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Feels weird going from Cimoo having a firm understanding of these cards with only playing one or two games, then going to Rarran who stares at every card like it's an Egyptian hieroglyphic despite reaching mythic in Arena
I’m pretty sure rarran got diamond in master duel and he still barely understands basic rules of yugioh. That’s one thing about the online simulators. They really are playing most of the game for you, people pretend like choosing the card is the only part of “playing” the card game but generally in the past you had to understand the rules of the game relatively well too. Unless you were playing “playground” card games where kids just make up the rules anyways.
@SDREHXC he also played MTG in paper on CGB's show, but i understand him not getting ygo, you only really need to know how to play YOUR deck and he has already stated he does not like the gameplay
Old Yu-Gi-Oh plays VERY similar to Magic to the point the resource system isn't the biggest difference between the 2 games but the way combat with creatures works
Evaluating lands is really difficult if you're not used to playing with them. The main thing with activated abilities like the one on Ramunap Ruins is that it's pure upside. It's kind of like you're getting a land that draws you a spell when you play it. And yes, it's a 4 mana spell that deals 2 damage, which is really bad, but it's not actually a card in your deck! You just get it for free when you play your land for turn! A Mountain never gives you a free spell, it's just a Mountain!
A hearthstone pov might be "replace your hero power with one that deals 2 damage but burns a mana crystal" Like, once the effect is at its best, you don't mind that cost. Who cares if I'm a land down? My curve ends at 4 or 5. Who cares if i burn my tenth mana crystal? I get it back next turn
most nonbasic lands come in tapped in exchange for having other abilities (or even more detrimental downsides, like lifepay, bouncing another land, or paying mana). Ramunap comes in untapped, and even costs no life at times.
@@yeturs69420I mean to account for the starting life differences it would be 3 damage, but even then it's not really equivalent because burn in HS and Magic works very different due to how combat works. Hearthstone aggro is creature based because A) There's no blocking aside from taunts and B) There are just a lot fewer spells that go face.
@retronymph I'm not saying it's perfect, it's just a way to look at it to help a hearthstone player understand the hidden power of it. Idk, opinions will differ.
Fun Fact for Rarran that he's not gonna read: the Wild Nacatl Zoo Decks were the original Zoo decks. They were called that because many creatures, like the Nacatl, were animals. Any later Zoo decks, including in Hearthstone, borrowed the term, even if they weren't all that beasty.
Yah in MtG it was Savannah Lion, Birds of Paradise, Kird Ape, and Serendib Efreet that made up the original Zoo decks, hence the name. Bertrand Lestree got 2nd. place at Worlds in 1994 playing it. By 1996, cards like Gorilla Shaman, Dandân, Electric Eel, Giant Shark, and Gorilla Tactics were being used, further cementing the theme.
That's true at all, i've read about Zoo decks since the original Ravnica came out (shoutout to my boy, Giant Solifuge) and I'm sure they existed before, thanks to Kird Ape.
Also that for most cards that come out of the block that nacatl came out of, it's assumed that there are popular three colour decks for cards in them to find a home in. Not sure if rarran understood that people would put basic mountains, plains and forests into the same deck.
The thing about ramunap is that its a land. At the time lands didn't do repeatable damage i don't think. It got rid of red's flaws od running out of stuff to do
Plus it's 2 damage. Off a LAND. It doesn't matter if they flood, they can just burn a land and kill you! Can't run them out of burn or tear apart their hand if they can just pop lands and kill you, no interaction possible!
Yep, a majority of red aggro decks lose if they flood out so being able to sac lands for damage does solve one of their biggest issues. Also CGB missed the notes that Ramunap Red had the highest win rate in Standard at that time. Lastly Ranunap Ruins still shows up a decent amount in red aggro decks in Pioneer/Explorer for the same reason, being able to turn mana flood into 2 or 4 damage can absolutely win the game.
The ban was more or less just leading to the deck having a clear weakness at having the reach to end games. Basically just a power level ban, and not just to murder the deck outright like some other card games go ham with their ban lists. Plus let's be honest most player don't want to see mono red being king for over half a year of standard.
I think an important part of Caw Blade (the jace deck) was that more than just being 70% of a pro tour it was 15 out of the top 16 in that tournament, and 100% of the top 8
And the deck got copy+pasted into Extended and was also 100% of the top 8 in every event _for years._ Not only was it dominating Standard, it destroyed Extended when WotC refused to do a ban. That meant not only was it beating every deck from two years of Standard, it was beating every deck for the four years it was legal before cycling out.
About Juggernaut: Something important to know about early Magic is that not only were creatures crap. They were *overrated* by Wizards. 5 power for 4 mana was a sin. They were TERRIFIED of games ending "fast" because creatures attacked you and you couldn't keep up. But you know, one-mana removal, four-mana mass removal, and undercosted tutors and draw was fine.
@@rosenbloody That's not being proven right, though. That's increasing the creature curve until it fits the old spells because everything's for an eternal format now.
@@fernandobanda5734 There's a difference between increasing power levels until they fit and increasing them until they exceed. We've gone way past the former (remember original affinity, a deck that had a strong showing even in type 1.5 where removal was cheap as hell), and hard into the latter (Grief, Ragavan, and the myriad 1-2cmc green creatures that straight up shut out cspells and removal options say hi)
@@Darkrocmon Ah yes, the fear of permanent value inevitably pushing game pace was not realized and didn't prove to be a disastrous overreach that ended with a powerlevel ban in VINTAGE. That must be why they're printing new spells that are as good if not better than old school removal staples. Yeah, creatures definitely got power crept to a level that only "kept up" with other spells and not completely thrash them. Just to be sure, I'm going to point out that this is sarcasm. They had good reason to be terrified of games ending fast, that's just how the math worked out. Hell we already saw signs of that as far back as Urza block, arguably even further since Sligh was the block before iirc.
Kind of annoying how there’s often context or knowledge missing from these cards, yet they are spoken confidently about. Agent of Treachery, for example, was mostly a casualty of Winota, not Transmogrify. They did worry about people using Tibalt’s Trickery on their own spells, which is why it mills so you can’t set the top of your deck. There definitely was a 0 mana spell (Stonecoil Serpent) in standard at the time, but they didn’t expect people would so drastically warp their deck around the combo. The fate seal + on Jace absolutely was used, and you knew the game was over if they kept whatever it was on top of your deck.
Talking about a Transmogrify + Fires deck is much more representative of how Agent was played just prior to its banning than anything to do with Winota. Sure, it's missing some of the other key players like Lukka and Yorion, but between a plain sorcery and a planeswalker with a bunch of irrelevant text, any UA-cam creator is going to pick the former when providing the key context you complain is missing. Winota was not-quite-a-joke compared to the Yorion/Lukka/Fires piles that were the latest thing making Standard a total dumpster fire, after Field of the Dead got hit (which was the OG deck for powering out Agent to break the mirror), and Oko came and went.
IIrc Lukka was the culprit for Agent ban. Winota was an aggro deck so why would it go for unfair durdling when Blade Historian just kills them on the spot?
