actually enjoyed the whole block.
Mirroden was pure unfiltered shit... They haven't made cards as powerful till this day.. they took away the need for colors, Rosewater should have been fired for it.
Kamigawa wasn't well-received, but the combination of time and ironic fandom made people want to return. Some people in hindsight saw that ninjas were cool and the planes art and themes were actually pretty cool if mechanically done better, and other people were just "lol imagine RETURN TO KAMIGAWA, do it wizards". I don't think there was anything disingenuous about wizards saying people didnt like the set- at the time they didn't, so it took a near total-reinvention of the set to make a return happen.
In Chronicles’s defense… Magic “investors” and a stupid knee-jerk reaction from a small game company were responsible for the reserve list. I don’t think anyone expected MTG to last 20+ years. Spellfire didn’t survive, Jyhad didn’t survive, Blood Wars didn’t survive
@@skillganon606 it was a "stupid knee-jerk reaction" so, yeah, it was a bad choice. And every time they double down on this decision it is a bad choice
As someone who started magic when Journey into Nyx was only a week old, It was strange seeing such great sets coming in and out of rotation and at the time not seeing the same enthusiasm for Nyx the same way people enjoyed Theros, RTR or khans. 8 years later it's a little humbling remembering myself always wanting to get a booster box of Nyx and now I would only want buy singles out of it these days. makes me miss the simpler times when I could appreciate the set for what it was. I can't help but still feel tempted to crack some packs for nostalgia's sake
I lowkey feel like some of the worst sets are just mediocre and soulless sets like Zendikar rising and Theros beyond death, especially considering they gave us Thoracle breach and omnath etc
BFZ was probably one of the worse sets imo. Insane power creep, printing dual lands when the previous set had fetches, lottery cards (the start of the bling era, and all the variants we have now). Overall just a mess of a set.
I got into magic with return to ravnica and experienced these bad sets one after another and man today's sets are better but value is lackluster for standard. Powerful yes but value not so much.
1. 100% with you on Chronicles being the worst set for its lasting impact. 2. You are standing too close to your greenscreen and your shaddow is causing a bleed through; you could solve it by standing 12-18" further away or lighting the screen better from either side.
Kind of crazy to think that Theros and RTR standard was maybe "the worst" considering my first FNM was after the release of Khans of Tarkir. I loved the cards in RTR and theros.
I know this is 6 months later, but Kenobi revealed he does poop like the rest of us. and that has shattered my image of him. I thought his waste just magically dissipated from him going into the ether. He truly killed the magic.
Big thank you to Nord VPN for sponsoring this video!
Go to NordVPN.com/kenobi to get a 2-year plan at a huge discount plus 4 months free. It’s risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!
Do you surf the world wide webs at your local school or internet café? Have you just had a dial up modem installed in your home? Do you worry about the MyDoom virus or an ICQ messenger hack destroying your brand new BBC Micro? What about DARPA spies, or AOL selling your search history?
Dont be a spaz. If you're a super sharp, hip, modern dude like me, use Nord VPN! 💪👴👍
Coincidentally, some of the big media streaming services are becoming a bad example of VPN use, given many sites like Netflix attempt to block connections made with VPNs. Sometimes they have difficulty recognizing the connection as VPN connections, but I get blocked for trying to access some sites like Netflix while using a connection in the same State in the U.S.A. VPNs are way more valuable than the ability to access media not shown in your local area, so I suggest you get one anyway, but media sites are a poor example of their use lately.
It would be a good idea to mention that using these services violates the Steam Subscriber Agreement, and could potentially put accounts at risk of getting banned. Especially Circuit Vpn services are configured to change a user's IP region.
Chronicles in my opinion was the moment that WotC screwed up - not because they printed it, but because they backed off. It wasn't that they printed Chronicles that was the problem. It's that they responded to the feedback of a tiny number of players as if those players were the only ones that mattered. Chronicles was great if you were a new player. Sure, your cards didn't look as cool as the neat black bordered cards, but you at least got to own them. It was like WotC printed their own proxies.
I remember back then the white border cards actually ramped up prices of black border cards because look and all that
@@ericpetersen6343 and for many it destroyed the value. Classic example killer bee´s, they have never recovered, nor have the elder dragons
I think the problem back then was not so much chronicles, it was chronicles and the sets coming out where shite. Revised was a joke in powerlevel compared to ABU (and 4th was even worse) fallen empires and homelands both rival for the worst set in magics history. Ice age was pretty meh as well.
@@daftwulli6145 I think that the panic that set in at WotC at that time was responsible for how they react to Chronicles.
Let's face it, Legends was reasonably well received but hasn't stood the test of time and contains many of the worst cards ever printed, The Dark was also weak and only had a few cards that proved fun, and Ice Age, Fallen Empires and Homelands really only furthered the problem as WotC struggled to find their identity and figure out how to design cards.
Magic was not well understood at a theoretical level at that time, people were only beginning to talk in terms of "card advantage" and the Sligh deck and real understanding of mana curves were in the games future. Wizards was entirely uncertain as to what power level the game needed to be fun, and at the time thought even Serra Angel was too good.
Had they put out well received product the probably wouldn't have panicked and created the reserve list, but Chronicles came in the midst of a long string of disasters for WotC. I'd argue that in a lot of ways Mirage block and Tempest block were some of the best sets they'd ever produce, and had Chronicles came during that happy period it probably would have been very different.
@@celebrim1 Excuse me ? Legends has quite a few cards that made it into vintage and legacy. How many current sets can say that ? It was a pretty strong set overall. Did it have some bad cards ? Well yea, so has every set of mtg ever. It was worlds above fallen empires, homelands and ice age.
Players: Magic is dying!
Magic: The tales of my demise have been greatly exaggerated
This has the feel of a megamind reference!
@@DGlattiator I love you, Metro Man!!
My death was... greatly exaggerated.
Kamigawa seemed to not be well received at it's time, but overtime people fell in love with it. Also love how this video came out the day after Neon Dynasty announcement
They fell in love with the lore, the world, but very few of the mechanics. Personally I’m only excited for ninjutsu and splice like in MH.
i loved kamigawa. so flavorful. i still have a demon-ogre deck with two hidetsugus. is kinda unplayable.
I’m very worried about the new set. It feels less about wotc actually caring for what the fans liked/cared about kamigawa and wanting to do the plane right and more about wotc wanting a slice of the cyberpunk/anime trends and just so happened to have kamigawa in their back pocket. I’m sure mechanically it can’t be as poorly thought out (no more over costed spirits and bushido cards) but just really shallow aestheticsof the cyber punk genre and Asian culture. I was not a fan of how they handled Kaladesh and Neon Kamigawa could end up like it with the flavour being highly questionable at best, horrifically off putting at most.
