Graham: Oh, I'm guessing this set has a hand size matters theme! Me: Correct. Graham: So that explains why sweep is a thing, to make your hand bigger. Me: Correct. Graham: ...Sweep still seems bad. Me: Correct!
The trick with Footsteps of the Goryo is you don't care if your Griselbrand attacks, you just want to pay the life to draw the cards. Also Protein Hulk.
I know this video is a year old now, but *in theory* the same is true with Atraxa, Grand Unifier in today's day & age. Recurring her for the card draw is good by itself.
The thing about Glitterfang is that it triggers "cast a Spirit or Arcane spell" abilities every turn for one mana. Very much a synergy card. Also, Oboro Envoy was misprinted. The -X/-0 is only until end of turn, as Graham correctly surmised.
I didnt think of that. I use glitterfang in my mutate deck, i get to re-trigger whichever necessary mutate ability every turn, all while my opponent is trying to deal with my copy after copy of mutated scute swarms
I'm a fan of the white sweep card (for each plains you return to your hand, all your creatures get +1/+1 until end of turn). It has won me quite a few games where I've been able to surprise an opponent by giving my entire army +5 or 6 power.
The "janky, but people did it" play with Footsteps of the Goryo in Modern was to get back Woodfall Primus, so you can blow something up, and then it comes back because of Persist, so you blow something up again. There were other targets in the deck, but I can't recall them at the moment.
Loving that force of habit (or as I might say in my technical life, "common collocations") are leading Graham and others to say "kamigawa neon genesis" more often than you might otherwise expect.
say what you will about Barrel Down Sokenzan, but that thing is a house in a Borborygmos Enraged EDH deck. It basically reads "Destroy target creature, then destroy target player"
@@fearjunkie It has to be my favorite EDH deck I've ever built. It's simple, cheap, and plays a bunch of cards that most people would never play in anything else, like Seek the Horizon.
I long for the day that there is high enough density that I can make a moth tribal deck. But only because I want to say, "And now I'm playing my favorite moth. Tapping for 2BB, and playing Yawgmoth."
The "where's the haste" reaction is what I have every time I see another card from this set, Skyfire Kirin. It lets you Act of Treason a creature, but doesn't untap or give haste to the creature, so it is basically a more complicated "target creature can't block this turn" with sacrifice synergies. Footsteps at least lets you get ETB/LTB value, and access to effects like Griselbrand for cheap.
Graham, this is the block that brought us One With Nothing, so they were definitely printing black cards just to explore design space, even if it meant bad cards in all but the narrowest of circumstances
"Everything here is sort of unsettling" says the man talking about a moth dwarfing clouds in size and it having butt breathing! I don't like when a moth is the size of a quarter and only has the abilities flying and find lights!
Yes, you are correct - the set theme was to have more cards than opponent, which made for a bad game experience (as opposed to, you know, playing your cards and the game)
Taunting Elf was the card name you were searching for, it's a 0/1 elf with a lure effect. The flavor text on that card involves elves learning swear words
When this set came out, one popular thing to do in standard was to sacrifice legendary dragon spirits like Kokusho and Yosei to Greater Good. Not getting to attack with the creature you reanimated wasn't that big a deal.
The original Kamigawa block had some of the most subtle and hard hitting flavor text in the game. I highly recommend going through and looking through it sometime
The Sweep cards are actually a lot better than they seem. Barrel Down Sokenzan deals 4 damage for 3 mana if you return 2 lands. That can be instrumental in limited. I really like these, but it's true that there are more powerful cards out there.
You draft champions/betrayers/ Saviors. Second why do EVERYONE forgets the original dragons Kokusho, Yosey, Keiga not forgetting Ryusei and Jugan death triggers that literally ended games also discard Myojin bring it back remove divinity counter win game I EXPECTED MORE!!! lol I love you
fun fact Oboro Envoy is one of only a few IRL cards with rules text errata changing the nature of the card since importantly the original printing does not say "until end of turn" on its ability. So you could shrink all your opponents creatures powers forever and lock them out of winning via combat damage.