Yeah, the context is often missing. Bannings depend on context and are worthless without them; it is very rare that a card is *so* broken that it doesn't need context to be banned (and then it's mostly a QC/testing issue)
Yeah, the Jace part kind of surprised me, i didn't even play at the time and the part about him i always heard about was the Fate Sealing +2 part being the most abnoxious part, kinda like a 1 card "lantern control" engine; not as good ofc, but good enough since you only need to invest one card to do that, and it does so much more than just Fate Sealing if you need him to.
"The energy cards weren't busted" is a hell of a claim to make. Give me a second, I have to have flashbacks to Aetherworks Marvel spinning into Newlamog or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
In fairness, he was talking about what was around at the time Attune with Aether was banned. By then, Aetherworks Marvel had already been banned for several months.
@imaginarycreatures9760 You probably remember the ban timeline better than I do, I'm constantly sick, so I kinda drop in and out of Magic when I'm well. I thought it was the same ban list for both though.
Energy was obnoxious because they took fairly costed cards that would have seen play as is and then stapled "you get 2 energy" on them. It was just free value for no sacrifice. It really felt like you either play energy or you're playing objectively wrong.
Feels like CGB didn't give enough credit to ramunap ruins/didn't explain in it well enough. The 2 dmg seems like not a lot, but it comes basically attached to a mountain ( 1 dmg to face for colored mana is irrelevant in a hyper aggro unless it s a mirror). Mono red burns often run shock effects that go to to the face and having a shock for 4 mana on a mountain is bascially if you had shock as your companion and we all know how good those are.
yea also that 2 dmg is 10% of someone's life total, so if mono red only needs to do 90% of the work and then throw a land at the opponents face it can significantly boost the win rate
He absolutely did not. Played a ton during that standard and ruins was such a messed up card in that deck. If was full of incidental damage already and having it stapled to a land, something your deck already needs, pushed that deck from A tier to S tier. Also red was so deep in that format that most other things they could ban (Hazoret aside) could just get replaced by another good red card on curve. Ruins was the only thing without an easy replacement that would actually power down the deck.
"there wasn't anything that said pay 10 energy: win the game" Aetherworks Marvel would like a word! The reasoning behind Feldon's Cane is because it violated the spirit of the restricted list by letting you shuffle cards restricted to 1 back into your deck to draw them again. Of course it still wasn't great because you still had to actually draw them to reuse them, but that was the idea.
The actual ramunap bnr announcement was:"Ramunap ruins adds a lot of 'invisible power' to the deck, often acting as a virtual reduction to the opponent's starting life total. It also provides a high level of inevitability in matchups that go long" Idk what CGB read for the ramunap ruins ban reason, but that definitely wasn't in the official blogpost. Edit: from the same post the most relevant part for attune with aether is "Without Attune with Aether, energy decks will need to make more difficult decisions about how many colors to play and how to structure their mana bases."
yeah imagine hearthstone if you had the extra ability of clicking your mana crystal to explode it for 3 damage, while not taking up a deck slot for it? like a "start of game" effect. that would be played on most aggro
1:03:52 it wasn’t transmogrify… the toxic decks flipping into Agent of Treachery were Winota (and then after Winota got banned quickly) it was Lukka planeswalker… both decks abused this card.
CGB should've brought up Scroll Rack being banned for filling the same purpose in it's deck. The massive difference of course being that Ramunap Ruins just replaced a mountain instead of being a potential dead draw
"There's not some card that says you get 10 energy, you win". Yeah, but there was a card that said "you get 6 energy, you win". It was called Aetherworks Marvel.
The combo of punishing fire + grove of the burnwillows is extremely strong and was the reason it got banned in modern. Once it's online creatures hardly can survive very long.
for tibalts trickery, there were 0 mana spells in standard, tormods crypt and stonecoil serpent were the ones that were played. Day9 was abusing tibalts trickery in standard onstream and probably the reason so many people played it in magic arena. it was banned in modern because of "Throes of chaos" a 4 mana cascade spell which eliminated the fail chance of trickery, because your only nonland card less than throes of chaos was tibalts trickery so it always cascaded into trickery. you would sometimes even in the standard version mulligan down to 3 or even 2 and still basically win games on turn 2-3
Throes did see play a bit in sideboards, but what truly got Trickery banned in modern were Violent Outburst and Ardent Plea, paired with fast mana in the form of Simian Spirit Guide and Gemstone Caverns
So for better context on some of these that CGB didn't explain well. Ramunap ruins added evitability to a deck that was already hard to stop. The deck would often get the opponent low really quick and it made it hard for other decks to stabilize even after a board wipe. Attune energy and Rouge Refiner bans were because energy was really strong during that format. There was pretty much 2 mana kill anything in red and these 2 not only fixed mana because this was a 4 color deck but also added consistency.
Energy also had the critical problem of being a completely uninteractible resource *and* every card that used/produced energy costed the payoffs at "free." There was no meaningful "tax" on energy production, it was just tacked on to basic effects for no real cost. And because there was no way to mess with energy your opponents have accumulated, they could just stockpile it until they got a payoff and then clown all over you.
Rarran was doomed to fail the Ramunap Ruins guess because his only experience with red aggro was mid-2024 where it's hilariously common to overkill by 5-10 damage, instead of fighting tooth and nail for that final 2 life.
Ramunap ruins is such a great card because a mono red deck has every card in its deck do damage to face and lands. Making even the lands deal damage to face makes every card in the deck go faceand makes the deck just so much more consistent.
29:38 According to my store owner, Juggernaut was just a fear ban. Technically it was over the curve for monsters of that time. But with all the crazy stuff you could do back then, there was no reason for it to be banned.
It’s pretty unfair to say that Jace wasn’t good enough for modern, the meta was just too fast when he was unbanned, back then humans, RDW and Tron were the decks to beat. During the same period Jace was in every blue control deck like Czech pile, stoneblade and miracles. I get that CGB doesn’t really play eternal formats but here he totally missed the mark
Jace being to slow does mean he wasn't good enough for modern when they unbanned him. I love Jace and all, but it's the sad truth. I also hate admitting Jund is dead.
He would have definitely seen play in Modern if he had been unbanned multiple years earlier, but by the time he was it was too late. The reason that he was a Legacy staple is because of how less creature-centric Legacy was mainly due to the power of the combo decks that trashed them and the great control tools like Force of Will and Swords.
I think Ramunap is very weird if you're not familiar with how lands play out in MTG. Or if you have a big chip on your shoulder that it was banned instead of Hazoret or Chainwhirler.
@@MainTopmastStaysail I think it's sometimes difficult, when you dont' have a bit of experience with the game, to evaluate how a card is good in aggro/burn decks. Most of those cards look terrible if you look at them in terms of traditional resource advantage (card advantage, mana ramp, trading potential in combat, etc...). In most situations you'd learn that losing lands sets you back in the game progression. You have to be in the mindset of dishing out 20 damage as fast as possible with as few cards as possible to understand how strong this card is.
I honestly just looked at that +2 and figured it was banned purely off of that. Getting to decide what your opponent gets to top deck or not is insane.