Most of the cards in the set are hot garbage. It’s just NOSTALJUHHH
It was never kamigawa that sucked. It has some bangers. It is that it came out right when “modern” started which caused some problems. It had too much mechanical impetus from a time when a mechanical theme would be dropped immediately. Nowadays, if your set does something weird, or is based on underused or brand new types you get commander products and the next few core sets and masters style premiere sets have some backup. You didn’t get that at the time.
Kamigawa's biggest flaw for it not being "well received" was also due in part to the fact that the playerbase was at a very low point in time thanks to Affinity dominating literally every event at the time to an extent that no other deck in history has, despite having several bans issued against it's cards. Mirrodin is the actual set/block that nearly killed magic.
You're wrong. After the golden age of Magic (Tempest, Urza's, Masques, Invasion) people were EXHAUSTED from playing more than they'd ever been playing the game before. That time was a frenzy. It might not have ever ended if it wasn't for Odyssey, a block so boring, insipid, soulless, derivative and mechanically shallow literally everyone stopped caring overnight. (My club went from 58 to 4 players) then Magic was a black hole all the way until Mirrodin. For some reason, everyone decided to come back for Mirrodin. Which is funny since you're trying to claim it "killed" Magic. In fact it was the third biggest reclamation bubble of lost players after Urza's Saga and Ravnica.
@@Vinterloft I have literally the opposite experience.
I started in Ice Age but didn't really get going competitively until Invasion bloc.
Odyssey and Onslaught was *insanely* popular in my area specifically for its simplicity, and there was an *immediate* crash in player counts when Eighth Edition hit and changed the card frames to the more modern look.
The player counts attending FNM's and other events didn't really recover until Ravnica, at least in my area.
@@Vinterloft I'd actually say mirrodyn kind of represented both the best and the worst of MTG. It did initially indeed create a resurgence in MTG, but at the same time it was also the sole reason as to why Kamigawa was made in such a way that it was a whole lot less powerful. Technically, MTG needs another similar set/block to push down on the insane powercreep that's been going on. Not to mention kamigawa was gradually becoming beloved because of its story rather than the cards themselves.
@@Vinterloft absolutely me and my buddies started in 2000 right after urzas and it was awful we all quit playing and didn't start again until late onslaught early mirrodin and we all loved it
@@Vinterloft In my part of the world (Midwest U.S.), players weren't as jazzed with Odyssey or Onslaught as they were Invasion and what came before, but overall play and tournament attendance was still high. Mirrodin Affinity in the winter of 2003-04 halved (or more) the Standard FNM scene and enthusiasm. Players HATED Affinity. I'd argue that, outside of Pre-Releases, most of the players I played against in card shops and tournaments were more hardcore, as the casuals abandoned ship. Things never really recovered until Ravnica.
If these sets didn't kill Magic, then MaRo is justified in saying that Magic is very hard to kill.
but he is doing a really damn good effort tho. Im surprised Throne of Eldraine isn't here.
Magic has both Persist and Undying, they cancel one another.
@@PSYCOMMUnist hardly, i stopped playing arena, like 50% of the playerbase. I only play pauper and commander. The further from wizards, the better magic feels.
@@juliofranciscogomezstoppel1860 over the years Marro has taught me to hate him that's for sure.
@@skillganon606 Anyone paying attention at the backstage of Magic hates him. Most of the broken cards of the game were designed by him, in all the formats, including vintage and legacy. The guy is on crack, he is poisonus for the game. No matter how much he likes it, the more control he gets over a set, the more repulsive the meta becomes. Thats easy to see given how much it powerspiked in the last 2 years. Dominaria was super tonned down, because Richard Garfield was involved, everything else was a burning pile of overpowered shit.
"Hey, I just picked up a box of Dragons Maze!"
"Well, I hope you like Cluestones..."
The cluestone cupcakes are fine just don't eat the simic slaw.
@@skillganon606 I’m still trying to make that Simic slaw work in modern ;-;
@@Kerrmunism ooh, what's in it?
@@skillganon606 Tried to share a link but think it got deleted for spam, it's on my deckstats, same name as youtube
@@skillganon606 I run three copies of Beck//Call in a Combo Elves build in Modern.
With kamigawa I get the arguments for why people disliked it.
Standard players blamed kamigawa for nothing having cards that could compete against Mirrodin and affinity (I’m sure this has never happened before or since. Cough cough Urza Saga. Cough cough eldraine) and then Ravinca came out and everyone lost their minds and called that the savior because it was multicolour (like invasion block) but not totally foreign in the references like kamigawa was with its shinto inspired creatures and spellls). Basically kamigawa standard paid for the sims of mirrodin and overshadowed by the adoration for Ravinca
limited players hated Jitte and the entirety of saviors because saviors had a lot of idiotic things going on like handsize matter cards combined with sweep which basically helped rendered games into being unplayable. I believe that was truly the worse thing about the block because betrayers and champions were more than solid sets (jitte aside).
That said, of all the “””bad””” sets ever made in magic, kamigawa aged the best. So many cards from the block would go on to define eternal formats and especially for commander, it was the greatest boon for commander since original Legends. Its flavour is wholly unique and wonderful and I hate magic players for being so closed minded and dismissive
Agreed, that’s why I’m tentatively excited for kamigawa neon dynasty. I really liked the flavor of old kamigawa and I hope the cyberpunk theme dosen’t ruin that.
I resent MtG players for loving Zendikar and hating all the coolest planes, but that's just me. Zendikar is sooo boring.
I mean…. Jitte and Kiki jiki were good in commander once. But that doesn’t mean most of the cards are pretty trash. A 5 drop samurai with bushido 1…. Wow so cool
I'm struggling with building a decent Samurai commander deck, there's just so many underwhelming cards of their type, which is a bit of a shame. (Fingers crossed that the upcoming one really won't be a huge stylistic departure, I don't want to mix in any cybered-up lightsaber stuff with my cool classy dudes)
@@barthalen hand of cruelty and kitsune blademaster are…. Good. In one v one… non commander formats lol.
What's funny is I was stoked for Chronicles and so were a lot of people when it came out. Legends was very difficult to buy and Chronicles made most people believe that if they missed a set or it was not available that we would be able to get the good cards as reprints later. By making Chronicles white-border, it meant that the original cards were still better. The fact that is caused the reserve list is the worst thing about Chronicles, certainly, but at the time of release, Chronicles was probably the greatest set for players and a lot of game stores that were unable to get their hands on early Magic. And when they say it "tanked" the secondary market, it took some of the Elder Dragons from $20 down to $3-$4. Nothing was worth more than about $100-$200 in Magic at the time.
The Chronicles scare paved the way for years and years of awful reprint policies.
Yea. I was totally jazzed about Chronicles too. Loved the opportunity to get those Expansions that I never had an opportunity to buy.