@@Veelofar i mean thats really more fastbond being strong then anything else and valakut theres so many things that do it better then these dumb cards that only return specific types rather then just doing other combos
@@Veelofar i mean tbh i play commander where there is no fast bond and cards like valukat and field of the dead are still busted so its just those cards
Footsteps is actually pretty good outside of Kamigawa. It’s one of my favorite enablers for flayer of the hatebound. Might not be competitive, but it’s a consistent turn three nine damage in my flayer unearth deck.
I could see sweep being good in a deck that uses landfall effects alot, it's a second way to get more landfall triggers without having to draw more lands from your deck.
Yeah, Saviors came from a time where they didn't plan their blocks as well, so they sometimes struggled for a theme for the third set. The first two sets had things like splice, soulshift, ninjutsu, the moonfolk mechanic, etc that meant players had more cards in their hand, so they naturally went with "hand size matters" as the theme for the last set in the block.
yeah, triple champions was a great draft format with one of the first "alternate" draft strategies (it had a viable mill deck based around grabbing as many copies of damping thought as possible) - champions-betrayers-saviors was not
I am sad that the interpretation of a Yuki no Onna (lit. Snow Maiden) is to blow up artifacts and then run away when another spirit shows up. She, in lore, was a human looking creature in the mountains that would lead people to freezing death if they were bad or save them from dying of exposure if they were honorable and pure.
yeah, I dunno. Footsteps of the Goryo doesn't seem like it's that hard to break open. yeah, in limited it seems like it's bad, but just from a kitchen table perspective, it's effectively an extra copy of Fleshbag Maurauder style effects, you can get back Gary, you can get something that sacrifices the body anyway to do it's thing, etc... Or you could get it to get your Kamigawa Dragon back and get it's dies trigger, or you can do the degen thing people are talking about and entomb your Gristlebrand or your Protean Hulk and go to town. Personally, I'd run Footsteps of the Goryo in my Obeka, Brute Chronologist deck because you can end the turn to exile the sac trigger off the stack and thus have made myself... bad Reanimate! Or I could just suck it up and do the same thing with Goryo's Vengeance.
I am actually playing Glitterfang and Yuki-Onna in an Old Kamigawa Spirit Commander Deck. A lot of those old Kamigawacards trigger off casting spirits e.g. Yuki-Onna. So Glitterfang is pretty nice because you can cast it every turn.
used to play a mono black life draining deck with 4 kokusho the evening star and 4 Footsteps of the Goryo fun deck back in the day but there are much more abusable cards to go with it now lol
Strange request, could you pull a pack out of the front or back of the left or right side? I feel like it's always the middle center row. Probably for video purposes but...yeah
I like these but I think the editing template could use an update, such that the card talked about remains on screen until the next card is brought up, thank you.
I use glitterfang with mutate abilities. Its not the most efficient way to use it im sure, but i know i cant mutate onto the human version that really is strictly better
Saviors is one of those limited environments where all the big payoffs incentivize people to not actually play Magic, and I think earnestly it's a major reason OG Kamigawa gets unfairly maligned. Triple Champions as a limited environment was rad, but Betrayers didn't make it better and Saviors actively made it worse. But Champions is exactly the kind of rock-em-sock-em-robots weirdo battlecruiser Magic I love.
I played during Kamigawa, and Sweep was still horrible. Some of the Soratami abilities were useful, because you could use them as much or as little as you needed, and they were normally pretty cheap (other than the pickup a land effect), but Sweep wasn't really put onto any game winning cards, so going down 3 or 4 lands was a lot of pain for nothing. Sweep did get rather disgusting later, when you could pair it with Landfall and similar effects, though.
glitterfang is actually superior to ronin in regards to Mutate creatures because ronin is a human and bouncing at end of turn lets you reuse the mutate every turn
Would sweep be more viable if there were basics in this set that had: 'You my play a second land this turn. All land played this turn after the first enter the battlefield tapped.'