@ 1:13:00 cgb you forgot about Grove of the Burnwillows which forces your opponent to gain 1 life in exchange for 1 red mana, which you would use to return one punishing fire, and more if you had more red mana.
JTMS, before Fire Design, was fairly strong even in Legacy. As soon as he hits the board, if your opponent can't finish him, you can always either brainstorm or get negative card selection on your opponent, and eventually you would win.
Jace was even played in vintage back in 2011, the card filtering was just better the more powerful your cards are. The fact that he hasn't destroyed modern just shows how much power creep we've had since 2011.
@@jkllkj12345 Yeah I remember playing 75-card proxy Vintage tournaments back then. A JtMS on turn one off Lotus was practically unbeatable. A lot of games were decided based on countermagic wars trying to stop Jace from hitting. Shops was playing Slash Panther mainboard just to deal with him and punish people who didn't +2.
Rarran, think about Ramunap Ruins like Patches. Normally, your lands *just* tap for mana, so any value you get on top of that is free in a way. When you get totally free value, it can be very good even if it's marginal. On top of that, add that dealing damage to the opponent in a red deck is exactly what you want, and that the downside of paying life doesn't matter (except maybe in an aggro mirror). There are a lot of games where 2-4 damage is all you need, and instead of flooding and losing, with Ramunap you simply win instead.
The best explanation I could find was the Juggernaut / Invisibility “combo” was a thing, where it was unblockable. So opponent died in 4 hits. There was a distinct lack of removal at that time for addressing this (particularly with counter spells to defend). By today’s standards this card is not even playable.
It was definitely Winota and Fires, and both were banned eventually as the real enablers (albeit Winota was banned in Historic/Pioneer). Winota was way more cancerous on the ladder, while Fires was the one actually taking events.
"Until you're out of hawks to cast" - don't worry! If you're insane you can bounce one back to hand! Edit: What was missed on the JTMS conversation was how JTMS and Stoneforge Mystic brutalised Extended for 17 months before Modern became a format, and continued to do so for a month after that before being banned; it was 2010/11, the game was generally slower, and between Ponder, Preordain, Serum Visions all being legal in both formats, you had even more tools to get rid of your "bad" cards with Jace's brainstorm effect... Ponder and Preordain only survived a single month in Modern before being banned.
Maybe a different way to look at Ramunap Ruins is to see it as a "both players start at 18 life" effect with no additional cost (you pay for the mana a few times and your opponent can't really interact with it). Also to Tibalt's trickery: in arena formats, the games were decided on turn 2 or 3 basically always, even if you only win 40% (or what the winrate was) you still finish your daily wins much faster. That is one of the biggest reasons why it was played so much. On arena, it had a fizzle rate (you could hit the enabler-stuff) and our opponent had a chance to kill your payoff. However, in modern... You could play a single copy of trickery, four violent outbursts and four Emrakuls. Violent outburst can ONLY hit trickery and trickery can ONLY hit Emrakul (and it cast, so you get the extra turn trigger). The fizzle rate was close to zero and the deck was actually quite powerfull and consistent IIRC (although disruptible).
30:00 Magic back then hated creatures that could end the game "too quickly". Sorceries and instants comboing off was fine, but a 4 mana creature that could just chunk your opponent in four turns with no downside? Nah, that was too much for 90s Magic.
It is difficult to understand how amazingly good Jace was in standard, even before Squadron Hawk came along later. The set before Jace was printed, Blue was nearly unplayable. The best thing it could do was turn the opponent's land into Islands, because your opponent was sure as hell not playing Blue. After Jace was printed, UW control was a top 2 deck. Jace stared down one of the most powerful, resilient and disruptive aggro/midrange decks of the era (Jund) and Jund blinked. Jace was so good that there was a Jund deck that played Jace in the sideboard. The deck literally could not produce Blue mana on its own, but since Blue decks of the time turned your lands into Islands, they would rely on their opponents to do that and throw out their own Jace (they could also cascade into it). Jace was so good that it made the OTHER legal Jace, a 3 mana planeswalker card, into a must play card for blue decks. This was because, at the time, only one Jace card could be in play. So you'd play your "baby Jace" as it was known to kill your opponent's Jace. This became known as a Jace war. This tactic was so widespread that it eventually led to the reform of the legendary rule to what it is today. Jace was so powerful the rules of the game changed for him! Jace was so good that if a creature was 4 mana or more, it either has to have a powerful come into play effect or have haste to be playable against Blue. Because if it didn't, Jace would -1 it every turn, effectively turning it into a blank piece of card board while they got three turns of free digging and drawing to find an answer. And what Rarran's missing about Jace's +2 is that lands exist in magic, unlike Hearthstone. So Jace would just look to see if you had something threatening on top, and if you did, bottom it so you'd probably draw a land (or at least something the UW player could easily handle).
I kinda get the first one, not because its so powerful the effect is gamechanging, but it is a sleeper value card. On paper its a 4 mana shock, which is atrocious value, but in reality, if you use it on turn 5 its a shock that have given you plus 1 mana value over the course of 5 turns. And in red, that is usually the turn you are looking to close out the game or you likely lose
Also plus one card advantage. You'd have to draw a shock in addition to all the other cards and lands you played by turn 5, this you just have at your disposal at all times.
At the time Jace the Mind Sculptor was dominant you could remove a planeswalker of the same character if you played one. So budget players would run four copies of a DIFFERENT Jace just to kill Mind Sculptor
I remember that, my friend sold his duel decks Jace at the time for like 15 bucks in store credit to our local game shop cause it was the 'cheap' out to Mind Sculptor.
About Punishing fire the banning was because strong repeatable engine with land called Grove of the Burnwillows which you may tap for colorless or green/red and you oponent gains 1 life. So you get your Punishfire back every turn.
Would love to see a video where you show people different kindred commanders, and they have to guess which one is most played according to EDH rec (e.g., here’s 2 different “zombies” commanders, guess which is most popular)
Tibalt's trickery was actually broken in Modern because of 3 mana cascade spells. It had to be banned for power level reasons there. In the other formats it was just banned because it's really annoying for the opponents..
Having played alot at the time, Ramanup ruins was absolutely banned for a good reason. its not that it 'did 2 damage' its that it often did THE LAST 2-4 damage, and there was just...no playable way to really interact with it. one of the core weaknesses of red aggro is running out of stuff, and it was one of several cards in the deck that protected from that. (also it was an uncommon so...less financially damaging to ban than the rare or mythic offenders)
Really think that he undersold how good Jace and Cawblade was. And I definately think back when Modern was fair magic the Jace would have been great. For goodness sakes, people were tapping out to play him in Legacy
The thing about tibalts trickery is that I'm pretty sure wizards were aware you could target your own spell. That's why it mills a random amount first, you can't stack the top of your deck (with cards like jace the mind sculptor) and guarantee your big bomb. They just weren't aware of the all-in stack the entire deck with bombs plan so you almost certainly hit if you cast trickery, which are so stupid because if you fail to cast trickery these decks do nothing.
Tibalt Trickery was such an easy way to get daily wins without any frustration for the person playing the deck. The daily grind of MTGA always gets to me eventually, I want to earn cards, but it just ends up not being fun for me. There were a lot of interesting cards on this list.