Sadly people who saw the game as a potential goldmine similar to baseball and other collectibles were probably pissing in their pants that abur cards would’ve all been devalued next and now their efforts have paid off lovely for them. Their investments are secure even if it means no one else gets to play with original duel lands or old janky legendary legends cards anymore unless they like proxies. Gotta make sure that Black lotus reaches 6 digit figures someday. Parasites, all of them.
Black Lotus was already 150 dollars by 95 and it was the most expensive ccard at the time.
@@vinnythewebsurfer it already sold for 6 digits
I bought a box of Saga back in the day. I got a cradle, yawg will, time spiral, sanctum etc and I was extremely disappointed because I didn't get a Serra Avatar. It was a ridiculously good box.
that's hilarious seeing as Serra Avatar is seen as one of the worst mythics reprinted in Dominaria Remastered, and it doesn't even have reserve list cards to compete.
I think it's important to bring up that Kamigawa wasn't well received MECHANICALLY. Lore/art-wise it was beloved. Making it very much worth returning to.
That was what I came here to say. The Vorthos was fantastic.. the mechanics were junk (Bushido, i'm looking at you)
The art was certainly competent. Mostly. But to claim it was anything but a thinly-veiled moneygrab towards the Japanese market is facetious at best. It is Magic's #1 most soulless set ever.
@@Vinterloft Usually I wouldn't say opinions are wrong, but that's one of the dumbest comments I've seen in a while.
My beef with Nyx being in here is that it just didn't really go that far into what it was supposed to do, setting-wise. Previous sets in the bloc established the Nyx esthetic already, with the star-studded elements, and I believe it should have been all about that, even on cards that aren't also enchantments. Just for the esthetic of it.
Also, actually involving one of the five gods the set had in the story would certainly have been a nice bonus.
But yes, it could have been rolled into the previous set to have a two-set block. I just don't like single sets on a story perspective. Like, what happened in the return to Theros? Even though it's a more extreme case because that's the point where Wizards was like "fuck story it doesn't bring in the cash money". And then they made too much happen in Ikoria which was, kinda similarly to Kaldheim, really feeling like two or three sets compressed in a single one.
Magic you so crazy sometimes
Nyx holding on the constellation mechanic and it not being in the entire "enchantment matters" block was a mistake. Otherwise it felt kind of forgettable or a bit mind numbing with overstaying or visit to the plane.
I think Kaldheim would've really benefited from a 2 set if not a 3 set block. (Also could've avoided the unintentional side effect of vorinclex being leaked and ruining his actual reveal)
I remember back in the day I played Maze's End TurboFog at FNM.
Now the only reason I did it was because I was in High School and it was the only deck I could just throw together and actually stand a chance, without throwing more money than I had at the game.
Good times...
Oh and Dragon's Maze has the creature with what might be the best Type Line ever, Melek, Izzet Paragon with "Weird Wizard"
"Maybe you like the reserved list cause you're a prick" made me genuinely LOL. This video gets a like.
Wow, Fallen Empires wasn't even on the list.
Fallen Empires at least had *some* good cards like Hymn to Tourach. Homelands didn't have anything like that to redeem it
@@zachmiles1289 Merchant Scroll was the only powerhouse, I think.
Hymn to Tourach, the pump knights, goblin grenade, Aeolipile (yes, there was a point where this was a decent card), plus a pretty cool story about each color at war with itself. FE was weak, but it was better than fucking Homelands (I bought sooo many Homelands back in the day...because it was the only set that came out for like half a year before Alliances)
@@zachmiles1289 For low density of quality cards, nothing beats Legends. It was a HUGE set with 10% of high-profile playables, and the rest was the most stinking garbage, with nothing in between. People at the time were fascinated by the introduction of legends and multicolored, and by that 10% of great cards, so it didn't feel like a terrible experience (plus, you didn't have to draft it, luckily), but if we analyze it today, it might just be the worst set ever.
Fallen Empires gave us Thallids. What's not to love?
13:04
*O B J E C T I O N ! !*
First top-down design set was, without question, _Arabian Nights_
He did literally say 'one of" not the first
6:20 oddly enough, not the case. At a couple of stores I've been to, dragon's maze packs are specifically held FOR chaos drafts because of the fixing they provide, with a dual land guarenteed and -at least 3 cluestones per pack- cluestones.
Chaos drafts tend to be multicolor piles while you try to find some cards that synergize with each other so the fixing they provide is welcomed.
Very fair point, and something I will try to encourage in future. Too many people want their packs to be either MONEY or BOMBS.
@@PleasantKenobi Yup. Who'da thunk cluestones would actually be good?
Well...maybe good is still stretching it, but "have a purpose".
Very fair, I similarly treasured Ikoria packs during a recent Chaos draft for similar reasons.
@@mathewevans9706 true, ikoria might have overtaken dragon's maze now. Last time I chaos drafted in paper Ikoria wasn't out yet. There's more bombs, but less crystals than cluestones
Serrated Arrows was especially useful during that time period because there were a lot of "pump knights" and Whirling Dervishes running around in constructed.
I had forgotten the minimum of five of each set. Four Serrated Arrows in the sideboard was a must have for some if not most. I think I even maindecked an Ihsan's Shade. I think Autumn Willow was the only other Homelands card I ever played.
I miss my Homelands print Merchant Scroll. Tutoring for blue instants like Cyclonic Rift is always useful.
Back when I was a kid I was so excited about Chronicles, finally I would be able to get some of those awesome Arabian Nights, Antiquities and Legends (and it was when I collected my playset of Tron lands), but it left a deep scar on MTG.
Homelands was bad… just bad but I think Fallen Empires was the first crappy expansion
I loved Chronicles when it came out, It repreprinted some cards from the 4 sets that came out before I got in the game. Fallen Empires was bad, unless you played black. But Homelands, yeah... only good card was Autumn Willow. And Wall of Kelp, but that card would be trash for another 20 years.
Yeah I started playing right as Fallen Empires came out, so I didn't know those cards were crap at the time. Right now I struggle to remember a single one. Chronicles was awesome. Being able to get some of those early cards I missed was amazing. My friends and I were players, so I never heard the backlash from the collector community. When I came back to Magic after 20 years and heard about the reserved list, I was disappointed I didn't hold on to the cards of my youth! Not for collectible reasons, but that it would be so difficult to get my hands on old favorites.
Hymn to Tourach, High Tide, Soul Exchange, Goblin Grenade
I'm super stoked for the new Kamigawa set. The old block had my favorite art (unfortunately, on a trash card) in Betrayers of Kamigawa. Horobi's Whisper captured the colors I expect to see in the Neon Dynasty.
The most broken set is undoubtedly "Alpha". Look at black lotus, ancestral recall and other power nine cards! They simply break the game!
They also break your wallet
I started playing during a down trend in magic, my first set was lorwyn and I was hooked. So I think that even if the set is lower powered, it can still grab new players that don't know what a "good set" is.