Jesus christ the cards are baaaad. 1/1 with haste you return to hand? Literally worse than raging goblin. 3 mana 2/1 flying? 3 mana 0/1? Terrible unsummon? Jeez
Glitterfang was actually better than it looks. There were a lot of cards in the set that cared about you casting Spirit spells, so bouncing to your hand every turn and only costing 1 mana was actually a pretty big upside. With that said, the format was still very weak overall.
@@DimT670 You don't have to attack with it if you don't want to. It's definitely not great or even good, but it can have a place in the right deck (like how the Ronin can sometimes just trigger your artifact synergies every turn, even if it doesn't want to attack).
God i hate magic cards that use real non English words so much. Destroys any magic feeling for me. I mean come on. Yukki onna? Since when are real ass japanese part of a magic plane?
Since original kamigawa, back in like 2004. You have to understand, it was a different time, this was the first modern set to try and integrate a real-life culture into a completely new plane.
@@ToxicAtom no it wasn't. Arabian nights, portal three kingdoms etc etc, as well as all the cultural elements in sets such as kamigawa, jamura for example, or the kjeldons. What you are saying is just not correct
@@MetallicMutalisk correct; I do mean "modern" as in using the modern card frame. I make this distinction because before that, they put very little thought into worldbuilding outside of dominaria. Stuff like Rabiah from Arabian Nights didn't really try to blend a real culture with a magic setting the way they tried with Kamigawa. Instead, those planes were just straight up transplanting concepts from those cultures into game peices, with little thought being put into the lore that bridges the gap.
Graham: Oh, I'm guessing this set has a hand size matters theme!
Me: Correct.
Graham: So that explains why sweep is a thing, to make your hand bigger.
Me: Correct.
Graham: ...Sweep still seems bad.
Me: Correct!
The "joke" with Footsteps of the Goryo is Protean Hulk, if anyone was wondering
I'm a Tim R.! I didn't send the pack, but I am one.
You are a pack?
Same on both accounts!
heh
I’m not a Tim R., but a Tim I are…. am.. I are one.. arrrr.
The trick with Footsteps of the Goryo is you don't care if your Griselbrand attacks, you just want to pay the life to draw the cards. Also Protein Hulk.
I know this video is a year old now, but *in theory* the same is true with Atraxa, Grand Unifier in today's day & age. Recurring her for the card draw is good by itself.
The thing about Glitterfang is that it triggers "cast a Spirit or Arcane spell" abilities every turn for one mana. Very much a synergy card.
Also, Oboro Envoy was misprinted. The -X/-0 is only until end of turn, as Graham correctly surmised.
I didnt think of that. I use glitterfang in my mutate deck, i get to re-trigger whichever necessary mutate ability every turn, all while my opponent is trying to deal with my copy after copy of mutated scute swarms
I ran it in early Purphoros, as a repeatable source of damage.
ITS THAT PERSON WHO MAKES THE FUNNY THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE ITS AN HONOR
@@thoop6795 Happy to be of service!
I'm a fan of the white sweep card (for each plains you return to your hand, all your creatures get +1/+1 until end of turn). It has won me quite a few games where I've been able to surprise an opponent by giving my entire army +5 or 6 power.
The "janky, but people did it" play with Footsteps of the Goryo in Modern was to get back Woodfall Primus, so you can blow something up, and then it comes back because of Persist, so you blow something up again. There were other targets in the deck, but I can't recall them at the moment.
Loving that force of habit (or as I might say in my technical life, "common collocations") are leading Graham and others to say "kamigawa neon genesis" more often than you might otherwise expect.
say what you will about Barrel Down Sokenzan, but that thing is a house in a Borborygmos Enraged EDH deck. It basically reads "Destroy target creature, then destroy target player"
Woooof, that interaction sounds *insane*!
Damn, I may need to build Borborygmos Enraged just so I can do this.
@@fearjunkie It has to be my favorite EDH deck I've ever built. It's simple, cheap, and plays a bunch of cards that most people would never play in anything else, like Seek the Horizon.
I think Footsteps of the Goryo was supposed to go with the kamigawa dragon cycle that had on death effects.