Back in Mirrodin I made the mistake of taking charbelcher combo to a nationals and lost nearly 100 places in the DCI rankings to a sea of affinity decks.
there were 0 Mana Spells in Standard when Tibalt´s Trickery got played. Stonecoil Serpent and Tormod´s Crypt. Played against this Card too much so I can´t forget xD
And the worst thing that even when they got their big thing cheated out it was still like 5 turn at least to finish the job. The over the top that got it banned was combo with mizzix´s mastery in historic if I remeber it right.
Ramunap was baned becouse it removed monreds biggest weaknes with it leagal it no longer insta loses when drawing fifth land while costing no spots in the deck.
I'm not sure Rarran ever internalized that Ramunap Ruins can sacrifice itself, so it was effectively a shock you didn't have to draw later (and of course the counterplay.) Attune with Aether was banned because, alongside Aether Hub, the deck was so good at making whatever colors you want that you effectively weren't playing colors. Every deck was everything. Aether Hub without so much free energy was fine overall. Some decks still used hub for a bit of fixing (Tendo Ice Bridge style), but it was fine.
To explain Rarran about Ramunap, imagine you play aggro hunter, but on top of your default hero power, you would have another button that said "pay 5 mana, destroy one mana crystal, deal 3 damages" with no card investment.
I might be wrong or it was just in my little bubble but back in the day Jace saw a lot of play in Legacy. Without the Hawks. On an empty board, the +2 was just horrible to play against. And I lost more than one time to the ultimate.
Regarding ramunap-ruins: Despite CGB trying to make this look like a silly ban: Imagine if 1 of the mountains you draw in your mono red aggro deck had the ability to fling itself at the opponent for 2 damage by spending 5 mana. Can‘t be countered, can‘t be prevented. (In 99.9% of cases) THATS DISGUSTING.
For Tibalt's Trickery you missed Modern, arguably the format it was best in, where you could cascade into a guaranteed Trickery and flip Emrakul on Turn 3. It got banned around the same time they changed the ruling for Valki/Tibalt, shortly before the Uro ban in multiple formats
I disagree that they didn't know people would counter their own thing with tibalt's trickery, if that were true why would it have the mill clause? I think they just thought that was a good enough dissuasion
@gmoney9469 mtg player here, can you elaborate on cowboy? The reason the desert stuff was good was because it cost you basically nothing to put in your deck. You have to play lands, and for a fast aggro deck that land isn't worse than a mountain in any appreciable way. So it's almost like you're playing the same deck but you only have to do 16-18 damage instead of 20 because they can't stop you from popping a couple deserts.
@@FalseHerald Gagaga Cowboy was an easy to make extra deck monster that could be summoned by overlaying any two level 4 monsters, which are the mainline monsters in yugioh, that could ping the opponent directly for 800 damage. So you could attack the opponent’s life points with a bunch of level 4 monsters, and if they barely survived, you could make cowboy and end the game there. Hence cowboy for game. People effectively had 7200 life points instead of 8000 because Cowboy was almost always readily available to summon from the extra deck.
The consternation on rarrans face when he learned that not only was ramunap ruins banned but was the namesake card of the deck is delicious. This is going to be good
I mean modern has/had villanous wealth, which at least used to bob around the 1% mark for a good long while and could at least be considered aspirationally competetive. So the "What deck are you playing?" "Yours, lol"-archetype from HS _is_ a thing in magic
With Rarran's reaction to Feldon's Cane, I wonder how he would feel when he finds out about the RTR Azorius control deck whose only win con was Elixer of Immortality.
I really love these videos but I sometimes wish he would do a better job explaining the good reasons why many cards got banned. They often seem really confused at the reasoning and the vibe that often comes across is "look at this, isn't this stupid?" Instead of learning about magic and what is good and why compared to other card games
I've barely played MTG, but Ramunap looks so good, like if you run no other Desert it's a normal land except it also Shocks the opponent, with like negligible downside, no?
That's quite the understatement on Jace. JtMS was an absolutely dominant card in multiple formats, Standard, Extended and Legacy, and was generally considered one of the strongest cards ever printed. Squadron Hawk wasn't even in Worldwake. Jace's -1 made 4 mana or bigger creatures without ETBs or haste basically unplayable and entirely defined the format and having the same card that's your control and card advantage tool also be a wincon when the game has ground to a halt was very relevant. Getting fatesealed by Jace when you're out of resources and having the card stay on top is an absolutely miserable feeling and means the game is effectively over but it'll take like 7 more turns to finish so yeah, he never ults cause you'd scoop way before that but your opponent doesn't actually need to play anything either when they can just have you draw lands forever. He was something like 70% of the field with 15/16 top decks in big events being CawBlade and warped even deckbuilding to the point people played the 3-mana Jace Beleren to legend-rule him (planeswalker uniqueness rule back then). Yeah Jace didn't do much in Modern... years later when Modern had already sped up a ton and powercreep pushed him out. UW control still played him though. Modern at its inception wasn't much different from today's Standard, I think it's pretty safe to assume he would have been format-defining there as well. I think he's a historically important card and deserved more research from CGB. He also absolutely doesn't belong in a "weirdo bans" episode.
I feel like fetch lands also being in Zendikar standard just added another bit of oomph to JTMS's power, being another way to shuffle away any irrelevant cards in addition to the Hawks
@seandun7083 i guess he mentioned it as being banned but i'm not sure if they talked about the reason (misprint in alpha as 1R instead of 3R and no errata at that time)
I don't understand why it's so hard to get why Ramunap was good. Anyone who has played an aggro burn deck knows the feeling of running out of damage just before killing your opponent. Ramunap is a way to get that extra damage that sits on your board until you need it, and the cost of putting it into your deck is basically nothing. Although, both of these guys are aggro haters lol
When you say that Wizards didn't think of self-targeting with Tibalt's Trickery, I think you're forgetting the random part. The text to mill at random, is there to try and prevent deck-stacking in my opinion. So they tried to discourage people from using on self, but clearly underestimated the hook of gambling! :D Loved the video as always ^^
the fun of having a HS player reviewing JTMS and both players likely see Kibler (one of, if not the cawblade architect) as a member of their respective game community 😂
Agent of Treachery was banned because of Winota Jointer of Forces not transmogrify. It was banned with the Companion rules update which means it was banned shortly after ikoria released
I just don't understand the heavy dislike for Pioneer :( I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but my friends and I like it, and the snide comments against the format makes me think we shouldn't..?
I love playing self-Trickery in non-blue EDH decks because that thrill of “Will I whiff or will I win?” is such a great moment for the table. Last time it got me Llanowar Elves after missing my land drop the turn prior. 🎉
The thing with Ramunep Ruins is that it plays the role of a normal, untapped land, which you have to bring in you deck anyway, and can eventually double as a 2 damage "spell" as a pure bonus in a deck that aims at doing 20 damage as fast as possible before running out of cards. In the deck it was played in, it was basically two cards in one. Even if the second "card" is a bit crappy in isolation, it's a free bonus.