Agreed. It also matters a lot less to commander players. If a set is weak after a high powered one then maybe I won't buy as much but I'm still there for flavor and maybe janky commander stuff.
Lorwyn slaps, even if most of its cards aren't that strong, they're so fun (in edh at least) and I adore the art and flavor
Although I hear draft was rough since wotc hadn't figured out tribes tbf
I started in Lorwyn as well and I still love that set. While it might not be as powerful card for card I find the creature synergies to overcome a lot of that. You don't need great cards if enough cards are doing things to boost others you have.
But I also played Merfolk as a new player and wrecked the dorms with that deck.
Kamigawa was great from some angles (flavor, uniqueness in mechanics, memorable) and absolutly terrible from others (overcosted, insular, parasidic) and is still my favorite set.
Champions was ok. The follow-up sets were quite bad. The "cards in hand matter" is a very bad design because it encourages players not to take game actions because their cards only work if they have enough in hand. You don't want to put Rending Vines in your deck, go ham, and then face a key artifact only to find you can't remove it because your kill spell needs you to have 4 cards in your hand at that point and you only have 2.
@@JD-gk7eh I wouldn't go that far.
Betrayers gave us the most beloved mechanic of the Kamigawa block with ninjutsu, The baku and genju were all pretty decent, the shoal cycle holds up pretty well, and there was good continued support for the mechanics of champions.
Saviors is harder to defend for sure, but I think that is less the mechanics designs as it is just the balancing being even more wrong. Channel is a perfectly fine mechanic, the Sweep spells were also alright mechanically (but way over cost), and the set has a lot of great one off cards that still see play in formats where they are legal.
I agree that the wisdom mechanic flowing through the block was a bad one and hits against one of Rosewaters 20 lessons “Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win.” But even those could have been fine had the costing of them been more balanced. Rending Vines I think is a perfect example. Had that spell cost 2 or maybe even 1 it would essentially have played like a Fatal Push, an early game removal that gets worse as the game goes on.
Oh and saviors gave us the best designed bad card ever with One with Nothing. A card that so many people keep trying to find a ways to make it good even through it is just a bad card.
Not a set but maybe as an honorable mention, The Walking Dead Secret Lair. By far the biggest discourse I've seen in Magic.
I mean, thats also the highest selling secret lair
@@SilverAlex92It might be the highest selling but i would bet on most of the sales being from players who wanted to make sure they had the cards should they see play and get expensive, personally i can say that this is why i bought it. Had the commander RC/Cag voted to ban them before release I would bet on it having sold a lot less than it did
@@andreww479 so you’re the person buying these secret lairs. I wondered who took the bait
Cold Snap feels like it could be in the conversation. Everything from how they presented it as a ‘found set’ to being way out of left field.
The marketing of that era was definitely dubious. I was in a long break from the game at that time, and I remember some friends telling me about "cards from the future" (the time spiral timeshifted shenanigans) and a "lost ice age set". A lot of facepalms around the table that evening.
Ikoria nearly ruined magic for me. I was promised a “Lair of Behemoths,” and what I received was “Lair of Cards That Suck to Play In Paper.”
If memory serves me right, journey into nyx was slightly more exciting than bored of the gods.
Ahhh the good old days of born - the excitment of knowing you'll have to make the deck out of two boosters instead of 3, maybe adding 1 card for the deck.
At our LGS the chant "come on Brimaz, one time!" became standard for the set :P
Yeah... BNG wasn't great... Courser and Spirit of the Labyrinth are the only cards besides the temples that I can think of that are still played.
Theros (the first set) was pretty solid with heroics and monstrosity. And then the next sets after had off putting mechanics like bestow….. and tribute….. inspired.
The only really redeemable aspects of the 2 other sets besides the couple of busted cards like courser if kruphix was basically the multicolor gods to chase after.
It's weird to hear revisionist history about Kamigawa because It decimated the local scene and caused me to quit playing magic for almost a decade. I've heard multiple card store people make the joke that covid is bad for business but not quite as bad as Kamigawa.
Same here alot of my friends and me all stopped playing after mirrodin block I didn't play again until artifacts made a comeback in 08 I loved the shards block and it got me back in
Urza's block is when Magic took off, player base wise.
Players love broken shit and complaining about it.
I had left Magic for a short while during the disappointment that was Homelands and came back during the Urza era. I was stunned, *stunned* at how powerful cards had become. I mean when you compare the absolute best cards from Homelands and the most filler cards of Urza you can't use words like power creep. This was power incarnate.
Obligatory nyah nyeah Chronicles Reserve List.
Thanks for the video, Vince! And you can't be old. You're only 21.
Dear God, Homelands was bad. But I think Fallen Empires is right there with it. I know this because I started playing right after Empires released and I could buy boosters for $ .50 a piece. Which new player and teenager I was, seemed like a great deal. So if you need a deep spawn... Hit me up, I guess?
You left the objectively worst set for the MtG economy and secondary market off the list entirely and that was Fallen Empires. Fallen Empires single handedly killed 90% of the secondary market. At Dragon Con '94 Garfield promised there would never be a black border card in a WalMart. Not only did they break that promise but by suddenly jumping from a 65M card print run for the Dark to a 350M card print run for Fallen Empires, they flooded the market and killed all but the largest secondary market dealers.
I was today years old when I realized Gaea's Cradle has a bare faerie buttocks in the art. Now that I think of it I don't think I've ever seen the card in person.
I would argue that Fallen Empires should be on this list. MTG was just starting to take off and Revised was doing great! Coming on the heels of Legends and The Dark WoTC produced a metric assload of Fallen Empires cards and flooded the market with them And they were absolute dog shit. Like Homelands level shit but without any kind of a story. Just shit. Stores couldn't sell them and they were left sitting on piles of booster boxes. The overproduction and underselling probably did a lot of damage at the time. I know it drove me off of MTG for a couple of years until I got back in around Mirage.
I was sure Fallen Empires was going to be number two on the list (Chronicles being number one), but it was a set you had to be there for to really understand the impact. Before Fallen Empires, you went to game stores to get your cards -- during Fallen Empires, you could buy packs *anywhere* and I do mean anywhere. I remember seeing packs of Fallen Empires at gas stations like 7-11. From a present day perspective where buying packs from the likes of Walmart is commonplace, back then this fundamentally changed not only the relationship between Wizards and hobby stores, but also the player base perspective of Magic. Unless you were there when it happened, it's tremendously difficult to explain.
Also, like you said, the set was absolute garbage and overprinted to amounts I don't think have ever been seen since. All the alternate art should have been a fun addition, but in reality no one wanted one copy of these horrendous cards, much less forcing collectors to hunt for all the variants. It was truly a set that failed on so many levels it deserved a mention.