I long for the day that there is high enough density that I can make a moth tribal deck. But only because I want to say, "And now I'm playing my favorite moth. Tapping for 2BB, and playing Yawgmoth."
The "where's the haste" reaction is what I have every time I see another card from this set, Skyfire Kirin. It lets you Act of Treason a creature, but doesn't untap or give haste to the creature, so it is basically a more complicated "target creature can't block this turn" with sacrifice synergies. Footsteps at least lets you get ETB/LTB value, and access to effects like Griselbrand for cheap.
Graham, this is the block that brought us One With Nothing, so they were definitely printing black cards just to explore design space, even if it meant bad cards in all but the narrowest of circumstances
Oh yeah, Shinen of Life's Roar was an MVP in one of my earliest decks, where I suited it up with a Blanchwood Armor and kill some blockers.
"Everything here is sort of unsettling" says the man talking about a moth dwarfing clouds in size and it having butt breathing! I don't like when a moth is the size of a quarter and only has the abilities flying and find lights!
Yes, you are correct - the set theme was to have more cards than opponent, which made for a bad game experience (as opposed to, you know, playing your cards and the game)
Sweep mid game + Landfall = whomp.
Taunting Elf was the card name you were searching for, it's a 0/1 elf with a lure effect. The flavor text on that card involves elves learning swear words
Possibly Elvish Bard, which was a 2/4 with the same mechanic.
Champions is the Torii gate, because as the first set it's the gateway to the block.
If this set were an album it would definite get called "conceptual"
Reki is one of my favourite commanders! Great buildaround
When this set came out, one popular thing to do in standard was to sacrifice legendary dragon spirits like Kokusho and Yosei to Greater Good. Not getting to attack with the creature you reanimated wasn't that big a deal.
Where's your mnemonic Graham, now you'll forever get Champions and Saviours of Kamigawa confused.
The original Kamigawa block had some of the most subtle and hard hitting flavor text in the game. I highly recommend going through and looking through it sometime
Oh wow. That lure spirit seems amazing in multiplayer since it's not "target creature you control".
The Sweep cards are actually a lot better than they seem. Barrel Down Sokenzan deals 4 damage for 3 mana if you return 2 lands. That can be instrumental in limited. I really like these, but it's true that there are more powerful cards out there.
You keep crackin' 'em, I'll keep watchin' 'em! Thanks G.
“Sorry, I’ve been watching a lot of curling recently” is very Canadian
foots steps of the goryo an ashen rider, exile 2 permanents for 1 card. worth. If you can flicker it before it dies, even better.
2:22 It was consider a bad block for a reason, Graham.
You draft champions/betrayers/ Saviors. Second why do EVERYONE forgets the original dragons Kokusho, Yosey, Keiga not forgetting Ryusei and Jugan death triggers that literally ended games also discard Myojin bring it back remove divinity counter win game I EXPECTED MORE!!! lol I love you
fun fact Oboro Envoy is one of only a few IRL cards with rules text errata changing the nature of the card since importantly the original printing does not say "until end of turn" on its ability. So you could shrink all your opponents creatures powers forever and lock them out of winning via combat damage.
Graham: I hate sweep.
Me: Same. Do you know how many degenerate combos that mechanic enables? Woof. Same page.
Graham: It’s bad.
Me: Different page.
wait like what
it enables fastbond combos really easily, Valakut + any number of things that mass puts lands in play. General shenaniganery.
@@Veelofar i mean thats really more fastbond being strong then anything else and valakut theres so many things that do it better then these dumb cards that only return specific types rather then just doing other combos
@@donb7519 I will admit the possibility that it may just be my playgroup
@@Veelofar i mean tbh i play commander where there is no fast bond and cards like valukat and field of the dead are still busted so its just those cards
"I've been watching a lot of curling" - it's OK, Graham, you're a Canadian in the time of the Winter Olympics, we know
Footsteps of the Goryo: it's called the Aristocrats.
I suggest targeting your Griselbrand with Footsteps of the Goryo, draw a bunch of cards, and cast Burnt Offering.
thanks for the video. these crack a packs are some of the highlights of my week.