Caw-Blade was a menace. It was *the deck* while legal in standard. The +2 on Jace meant you could put opponents that were behind out of the game. Fetch lands were legal, so the +0 had even more ways to get fresh cards, as well as thinning your deck. The -1 and good removal like Path to Exile dealt with threats efficiently. 4 mana board clear was also legal, and there were good counter spells to control the game. We had went back to Mirrodin, so one of those goofy birds could pick up a sword that untapped all your lands and made the opponent discard a card. That sword was tutored for and could be cheated into play. What a time. Wild Nacatl (my beloved) makes me think of my favorite deck possibly ever, the worlds winning "Naya Lightsaber". What a deck.
I want Rarran to hear about some of the BTE starts from back in the day. T1 nacatl, t2 BTE, BTE, nacatl, goblin guide, swing for 5 with 12 power on board, etc
Ramunap ruins: broken because everyone had to run lands. Belcher: playable because it didn't have to run lands. Mtg's history is fucked up enough rarran forgot both ways.
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You had far too much fun filming that ad lmao
plenty competitive formats out there and pauper is 100% one of them.
Not sure timeless is a quality you want in a watch
Feels weird going from Cimoo having a firm understanding of these cards with only playing one or two games, then going to Rarran who stares at every card like it's an Egyptian hieroglyphic despite reaching mythic in Arena
I’m pretty sure rarran got diamond in master duel and he still barely understands basic rules of yugioh.
That’s one thing about the online simulators. They really are playing most of the game for you, people pretend like choosing the card is the only part of “playing” the card game but generally in the past you had to understand the rules of the game relatively well too. Unless you were playing “playground” card games where kids just make up the rules anyways.
somehow Cimo has a better understanding of Magic than Rarran even though both only have hearthstone knowledge as a resource based card game background
@SDREHXC he also played MTG in paper on CGB's show, but i understand him not getting ygo, you only really need to know how to play YOUR deck and he has already stated he does not like the gameplay
Old Yu-Gi-Oh plays VERY similar to Magic to the point the resource system isn't the biggest difference between the 2 games but the way combat with creatures works
Cimo is a Yu-Gi-Oh player?@@EvanTheNinjaog
During 1990’s we referred to juggernaut as ”conductor” because it was no.1 target for lightning bolts.😂
That's very funny
BOLT the bird
"No pauper... These are competitive, tournament formats"
The pauper fans are coming for you now, CGB
yeah all 12 of them
It's okay, they don't reach his knees.
Not Pauper's fault that WOTC says its a sanctioned format and yet doesnt have tournament support.
Though Pioneer... welcome to the bottom
There goes all his brazilian fans
I honestly really enjoy Pauper as a format. I wish they would add a Pauper ladder to Arena. It's honestly a lot of fun creating Pauper decklists.
Evaluating lands is really difficult if you're not used to playing with them. The main thing with activated abilities like the one on Ramunap Ruins is that it's pure upside. It's kind of like you're getting a land that draws you a spell when you play it. And yes, it's a 4 mana spell that deals 2 damage, which is really bad, but it's not actually a card in your deck! You just get it for free when you play your land for turn! A Mountain never gives you a free spell, it's just a Mountain!
A hearthstone pov might be "replace your hero power with one that deals 2 damage but burns a mana crystal"
Like, once the effect is at its best, you don't mind that cost. Who cares if I'm a land down? My curve ends at 4 or 5. Who cares if i burn my tenth mana crystal? I get it back next turn
Yeah, as a pretty new MTG player myself, I always underestimated mana sinks.
most nonbasic lands come in tapped in exchange for having other abilities (or even more detrimental downsides, like lifepay, bouncing another land, or paying mana). Ramunap comes in untapped, and even costs no life at times.
@@yeturs69420I mean to account for the starting life differences it would be 3 damage, but even then it's not really equivalent because burn in HS and Magic works very different due to how combat works. Hearthstone aggro is creature based because A) There's no blocking aside from taunts and B) There are just a lot fewer spells that go face.
@retronymph I'm not saying it's perfect, it's just a way to look at it to help a hearthstone player understand the hidden power of it. Idk, opinions will differ.
these are my comfort food, sleep aid and favorite second monitor content all at once
Agree wholeheartedly! Lately has been my background noise and helping me pass the day recently. Love these videos
True.
Second monitor content is the most zoomer brain fried dopamina receptor thing I ever heard.
Second monitor content is required when my main monitor is work.
Sounds like you need to stop eating yourself to sleep at your desk.
Fun Fact for Rarran that he's not gonna read: the Wild Nacatl Zoo Decks were the original Zoo decks. They were called that because many creatures, like the Nacatl, were animals. Any later Zoo decks, including in Hearthstone, borrowed the term, even if they weren't all that beasty.
Yah in MtG it was Savannah Lion, Birds of Paradise, Kird Ape, and Serendib Efreet that made up the original Zoo decks, hence the name. Bertrand Lestree got 2nd. place at Worlds in 1994 playing it. By 1996, cards like Gorilla Shaman, Dandân, Electric Eel, Giant Shark, and Gorilla Tactics were being used, further cementing the theme.
That's true at all, i've read about Zoo decks since the original Ravnica came out (shoutout to my boy, Giant Solifuge) and I'm sure they existed before, thanks to Kird Ape.
Also that for most cards that come out of the block that nacatl came out of, it's assumed that there are popular three colour decks for cards in them to find a home in. Not sure if rarran understood that people would put basic mountains, plains and forests into the same deck.
The thing about ramunap is that its a land. At the time lands didn't do repeatable damage i don't think. It got rid of red's flaws od running out of stuff to do
Yeah, EVERY deck needs to include lands, so any smidgen of value you can extract out of them can pretty easily become entirely free.
Plus it's 2 damage. Off a LAND. It doesn't matter if they flood, they can just burn a land and kill you! Can't run them out of burn or tear apart their hand if they can just pop lands and kill you, no interaction possible!
Yep, a majority of red aggro decks lose if they flood out so being able to sac lands for damage does solve one of their biggest issues. Also CGB missed the notes that Ramunap Red had the highest win rate in Standard at that time. Lastly Ranunap Ruins still shows up a decent amount in red aggro decks in Pioneer/Explorer for the same reason, being able to turn mana flood into 2 or 4 damage can absolutely win the game.
The ban was more or less just leading to the deck having a clear weakness at having the reach to end games. Basically just a power level ban, and not just to murder the deck outright like some other card games go ham with their ban lists. Plus let's be honest most player don't want to see mono red being king for over half a year of standard.
Also it doesn't sacrifice itself
Meaning you can repeat that
I think an important part of Caw Blade (the jace deck) was that more than just being 70% of a pro tour it was 15 out of the top 16 in that tournament, and 100% of the top 8
And the deck got copy+pasted into Extended and was also 100% of the top 8 in every event _for years._ Not only was it dominating Standard, it destroyed Extended when WotC refused to do a ban. That meant not only was it beating every deck from two years of Standard, it was beating every deck for the four years it was legal before cycling out.