@@Nightenstaff I still harbor a deep reflexive hate for spore counters and saprolings. They were freaking everywhere and just sucked. At least with Legends and the Dark, even not-good cards would have something flavor-wise or mechanically unusual at the time that made the card something you’d maybe think about playing, and made buying a pack feel worth it. With FE, the mechanics were so weak and repetitive, and the set so omnipresent, that getting packs felt actively painful and pointless for the first time I can remember.
Hey, I really could recognize that you were using a green screen. Might want to have more lighting to cut down on the shadows.
Skullclamp did almost kill the game. For that brief period where it was legal in Standard (Type 2) it was INSANITY.
Did you want to play goblin bidding, tooth and nail with skullclamp or ravaged? LOL
Skullclamp wasn't killing the game at the time. Affinity is what nearly killed the game. Skullclamp wasn't in standard long enough to make a big enough impact, but Affinity was, and didn't go away Ravnica released, and Mirrodin rotated out. Affinity drove FNM turnouts to points that many LGS couldn't even hold an event because there weren't enough people. I remember my local LGS at the time went from 20 people on average for FNM, to "hey guys, you're all in top 4". Affinity made up over 90% of the field, and if you weren't playing it, you basically said "I like loosing more than winning". Even larger events were severely impacted by Affinity's dominance of nearly every format. Kamigawa was largely ignored outside of drafting and block, because standard and extended were still dominated by Affinity. It was a nightmare of a time to play.
@@MakeEmRageQuit The reason it wasn't in Standard very long is because the warped the entire format immediately. The whole meta changed and became x/1 tribal and it had to be banned to save the format.
Fallen empire, war of the spark, eldraine, ikoria, chronicles, and Arabian nights. Fallen empire was just doo doo , war eldraine and ikoria basically broke everything and signaled the beginning of the worst design philosophy wizards has ever adopted, chronicles lead to the reserved list and Arabian nights was a lore nightmare
That's my six
Kamigawa was that kind of dog with an unlovable face gifted to you by your drunk pals as a joke. The first weeks you're contemplating whether or not to hand it off, but eventually you realize that you love the thing. It's still painful to look at, and it makes this sort of wierd squeaky bark when it sees the mailman, but you love it all the same because it has character.
Hey Vince! Probably know this, but to fix up your tiny greenscreen issue, try white lights from behind you close to the greenscreen pointed up to smooth out the shadows from your hands.
Interesting! I will try this next time! I was watching it back and wondering if I need to increase framerate when recording something I am going to key?
@@PleasantKenobi personally I think it's a combo of the light not being even with shadows and maybe a not completely flat greenscreen? Hard to say, obviously I don't know your production setup haha. A quick test with some backdrop floodlights that bounce off the ceiling (particularly good if it's a white ceiling) should help. I don't think it's frame rate since there'd be a more consistent flickering throughout, not just when your hands are in motion in front of the greenscreen.
Then again it's been a few years since I'd been on a greenscreen set in any capacity so I could be wrong.
8th edition.
Oh man I remember all the rage on the new borders and the color issue with artifacts looking white. To this day I still see the "current" or "Modern" borders as the "New" ones despite that they have been the standard longer and there are more cards in that style.
8th ed. is the worst. The set symbol matters, and 7th edition was the last core set with an appealing one.
@@Vinterloft I dunno. I liked Tenth. Really felt like an established logo for a Hallmark moment in magic at the time.
@@dreamakuma It's not terrible, but would have been better if the X was smaller. It's so big it looks like it imbalances the card. Also the modern frame doesn't help
Chronicles was $3 MSRP at a time when 4 was a bit much for a booster in ANY card game. Just remember, people were shocked that WotC priced Modern Masters 2013 at $10 per booster. Little did we know that that would not be the priciest pack out there made for a set only 7 years later at $103.
I actually started playing Magic around Dragon's Maze, and I honestly never saw any problems with it. It actually seemed like a really fun set and a cool setting. Chances are that if I had started playing magic in most other sets then I'd probably wouldn't have kept playing
I remember the limited format with Dragon's Maze being especially terrible. Each pack was guaranteed to have at least three Guildgates, two to three Cluestones, and at least one shock land. Sure it made your color fixing excellent, but the value of all the other cards didn't compensate for how many slots the fixing took up.
@@cameroncorrado3935 Good thing I never played limited of that set (think my first time playing limited was in either Theros or Born of the Gods)
Chronicles was the greatest set of all time. The bad decisions that Wizards used it to justify didn't have to happen. Magic could have been an affordable and widely played game, but instead it retreated into an exclusive luxury business model and allowed itself to be overtaken by Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh
Not sure on whose fault that is but your exactly right💯
The "five cards per set" thing was only a rule for the 1996 pro Tour; a minimum of 5 from the core Set (4th edition), Fallen Empires, Chronicles, Ice Age, and Homelands. It was an interesting constraint, and a number of Homelands Cards saw active use in it (Granted, yes, mostly Serrated Arrows, butalso Autumn Willow, and Spectral bears; one of the most efficient creatures at the time, given the preponderance of necropotence decks)
The gimmick was not reprised not because it was a bad gimmick, but simply because it was a prototype of Type 2 play; once that format was secured, there was no real need for it.
Also Chronicles was $2.50 usd - which was a dollar cheaper than a 4th edition or ice age booster, but .75 more expensive than Fallen empires or Homelands; which is kinda weird, when you're getting 3 caerds less than 4th/ice age, but 4 cards MORE than FE/HL
As far as I'm concerned, I would agree with your view on Homelands and Chronicles. However, Urza's Saga (yes, there are some very powerful cards) really revitalized the Standard format (Type 2) after Mirage phased out-just imagine how strong and dominant pure Necro, NecroBloom, and Goblin or FireElves decks were at that time. Replenish, CounterRebel, Academy (which was soon banned), were all great decks, and players realized that it was amazing not to just wait for a 2-card combo on the table. But we also learned that MtG has so much more potential and options, allowing us to have fun without having to defeat opponents within 2-3 turns. So I would see it more as a learning curve and probably the beginning of what we see today in MtG (also in Commander): playing different cards, combining them in complex ways to trigger abilities and do amazing things. Magic!
I'm honestly surprised that Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch wasn't included. Eldrazi Winter was one hell of a time, and outside of the Eldrazi (IE: Ulamog, TKS, etc.), the BFZ and Oath block didn't really have any memorable cards. As far as "Almost Killed Magic" goes, I remember Modern arguably being at one of it's worst points during that time.
BFZ was my other "Modern" set alongside Throne that I started to consider, but ultimately cut because they will age and be remembered better than the more boring ones.
Bulk rares
I think Kamigawa ages well because it, in theory, has some of the strongest effects in modern Magic. Splice essentially gives all your relevant spells a kicker for the splice cost while keeping a spell in hand, spiritcraft can trigger off almost everything in a deck designed for it, Shrines get out of hand after only a couple get on the board, effects that can completely shut an opponent down like Myojin of Infinite Rage or Erayo. Everything was just way over costed, had too difficult of requirements, or was too niche for it to stand on it's own. It's a Timmy and Johnny set where the cards slowly started finding their places.