Footsteps is actually pretty good outside of Kamigawa. It’s one of my favorite enablers for flayer of the hatebound. Might not be competitive, but it’s a consistent turn three nine damage in my flayer unearth deck.
Heck yeah new crack a pack
I could see sweep being good in a deck that uses landfall effects alot, it's a second way to get more landfall triggers without having to draw more lands from your deck.
The moonfolk from this block were amazing for doing this too.
Footsteps of the Goryo did not forget a sentence. Oboro Envoy did forget the clause "until end of turn".
I feel like Footsteps of the Goryo is also pretty good when you have return to hand effects.
Yeah, Saviors came from a time where they didn't plan their blocks as well, so they sometimes struggled for a theme for the third set. The first two sets had things like splice, soulshift, ninjutsu, the moonfolk mechanic, etc that meant players had more cards in their hand, so they naturally went with "hand size matters" as the theme for the last set in the block.
yeah, triple champions was a great draft format with one of the first "alternate" draft strategies (it had a viable mill deck based around grabbing as many copies of damping thought as possible) - champions-betrayers-saviors was not
@@tinaun Yeah, the full block drafts where almost always bad.
Watching a lot of curling? So you opened a lot of collector boosters?
hehe. I get it.
I am sad that the interpretation of a Yuki no Onna (lit. Snow Maiden) is to blow up artifacts and then run away when another spirit shows up. She, in lore, was a human looking creature in the mountains that would lead people to freezing death if they were bad or save them from dying of exposure if they were honorable and pure.
It's an expensive reanimate, but it's still a reanimate, with no restriction on what it can grab
Damn forcing someone to block your creature with all of their capable ones is good especially if your creature has death touch, ouch!
You know he's Canadian by the fact he watches curling. :P
yeah, I dunno. Footsteps of the Goryo doesn't seem like it's that hard to break open. yeah, in limited it seems like it's bad, but just from a kitchen table perspective, it's effectively an extra copy of Fleshbag Maurauder style effects, you can get back Gary, you can get something that sacrifices the body anyway to do it's thing, etc... Or you could get it to get your Kamigawa Dragon back and get it's dies trigger, or you can do the degen thing people are talking about and entomb your Gristlebrand or your Protean Hulk and go to town.
Personally, I'd run Footsteps of the Goryo in my Obeka, Brute Chronologist deck because you can end the turn to exile the sac trigger off the stack and thus have made myself... bad Reanimate! Or I could just suck it up and do the same thing with Goryo's Vengeance.
Champions at the gate
Betrayer's Shuriken
Saviors light the way
I am actually playing Glitterfang and Yuki-Onna in an Old Kamigawa Spirit Commander Deck. A lot of those old Kamigawacards trigger off casting spirits e.g. Yuki-Onna. So Glitterfang is pretty nice because you can cast it every turn.
I would take Glitterfang as its a one drop hast creature. I use as a one drop for my R/W spirit deck.
Don't ever call me or my regulars irregular
used to play a mono black life draining deck with 4 kokusho the evening star and 4 Footsteps of the Goryo fun deck back in the day but there are much more abusable cards to go with it now lol
Engagement for the engagement god!
Descendant of Doramaro is actually pretty okay in a casual Narset deck i think
Strange request, could you pull a pack out of the front or back of the left or right side? I feel like it's always the middle center row. Probably for video purposes but...yeah
“There’s a card from… neon genesis”
I mean Gush is basically unkeyworded sweep for 2 and is vintage restricted isn't it?
No, Gush is restricted because the island bouncing makes the card _free_ rather than giving it a shitty scaling effect.
That red sweep card would go well with Toralf
"This moth has butt breathing". Alright
I like these but I think the editing template could use an update, such that the card talked about remains on screen until the next card is brought up, thank you.
I use glitterfang with mutate abilities. Its not the most efficient way to use it im sure, but i know i cant mutate onto the human version that really is strictly better
Did you even realize you called the new set Neon Genesis? 😁
I would take the Death Denied, bring back 2-3 creatures on OP's end phase.