About Juggernaut: Something important to know about early Magic is that not only were creatures crap. They were *overrated* by Wizards. 5 power for 4 mana was a sin. They were TERRIFIED of games ending "fast" because creatures attacked you and you couldn't keep up. But you know, one-mana removal, four-mana mass removal, and undercosted tutors and draw was fine.
I mean they were inevitably proven right, and had to print 0 mana removal effects with alternative casting costs, better 1cmc removal,
@@rosenbloody That's not being proven right, though. That's increasing the creature curve until it fits the old spells because everything's for an eternal format now.
@@rosenbloodypower creeping creatures to keep up with other spells didn't prove your point.
@@fernandobanda5734 There's a difference between increasing power levels until they fit and increasing them until they exceed. We've gone way past the former (remember original affinity, a deck that had a strong showing even in type 1.5 where removal was cheap as hell), and hard into the latter (Grief, Ragavan, and the myriad 1-2cmc green creatures that straight up shut out cspells and removal options say hi)
@@Darkrocmon Ah yes, the fear of permanent value inevitably pushing game pace was not realized and didn't prove to be a disastrous overreach that ended with a powerlevel ban in VINTAGE. That must be why they're printing new spells that are as good if not better than old school removal staples. Yeah, creatures definitely got power crept to a level that only "kept up" with other spells and not completely thrash them. Just to be sure, I'm going to point out that this is sarcasm.
They had good reason to be terrified of games ending fast, that's just how the math worked out. Hell we already saw signs of that as far back as Urza block, arguably even further since Sligh was the block before iirc.
Kind of annoying how there’s often context or knowledge missing from these cards, yet they are spoken confidently about. Agent of Treachery, for example, was mostly a casualty of Winota, not Transmogrify. They did worry about people using Tibalt’s Trickery on their own spells, which is why it mills so you can’t set the top of your deck. There definitely was a 0 mana spell (Stonecoil Serpent) in standard at the time, but they didn’t expect people would so drastically warp their deck around the combo. The fate seal + on Jace absolutely was used, and you knew the game was over if they kept whatever it was on top of your deck.
Same goes for talking about Punishing Fire without mentioning Grove of the Burnwillows
Talking about a Transmogrify + Fires deck is much more representative of how Agent was played just prior to its banning than anything to do with Winota. Sure, it's missing some of the other key players like Lukka and Yorion, but between a plain sorcery and a planeswalker with a bunch of irrelevant text, any UA-cam creator is going to pick the former when providing the key context you complain is missing. Winota was not-quite-a-joke compared to the Yorion/Lukka/Fires piles that were the latest thing making Standard a total dumpster fire, after Field of the Dead got hit (which was the OG deck for powering out Agent to break the mirror), and Oko came and went.
IIrc Lukka was the culprit for Agent ban. Winota was an aggro deck so why would it go for unfair durdling when Blade Historian just kills them on the spot?
Yeah, the context is often missing. Bannings depend on context and are worthless without them; it is very rare that a card is *so* broken that it doesn't need context to be banned (and then it's mostly a QC/testing issue)
Yeah, the Jace part kind of surprised me, i didn't even play at the time and the part about him i always heard about was the Fate Sealing +2 part being the most abnoxious part, kinda like a 1 card "lantern control" engine; not as good ofc, but good enough since you only need to invest one card to do that, and it does so much more than just Fate Sealing if you need him to.
"The energy cards weren't busted" is a hell of a claim to make. Give me a second, I have to have flashbacks to Aetherworks Marvel spinning into Newlamog or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
In fairness, he was talking about what was around at the time Attune with Aether was banned. By then, Aetherworks Marvel had already been banned for several months.
@imaginarycreatures9760 You probably remember the ban timeline better than I do, I'm constantly sick, so I kinda drop in and out of Magic when I'm well. I thought it was the same ban list for both though.
I think maybe he was thinking in comparison to the mh3 energy cards which are definitely busted.
@surfinggarchomp2820
Mtg design: energy is fine to bring back, right?
Something something ptsd 😅
Energy was obnoxious because they took fairly costed cards that would have seen play as is and then stapled "you get 2 energy" on them. It was just free value for no sacrifice. It really felt like you either play energy or you're playing objectively wrong.
Feels like CGB didn't give enough credit to ramunap ruins/didn't explain in it well enough.
The 2 dmg seems like not a lot, but it comes basically attached to a mountain ( 1 dmg to face for colored mana is irrelevant in a hyper aggro unless it s a mirror).
Mono red burns often run shock effects that go to to the face and having a shock for 4 mana on a mountain is bascially if you had shock as your companion and we all know how good those are.
yea also that 2 dmg is 10% of someone's life total, so if mono red only needs to do 90% of the work and then throw a land at the opponents face it can significantly boost the win rate
He absolutely did not. Played a ton during that standard and ruins was such a messed up card in that deck. If was full of incidental damage already and having it stapled to a land, something your deck already needs, pushed that deck from A tier to S tier. Also red was so deep in that format that most other things they could ban (Hazoret aside) could just get replaced by another good red card on curve. Ruins was the only thing without an easy replacement that would actually power down the deck.
I played that deck that card was insane
@@darksteel913 Exactly. The deck was called Ramunap Red for a reason
@@darksteel913 That's the point, though. Those decks were built as least as much around Hazoret as about this one, if not more.
"there wasn't anything that said pay 10 energy: win the game"
Aetherworks Marvel would like a word!
The reasoning behind Feldon's Cane is because it violated the spirit of the restricted list by letting you shuffle cards restricted to 1 back into your deck to draw them again. Of course it still wasn't great because you still had to actually draw them to reuse them, but that was the idea.
The actual ramunap bnr announcement was:"Ramunap ruins adds a lot of 'invisible power' to the deck, often acting as a virtual reduction to the opponent's starting life total. It also provides a high level of inevitability in matchups that go long"
Idk what CGB read for the ramunap ruins ban reason, but that definitely wasn't in the official blogpost.
Edit: from the same post the most relevant part for attune with aether is "Without Attune with Aether, energy decks will need to make more difficult decisions about how many colors to play and how to structure their mana bases."
yeah imagine hearthstone if you had the extra ability of clicking your mana crystal to explode it for 3 damage, while not taking up a deck slot for it? like a "start of game" effect. that would be played on most aggro
1:03:52 it wasn’t transmogrify… the toxic decks flipping into Agent of Treachery were Winota (and then after Winota got banned quickly) it was Lukka planeswalker… both decks abused this card.
I think rarran didnt get that ramunap ruins can sac itself and doesnt cost a card slot
CGB should've brought up Scroll Rack being banned for filling the same purpose in it's deck. The massive difference of course being that Ramunap Ruins just replaced a mountain instead of being a potential dead draw
"There's not some card that says you get 10 energy, you win".
Yeah, but there was a card that said "you get 6 energy, you win". It was called Aetherworks Marvel.
The combo of punishing fire + grove of the burnwillows is extremely strong and was the reason it got banned in modern. Once it's online creatures hardly can survive very long.
modern bans are have so many dumb picks.
this and lattice lock should not be banned.
And then they printed fury
for tibalts trickery, there were 0 mana spells in standard, tormods crypt and stonecoil serpent were the ones that were played.