Although, I do think any Modern blocks not named Alara or Zednikar slammed between Mirrodin and original Ravnica would be doomed to feel bad in standard.
Homelands was actually more powerful but got nerfed prior to printing. That was referenced in an old printed interview. We need a Homelands Remastered featuring cut stuff and cards that have been made since then that reference stuff from Homelands. And maybe some reprint staples re-skinned for that set, with some new stuff.
They need to get rid of the reserve list. They promised they wouldn’t sell us singles and they’ve done that with secret lair. If they can break one rule they can break the other.
Chronicles is the best set with the worst legacy, not because its reprints were the wrong move - they were exactly the right thing, but people that try to treat this game like a stock market got upset, complained, and now legacy is unplayable for people without a gold-shitting donkey forever.
Playing Homelands sealed was a slog. I remember Feast of the Unicorn was one of my favorites just because it helped the game end. But I've never just given up on a set's sealed experience like I have with Fallen Empires. It's just so boring and not fun at all. There are actual good cards from that set at least, but I would never want to play limited with a box.
WOW VINCE I WONDER WHAT SHADE YOU MIGHT BE THROWING. YOU ARE SO SUBTLE AND WISE AND HANDSOME WITH YOUR ENLIGHTENED CENTRIST PERSPECTIVE.
As someone who actually played actively during OG Kamigawa, it was really well received by players. The issue was it was coming in on the heel of Mirrodin block when massive amounts of players quit the game due to the sort of second combo-winter that made them emergency ban bunch of Mirrodin cards.
I started playing Magic during the revised addition and collected quite heavily of the expansion sets ie… Arabian nights, the dark, Legends, and ice age.
I can tell you personally and completely agree that the Chronicles set was the worst. I bought a box and remember opening packs and was ticked off of all the reprints. Especially the elder dragons from Legends because I had them all from the Legends set.
Didn't put Fallen Empires on the list, but put Urza's Saga, that was literally the pinnacle of when Magic started to become popular around the world, not just America, and the set that made the game much more appeasing? Shaking my head in disgust. You gots to do your research better, mate.
There is a big difference between "worst sets" and "most damaging sets". I played seriously from 1995-2008, and here's my personal view:
* Most damaging sets: Urza's Saga, Urza's Destiny, Mirrodin, Darksteel, Time Spiral Block#- these are all sets that seriously hurt sales (TSP was way too complicated for newer players) and/or tournament attendance. The utter absurdity of the Urza block in general and Mirrodin-era Standard Affinity made people quit playing altogether, or at least kept them away from events until the banhammers came down. And the last thing any gaming company and gaming stores want is low event attendance.
* Worst sets: Homelands, Mercadian Masques, Kamigawa block. These were sets were most of the cards were utter dreck (Homelands), the theme and playstyle sucked (Kamigawa block) or both (Mercadian Masques). Interesting to note that both Masques and Kamigawa had to be powered WAY down because of the brokenness of their predecessors (Urza, Mirrodin).
#- Personally, as a longtime player who got all the jokes, references and story beats, I absolutely LOVED Time Spiral Block, but I understand the overall issues with it.
As a child, the art of Kamigawa actually drew me in and I bought the preconstructed decks at the time. I didn't understand a thing because no one I knew played and rules weren't included but the art and flavor text filled me with questions and wonder.
As a child I played in Tempest, Urza's Saga, Masques and Invasion and because everyone else quit when Odyssey came out I did too. But I did pick up a couple of theme decks of Kamigawa on a whim at some point. I remember opening them (one was a snake themed one with uncommon legendaries) and remember exclaiming out loud "what the fuck is this shit"
At least I got a Sensei's Divining Top
I started playing magic with Journey into Nyx, and while I still love my Grim Guardians and Nyxfleece Rams, in retrospect I'm glad the blocks are now two sets max
People harp on about Dragon's Maze being crap, but it has way more to it than people remember. For one, it was a small set, which means less chance for it to be as iconic as a full size set. Even given that, Dragon's Maze had all the following:
Dragon's Maze [which is either great or awful depending on who you ask]
Aetherling [Standard control finisher]
Hidden Strings [Jank combo enabler]
Crypt Incursion [Mill sideboard all-star]
Pontiff of Blight [Commander win con for grindy black decks]
Possibility Storm [combo piece]
Advent of the Wurm [stellar meme card, saw Standard and fringe Modern play]
Blood Baron of Vizkopa
Master of Cruelties
Notion Thief [Commander all-star, especially since a certain card got banned]
Progenitor Mimic
Render Silent
Plasm Capture
Sin Collector [saw Modern play]
Unflinching Courage [played in Bant Bogles along with Geist of St. Traft... okay, that deck was admittedly miserable]
Voice of Resurgence
Beck // Call [saw play in Modern with Brain in a Jar and experimentation as a Glimpse replacement in Elfball]
Breaking // Entering [Mill prior to Tasha's and the second set of Crabs being printed]
Wear // Tear
The packs had shocklands replacing the guildgate in packs at a rate of ~1/10 or something like that
And, who could forget, it introduced the guild champions to EDH, most notably the following:
Vorel of the Hull Clade [counters commander]
Varolz, the Scar-Striped [also saw fringe Modern play with Death's Shadow]
Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts [annoying stax-y control commander]
Tajic, Blade of the Legion [i.e. Worldslayer tribal]
Ruric Thar, the Unbowed [amazingly toxic Stompy/Chumbo tribal commander]
Melek, Izzet Paragon [popular UR Spells commander prior to Mizzix's printing]
Lavinia of the Tenth [underrated hatebears/control commander]
While JOU is less defensible, your description doesn't do justice to its impact. Beyond Mana Confluence, it also introduced Keranos God of Storms [sideboard tech in Modern in Twin and some other places], Eidolon of Blossoms [enchantress all-star], Eidolon of the Great Revel [Modern burn all-star], and Eidolon of Rhetoric [since powercrept out of its sideboard slot]. It did a bunch of fun things in Standard and fringe stuff in other formats too with cards like Doomwake Giant, Brain Maggot, Ajani's Presence, Banishing Light [bad O-ring], Legonna-Band Trailblazer, jank all-star Nyx-Fleece Ram, Dictate of Erebos, Dictate of Kruphix [Modern turns], Twinflame [Dualcaster Mage combo piece], Disciple of Deceit [rogue combo brewer favorite], and Pharika God of Affliction.