Repeatable Reorder is good with new hidegatsu and new omnath and other commander stuff
algorithmic punch!
Saviors is one of those limited environments where all the big payoffs incentivize people to not actually play Magic, and I think earnestly it's a major reason OG Kamigawa gets unfairly maligned. Triple Champions as a limited environment was rad, but Betrayers didn't make it better and Saviors actively made it worse. But Champions is exactly the kind of rock-em-sock-em-robots weirdo battlecruiser Magic I love.
Gnat miser doesn't say until end of turn...
I also thought Sweep was just terrible & realized this set had a hand size mechanic at the same time as Graham.
I played during Kamigawa, and Sweep was still horrible. Some of the Soratami abilities were useful, because you could use them as much or as little as you needed, and they were normally pretty cheap (other than the pickup a land effect), but Sweep wasn't really put onto any game winning cards, so going down 3 or 4 lands was a lot of pain for nothing.
Sweep did get rather disgusting later, when you could pair it with Landfall and similar effects, though.
@@boosterh1113 Sweep all of your lands, Wrenn and Seven 0, bask in glory as you figure out how to stack your 431 landfall triggers
Rare drafting lol
If I’m not mistaken, there were at least a couple ways to remove your max hand size.
6:00 a great example of Power Creep.
No, something being blatantly stronger than unplayable garbage is definetly not powercreep.
ther's like only 4 cards with sweep, why'd they bother?
Crack! A! Pack!
The subtitle of this show is packs aren't worth the money
glitterfang is actually superior to ronin in regards to Mutate creatures because ronin is a human and bouncing at end of turn lets you reuse the mutate every turn
It also (more relevant to its own time) triggered all of those "whenever you cast a Spirit or Arcane spell" that you can see on Yuki Onna.
Not if your a Zombie
Would sweep be more viable if there were basics in this set that had: 'You my play a second land this turn. All land played this turn after the first enter the battlefield tapped.'
Yes, but also that sounds incredibly busted overall to make a bad mechanic better
Saviors was crazy underpowered even for the time. The shinen was prolly the best pick followed by the barrel down. Truly a bad pack in a gimped set.
Jesus christ the cards are baaaad. 1/1 with haste you return to hand? Literally worse than raging goblin. 3 mana 2/1 flying? 3 mana 0/1? Terrible unsummon?
Jeez
Glitterfang was actually better than it looks. There were a lot of cards in the set that cared about you casting Spirit spells, so bouncing to your hand every turn and only costing 1 mana was actually a pretty big upside.
With that said, the format was still very weak overall.
@@ladsworld it's still a worse raging goblin. Also it won't return to your hand because it will die since its a 1/1 with no evasio
@@DimT670 You don't have to attack with it if you don't want to. It's definitely not great or even good, but it can have a place in the right deck (like how the Ronin can sometimes just trigger your artifact synergies every turn, even if it doesn't want to attack).
@@DimT670 you're not attacking with it. it's purely an engine.
God i hate magic cards that use real non English words so much. Destroys any magic feeling for me. I mean come on. Yukki onna? Since when are real ass japanese part of a magic plane?
Since original kamigawa, back in like 2004. You have to understand, it was a different time, this was the first modern set to try and integrate a real-life culture into a completely new plane.
@@ToxicAtom no it wasn't. Arabian nights, portal three kingdoms etc etc, as well as all the cultural elements in sets such as kamigawa, jamura for example, or the kjeldons.
What you are saying is just not correct
@@DimT670 none of those are "modern" sets
@@MetallicMutalisk correct; I do mean "modern" as in using the modern card frame. I make this distinction because before that, they put very little thought into worldbuilding outside of dominaria. Stuff like Rabiah from Arabian Nights didn't really try to blend a real culture with a magic setting the way they tried with Kamigawa. Instead, those planes were just straight up transplanting concepts from those cultures into game peices, with little thought being put into the lore that bridges the gap.
Wow, Eldraine must have been a nightmare for you.
I mean, like, in a different way to how it was a nightmare for Constructed players.