Day9 was abusing tibalts trickery in standard onstream and probably the reason so many people played it in magic arena.
it was banned in modern because of "Throes of chaos" a 4 mana cascade spell which eliminated the fail chance of trickery, because your only nonland card less than throes of chaos was tibalts trickery so it always cascaded into trickery.
you would sometimes even in the standard version mulligan down to 3 or even 2 and still basically win games on turn 2-3
Yep, Cascade made Tibalts Trickery 100% consistent, while in Standard it was just a lottery.
Throes did see play a bit in sideboards, but what truly got Trickery banned in modern were Violent Outburst and Ardent Plea, paired with fast mana in the form of Simian Spirit Guide and Gemstone Caverns
@RumpledNutskin yeah i forgot about that
So for better context on some of these that CGB didn't explain well. Ramunap ruins added evitability to a deck that was already hard to stop. The deck would often get the opponent low really quick and it made it hard for other decks to stabilize even after a board wipe. Attune energy and Rouge Refiner bans were because energy was really strong during that format. There was pretty much 2 mana kill anything in red and these 2 not only fixed mana because this was a 4 color deck but also added consistency.
I think it’s very important that it’s on a land which is essentially “free” 2 damage
And the most egregious missing context, Grove of the whatever land that combos with punishing fire. They didnt just rawdog ban a random shock
Energy also had the critical problem of being a completely uninteractible resource *and* every card that used/produced energy costed the payoffs at "free." There was no meaningful "tax" on energy production, it was just tacked on to basic effects for no real cost. And because there was no way to mess with energy your opponents have accumulated, they could just stockpile it until they got a payoff and then clown all over you.
Rarran was doomed to fail the Ramunap Ruins guess because his only experience with red aggro was mid-2024 where it's hilariously common to overkill by 5-10 damage, instead of fighting tooth and nail for that final 2 life.
Ramunap ruins is such a great card because a mono red deck has every card in its deck do damage to face and lands. Making even the lands deal damage to face makes every card in the deck go faceand makes the deck just so much more consistent.
29:38 According to my store owner, Juggernaut was just a fear ban. Technically it was over the curve for monsters of that time. But with all the crazy stuff you could do back then, there was no reason for it to be banned.
Over curve for the time being "this creature has okay/good stats for the cost".
@SpecterVonBaren That's what my store owner said. I've only gotten into magic recently
It’s pretty unfair to say that Jace wasn’t good enough for modern, the meta was just too fast when he was unbanned, back then humans, RDW and Tron were the decks to beat. During the same period Jace was in every blue control deck like Czech pile, stoneblade and miracles. I get that CGB doesn’t really play eternal formats but here he totally missed the mark
Jace being to slow does mean he wasn't good enough for modern when they unbanned him. I love Jace and all, but it's the sad truth. I also hate admitting Jund is dead.
He would have definitely seen play in Modern if he had been unbanned multiple years earlier, but by the time he was it was too late. The reason that he was a Legacy staple is because of how less creature-centric Legacy was mainly due to the power of the combo decks that trashed them and the great control tools like Force of Will and Swords.
Ramunap isn't weird at all! That card is good enough to see play in Pioneer to this day
I think Ramunap is very weird if you're not familiar with how lands play out in MTG. Or if you have a big chip on your shoulder that it was banned instead of Hazoret or Chainwhirler.
@@MainTopmastStaysail I think it's sometimes difficult, when you dont' have a bit of experience with the game, to evaluate how a card is good in aggro/burn decks. Most of those cards look terrible if you look at them in terms of traditional resource advantage (card advantage, mana ramp, trading potential in combat, etc...). In most situations you'd learn that losing lands sets you back in the game progression. You have to be in the mindset of dishing out 20 damage as fast as possible with as few cards as possible to understand how strong this card is.
I’m pretty sure Jace’s +2 was WILDY overpowered
I honestly just looked at that +2 and figured it was banned purely off of that. Getting to decide what your opponent gets to top deck or not is insane.
Yeah they called it the jace lock for a reason
Everything about the card is stupid. Thats just the stupidist part.
@ 1:13:00 cgb you forgot about Grove of the Burnwillows which forces your opponent to gain 1 life in exchange for 1 red mana, which you would use to return one punishing fire, and more if you had more red mana.
JTMS, before Fire Design, was fairly strong even in Legacy. As soon as he hits the board, if your opponent can't finish him, you can always either brainstorm or get negative card selection on your opponent, and eventually you would win.
Jace was even played in vintage back in 2011, the card filtering was just better the more powerful your cards are. The fact that he hasn't destroyed modern just shows how much power creep we've had since 2011.
@@jkllkj12345 Yeah I remember playing 75-card proxy Vintage tournaments back then. A JtMS on turn one off Lotus was practically unbeatable. A lot of games were decided based on countermagic wars trying to stop Jace from hitting. Shops was playing Slash Panther mainboard just to deal with him and punish people who didn't +2.
Punishing Fire is broken because of an untapped Gruul land that can force the opponent to gain life just by tapping it for mana.
Grove of the Burnwillows
Rarran, think about Ramunap Ruins like Patches. Normally, your lands *just* tap for mana, so any value you get on top of that is free in a way. When you get totally free value, it can be very good even if it's marginal. On top of that, add that dealing damage to the opponent in a red deck is exactly what you want, and that the downside of paying life doesn't matter (except maybe in an aggro mirror). There are a lot of games where 2-4 damage is all you need, and instead of flooding and losing, with Ramunap you simply win instead.
The best explanation I could find was the Juggernaut / Invisibility “combo” was a thing, where it was unblockable. So opponent died in 4 hits. There was a distinct lack of removal at that time for addressing this (particularly with counter spells to defend).
By today’s standards this card is not even playable.
I thought Winota was the one that got Agent banned. Tough that period ramp was discusting so Agent was seing play in general
yeah, Winota, Joiner of Forces getting this out on turn 4 was a problem
It was definitely Winota and Fires, and both were banned eventually as the real enablers (albeit Winota was banned in Historic/Pioneer). Winota was way more cancerous on the ladder, while Fires was the one actually taking events.
"Until you're out of hawks to cast" - don't worry! If you're insane you can bounce one back to hand!
Edit: What was missed on the JTMS conversation was how JTMS and Stoneforge Mystic brutalised Extended for 17 months before Modern became a format, and continued to do so for a month after that before being banned; it was 2010/11, the game was generally slower, and between Ponder, Preordain, Serum Visions all being legal in both formats, you had even more tools to get rid of your "bad" cards with Jace's brainstorm effect... Ponder and Preordain only survived a single month in Modern before being banned.
Maybe a different way to look at Ramunap Ruins is to see it as a "both players start at 18 life" effect with no additional cost (you pay for the mana a few times and your opponent can't really interact with it).
Also to Tibalt's trickery: in arena formats, the games were decided on turn 2 or 3 basically always, even if you only win 40% (or what the winrate was) you still finish your daily wins much faster. That is one of the biggest reasons why it was played so much. On arena, it had a fizzle rate (you could hit the enabler-stuff) and our opponent had a chance to kill your payoff. However, in modern... You could play a single copy of trickery, four violent outbursts and four Emrakuls. Violent outburst can ONLY hit trickery and trickery can ONLY hit Emrakul (and it cast, so you get the extra turn trigger). The fizzle rate was close to zero and the deck was actually quite powerfull and consistent IIRC (although disruptible).