I think Darksteel is my least favorite Modern legal set from a card quality standpoint. All the best cards from it - Retract, Arcbound Ravager, Skullclamp, Sundering Titan, the first two Swords, Trinisphere, Darksteel Citadel and Blinkmoth Nexus, Serum Powder, Spire Golem [in old Pauper, more that the decks it was played in were miserable], Mycosynth Lattice, Aether Vial, Chittering Rats, Death Cloud, Reshape, Echoing Truth - are miserable to play against and beyond those the set doesn't have much to offer. It even has the most toxic of the OG Kaldra pieces. I think the only two cards I would be sad to see go if the entire set was wiped are Genesis Chamber and maybe Whispersilk Cloak.
The set and story might have both been lackluster, but I still say the Journey into Nyx trailer is the best trailer Wizards have ever done. Go watch it on UA-cam. The part at the end where Erebos is like "Resign yourself to your glorious fate. I am coming... to claim my prize." gives me chills every fucking time. Such a great trailer.
As a young player with little money, Urza made me zone put of Magic. Those cards were so powerful that all my hard earned cards were now so underpowered that I lost all the time to players with access to the new stuff.
The Urza's bannings caused the most ire with Memory Jar in Urza's Legacy. It was banned inside the first month of release, while many stores and players were still opening product, sometimes getting a useless banned card as a rare. WotC issued an offer to exchange Legacy boosters for Memory Jars, which may be why Rosewater and friends got that ultimatum.
Kamigawa felt like a kneejerk reaction to try and drag L5R players back to MTG. L5R was going through a popular period at that time. It's adds in scry magazine took punches at MTG. It also portrayed the mythological Japanese theme in a more interesting way. Anyways, that's all I remember about Kamigawa. Desperately trying to get L5R players back to MTG.
It makes me wonder if the clamoring for going back to Kamigawa was mostly players who didn't play it the first time. Sort of like how the clamoring to play WoW classic seemed to come from those who missed it the first time. I mean I didn't play Kamig either but that's because I was all in on L5R instead.
Ah, Kamigawa. I started my Magic journey with Champions and as I only ever played kitchen table casual, for years I refused to play any card that wasn't from the Kamigawa Block. At high I had at least a dozen different Kamigawa Decks. The green black preconstructed Spirit deck was my first deck ever. Until today I love my Samurais, my Orochi and green black soulshift. And I still try to bring out the Unspeakable some times.
Neon Dynasty was the heaviest punch WotC could ever deal to me. Not only didn't they return to the Kamigawa I love, they made it nearly impossible to ever do so. In the means of flavour all the medieval shinto-budhistic charme has vanished. I'm heavy into cyberpunkt and would have loved Neon Dynasty, if only it would've taken place on any other plane. And mechanically the - in my very own opinion - best things from Kamigawa are lost, too. No more bushido, soulshift and arcane splicing. All these mechanics could've profited greatly from new, slightly better cards. But with Kamigawa changed to Neon Dynasty, it will never happen. Broke my heart somehow and continues breaking it whenever I think about it.
I’m stunned that Fallen Empires isn’t on this list, much less not number one.
10 months later and I’m still stunned Fallen Empires isn’t on the list.
When I was a dumb kid (instead of the dumb adult I am now) I kinda enjoyed Homelands, but mainly for the fact that the world of the set felt more interconnected than in previous sets. Cards/characters referenced each other a lot, you had the whole Sengir estate (with its own carriage, gate, bats and crazy granny), Chandler + Joven and his tools, and I might've had a little crush on Autumn Willow('s card). Early hexproof! But yeah, it was SO BAD.
I really loved how the characters were quoted on each other's cards and how, as you say, interconnected it all was. I really wanted to play a lot of the cards when they came out but even then we knew they were bad and my super casual terrible self even figured that out.
I love that forgetting the stat line of the sheep just proves your point lol
When Chronicles released, we had a MASSIVE local panic and sell-off among many of the die-hard players who had been playing since Beta/Unlimited. Like an absolute fool, I sold into that panic. The cards I sold then would buy a house now, full stop. Did I mention "absolute fool?" But at the time I was convinced the fad was over, the market was doomed, and I would never play Magic again. Here I am, 25 years later, telling this sad tale as I get ready to build a new Propser Commander deck tonight after work.
That's fair there were a lot of knee jerk reactions back then like the reserve list that basically makes it impossible for younger players to play eternal formats.
Fallen Empires and then Ice Age made me quit magic. I just came back to it this year.
To those who weren't around when Chronicles released: That set was so bad, when I tried to buy boosters, the guy behind the counter told me not to.
I remember buying a pack of homelands for 2 bucks when it was in standard and I didn't really know how to play.
Kamigawa was awful. I had a shop during this block and nearly went out of business due to how it was received. Tge drafters wanted to play the core set. Thank God for Rav.
Mirrodin was considered a game killer because of the power level and equipment etc etc etc, lorwyn for the introduction of planeswalkers, scars of mirrodin block for introducing the infect mechanic, zendikar rising block (cant remember which exact set off the top of my head) for eldrazi winter, modern Masters for breaking the "spirit of the reserve list", modern horizons for printing cards specifically to change or ruin depending on who you ask the older formats of the game, Eldritch moon for the fuse cards. Magic players are bonkers
I traded a voice of resurgence token for a voice of resurgence for my modern zoo deck during Dragon’s Maze. Good times, good times.
The only times magic was in danger of getting killed was Chronicles and Fallen Empires as far as I'm aware, but that wasn't because of what players thought, it was because of marketing.
For me personally Eight Edition followed by the Mirrodin and Kamigawa blocks is when I completely lost interest. The card design was very unappealing in the early stages of the new design, standard was a joke, the card economy made no sense where all the value of the sets was in less than 5 cards. It took me all the way until Zendikar release to be interested in Magic again, that's how bad those blocks were in my experience.
My memory is like a fog when it comes to trying to remember what's in Journey into Nyx. Except for silence the believers, I think
I disagree in a few small ways:
- Journey into Nyx was a fine set. The constellation mechanic was great, and there were a decent number of tournament cards. Born of the Gods was the clunker. It had Courser of Kruphix and not much else. Inspired and Tribute were very meh mechanics. People were angry that we had to wait until the last set to get an "enchantment matters" mechanic.
- Saviors of Kamigawa is the real culprit. Champions and Betrayers had some good cards, like Top and Jitte. Many people also loved the CCC and CCB draft formats. Saviors gave us Kataki, Pithing Needle and trash. Sweep was terrible, Channel was forgettable, Epic was interesting but the execution was bad.
- As for Chronicles, if you look back any card reprinted in Chronicles and compare it to its OG printing, the OG cards are worth much much more. The prices may have tanked at the time, but they've all recovered and then some.
Also, I think glossing over how broken Mirrodin (and Darksteel) were is a bit of a disservice, as apparently that timeframe led to a big exodus of players.
Urza's Saga, Chronicles/Fallen Empires/Homelands are the only times in which Magic's existence felt in danger. I was a very new player during Urza's Block, so I didn't experience the problems very much. Still, the block itself represented a design philosophy that, had it continued, would have run Magic into the ground. Chronicles followed by Fallen Empires and HOmelands (roughly) represented two different but concurrent threats. Chronicles in making the bottom drop out of the singles market. (I do think this was kind of a good thing though because the singles market bubble wasn't a good thing) Players felt betrayed by WotC making so many valueable cards worthless. And magic was still young enough where its base wasn't strong enough to support repeats of this. Fallen EMpires and HOmelands were very underpowered and overprinted. Fallen Empires has more good cards than Homelands by a mile, but they're mostly very easy cards to pull from packs. So there was no incentive to buy packs. HOmelands was ever lower powered and for the same reason people didn't want to buy cards.
Regarding Kamigawa block: the sets mechanics were narrow and underbaked. The flavor was amazing and I've met many people who loved the flavor of Kamigawa but disliked the cards. Combine that with the fact that Betrayers gave us Umezawa's Jitte, a card that dominated the post-ravager standard for a loooong time and was mostly boring and terrible to play against and you can see the issue. But nah, it didn't kill magic or come close to it.
Every time I sell a box of Dragon's Maze, I reference this video in my mind and go, "Yup. Still bad."
They reprinted a reserve list card in a FTV box. So there's no reason they can't full on reprint all of them in a vintage master's set.
Kamigawa was not well received, because of the power. They introduced a Pacifism that costed an extra mana, while in Mirrodin spells did not cost mana at all.
Also, Thank you for not including Fallen empires. I really unironically love that set with some really great cards and alternate arts.
🤤😲😲 Fallen Empires pretty much made me quit and I had played since beta
@@hicknopunk I mean, you played for like a year?
@@dreamakuma probably closer to 4. I should have said I stopped buying cards, but I played type 1 after that only. I sold off all my cards except 1 box of decks and good rares. Cripes I had so many 500 count boxes of cards at one point. I also played the win95/98 game as it was basically type 1 on your pc and had the ability to connect to a friend.
@@dreamakuma oh and I am not trying to insult the expansion, I do have a fallen empires draft deck in a 3.5" floppy box 😅
It wasn't a set that killed MTG for me, it was the development of prices that killed it for me. At some point it was not worth it to keep up anymore, in my eyes. now, I just play a draft here and there if I am at my legs and they are one person short.
Regarding Kamagawa, Rosewater said the original set was not well recieved at the time it came out. In the past several years, however, so many players requested it they decided to give it another go.
AFAIK, Kamigawa had a lot design problems (it was underpowered compared to Mirrodin and the upcoming Ravnica, mechanics were too parasitic, and they filled it with artifact-hate cards to try fight affinity) but players LOVED the flavor (it was the first set based on a real-life setting).
Someone didn’t play in the Legion’s pre-release and it shows. A set with all creatures is brutally unfun to play and I promptly quit Magic at that pre-release.
For context, Kamigawa didn't almost kill Magic. Mirrodin Block (specifically the Affinity deck spawned from it) decimated Standard before Kamigawa ever arrived, making sure that whatever followed it would look bad.
Yet Mirrodin was a big upward swing for playerbase head count. You need to realize, Odyssey and Onslaught were a huge (maybe the biggest ever) downward spiral for the game. Mirrodin showed that if a block is flavourful enough, balance issues can be forgiven. Just a shame Wizard's couldn't replicate the Masques formula of fixing the broken block before it with Kamigawa. In Urza's/ Masques standard, the best deck (Rising Waters) was overwhelmingly made up of cards from Masques. This was not the case with Mirrodin/ Kamigawa, not even close
I bought two boxes of Homelands in 2008 because a) it seemed interesting to draft, and b) it was 1/3 of the price of the sets in rotation at the time. Most of the cards went straight into a binder. On current re-sale prices for those cards, I've actually made a decent profit. I did similar for Weatherlight too, but that set has some much nicer cards in it.
I started with RTR, and I thought Blood Baron was awesome when I was a kid. I just loved that it could become a 10/10 flier with crazy abilities, and I immediately loved the whole theme of Ravnica, so I actually enjoyed the whole block.
Mirroden was pure unfiltered shit... They haven't made cards as powerful till this day.. they took away the need for colors, Rosewater should have been fired for it.
Kamigawa wasn't well-received, but the combination of time and ironic fandom made people want to return. Some people in hindsight saw that ninjas were cool and the planes art and themes were actually pretty cool if mechanically done better, and other people were just "lol imagine RETURN TO KAMIGAWA, do it wizards". I don't think there was anything disingenuous about wizards saying people didnt like the set- at the time they didn't, so it took a near total-reinvention of the set to make a return happen.
I actually really like the Chronicles pick for number one, because it's basically singlehandedly responsible for the Reserved List.
In Chronicles’s defense… Magic “investors” and a stupid knee-jerk reaction from a small game company were responsible for the reserve list. I don’t think anyone expected MTG to last 20+ years. Spellfire didn’t survive, Jyhad didn’t survive, Blood Wars didn’t survive
@@iPivo fair point but I think it's also time to look back and say that was a bad choice.
@@skillganon606 it was a "stupid knee-jerk reaction" so, yeah, it was a bad choice.
And every time they double down on this decision it is a bad choice
As someone who started magic when Journey into Nyx was only a week old, It was strange seeing such great sets coming in and out of rotation and at the time not seeing the same enthusiasm for Nyx the same way people enjoyed Theros, RTR or khans. 8 years later it's a little humbling remembering myself always wanting to get a booster box of Nyx and now I would only want buy singles out of it these days. makes me miss the simpler times when I could appreciate the set for what it was. I can't help but still feel tempted to crack some packs for nostalgia's sake
I lowkey feel like some of the worst sets are just mediocre and soulless sets like Zendikar rising and Theros beyond death, especially considering they gave us Thoracle breach and omnath etc
BFZ was probably one of the worse sets imo. Insane power creep, printing dual lands when the previous set had fetches, lottery cards (the start of the bling era, and all the variants we have now). Overall just a mess of a set.
I got into magic with return to ravnica and experienced these bad sets one after another and man today's sets are better but value is lackluster for standard. Powerful yes but value not so much.
1. 100% with you on Chronicles being the worst set for its lasting impact.
2. You are standing too close to your greenscreen and your shaddow is causing a bleed through; you could solve it by standing 12-18" further away or lighting the screen better from either side.
Kind of crazy to think that Theros and RTR standard was maybe "the worst" considering my first FNM was after the release of Khans of Tarkir. I loved the cards in RTR and theros.
"Maybe you love the reserved list because you're a prick" I love you, Vince. Never change! :'D
I know this is 6 months later, but Kenobi revealed he does poop like the rest of us. and that has shattered my image of him. I thought his waste just magically dissipated from him going into the ether. He truly killed the magic.
At release, Chronicles was about $3.00 in California