30:00 Magic back then hated creatures that could end the game "too quickly". Sorceries and instants comboing off was fine, but a 4 mana creature that could just chunk your opponent in four turns with no downside? Nah, that was too much for 90s Magic.
It is difficult to understand how amazingly good Jace was in standard, even before Squadron Hawk came along later. The set before Jace was printed, Blue was nearly unplayable. The best thing it could do was turn the opponent's land into Islands, because your opponent was sure as hell not playing Blue. After Jace was printed, UW control was a top 2 deck. Jace stared down one of the most powerful, resilient and disruptive aggro/midrange decks of the era (Jund) and Jund blinked.
Jace was so good that there was a Jund deck that played Jace in the sideboard. The deck literally could not produce Blue mana on its own, but since Blue decks of the time turned your lands into Islands, they would rely on their opponents to do that and throw out their own Jace (they could also cascade into it).
Jace was so good that it made the OTHER legal Jace, a 3 mana planeswalker card, into a must play card for blue decks. This was because, at the time, only one Jace card could be in play. So you'd play your "baby Jace" as it was known to kill your opponent's Jace. This became known as a Jace war. This tactic was so widespread that it eventually led to the reform of the legendary rule to what it is today. Jace was so powerful the rules of the game changed for him!
Jace was so good that if a creature was 4 mana or more, it either has to have a powerful come into play effect or have haste to be playable against Blue. Because if it didn't, Jace would -1 it every turn, effectively turning it into a blank piece of card board while they got three turns of free digging and drawing to find an answer. And what Rarran's missing about Jace's +2 is that lands exist in magic, unlike Hearthstone. So Jace would just look to see if you had something threatening on top, and if you did, bottom it so you'd probably draw a land (or at least something the UW player could easily handle).
Punishing Fire was played with Grove of the Burnwillows, a land that gave your opponent 1 life as a cost.
I kinda get the first one, not because its so powerful the effect is gamechanging, but it is a sleeper value card. On paper its a 4 mana shock, which is atrocious value, but in reality, if you use it on turn 5 its a shock that have given you plus 1 mana value over the course of 5 turns. And in red, that is usually the turn you are looking to close out the game or you likely lose
Also plus one card advantage. You'd have to draw a shock in addition to all the other cards and lands you played by turn 5, this you just have at your disposal at all times.
Playing a land 5 turns in a row usually means you've lost in mono red, so having a land that deals 2 damage us insane
At the time Jace the Mind Sculptor was dominant you could remove a planeswalker of the same character if you played one. So budget players would run four copies of a DIFFERENT Jace just to kill Mind Sculptor
Not only budget players, everyone did.
I remember that, my friend sold his duel decks Jace at the time for like 15 bucks in store credit to our local game shop cause it was the 'cheap' out to Mind Sculptor.
About Punishing fire the banning was because strong repeatable engine with land called Grove of the Burnwillows which you may tap for colorless or green/red and you oponent gains 1 life. So you get your Punishfire back every turn.
Would love to see a video where you show people different kindred commanders, and they have to guess which one is most played according to EDH rec (e.g., here’s 2 different “zombies” commanders, guess which is most popular)
Oh that's clever I like that
Varinna deserves to be more popular than Mr Rotcleave :(
Tibalt's trickery was actually broken in Modern because of 3 mana cascade spells. It had to be banned for power level reasons there. In the other formats it was just banned because it's really annoying for the opponents..
Having played alot at the time, Ramanup ruins was absolutely banned for a good reason. its not that it 'did 2 damage' its that it often did THE LAST 2-4 damage, and there was just...no playable way to really interact with it. one of the core weaknesses of red aggro is running out of stuff, and it was one of several cards in the deck that protected from that. (also it was an uncommon so...less financially damaging to ban than the rare or mythic offenders)
Really think that he undersold how good Jace and Cawblade was. And I definately think back when Modern was fair magic the Jace would have been great. For goodness sakes, people were tapping out to play him in Legacy
CGB and rarran could have a two hour conversation about the science of foot size measurement and I would watch that
you would want to watch a video about feet wouldn't you
The yeti move would have been to start with the Juggernaut and devolve from there
These collabs between Rarran, you and Cimo are my favorite thing to watch. Thank you for doing all these. They are amazing.
The thing about tibalts trickery is that I'm pretty sure wizards were aware you could target your own spell. That's why it mills a random amount first, you can't stack the top of your deck (with cards like jace the mind sculptor) and guarantee your big bomb. They just weren't aware of the all-in stack the entire deck with bombs plan so you almost certainly hit if you cast trickery, which are so stupid because if you fail to cast trickery these decks do nothing.
1:12:36 'punishing fire' was banned because of it's plays with 'grove of the burnwillows' in various decks.
Tibalt Trickery was such an easy way to get daily wins without any frustration for the person playing the deck. The daily grind of MTGA always gets to me eventually, I want to earn cards, but it just ends up not being fun for me. There were a lot of interesting cards on this list.
Back in Mirrodin I made the mistake of taking charbelcher combo to a nationals and lost nearly 100 places in the DCI rankings to a sea of affinity decks.
there were 0 Mana Spells in Standard when Tibalt´s Trickery got played. Stonecoil Serpent and Tormod´s Crypt. Played against this Card too much so I can´t forget xD
And the worst thing that even when they got their big thing cheated out it was still like 5 turn at least to finish the job. The over the top that got it banned was combo with mizzix´s mastery in historic if I remeber it right.
It also got banned in standard. Mono red back then could still beat it if they did not hit perfect on turn 2.
Ramunap was baned becouse it removed monreds biggest weaknes with it leagal it no longer insta loses when drawing fifth land while costing no spots in the deck.
Not always the biggest fan of banlist eval vids, but I make a MAJOR exception for the Rarran collabs -- can't get enough of em lol
Helllll yeah glad this popped up! Love the Chillwind Yeti & Mesa Falcon collabs.
Ramunap red was fast but the insane low drops could be stopped. A shock without needing a card took the deck over the top late game
There was Tormod's crypt and stonecoil serpent at zero mana during Tibalt's trickery standard.
I'm not sure Rarran ever internalized that Ramunap Ruins can sacrifice itself, so it was effectively a shock you didn't have to draw later (and of course the counterplay.)
Attune with Aether was banned because, alongside Aether Hub, the deck was so good at making whatever colors you want that you effectively weren't playing colors. Every deck was everything. Aether Hub without so much free energy was fine overall. Some decks still used hub for a bit of fixing (Tendo Ice Bridge style), but it was fine.
To explain Rarran about Ramunap, imagine you play aggro hunter, but on top of your default hero power, you would have another button that said "pay 5 mana, destroy one mana crystal, deal 3 damages" with no card investment.
I might be wrong or it was just in my little bubble but back in the day Jace saw a lot of play in Legacy. Without the Hawks.
On an empty board, the +2 was just horrible to play against. And I lost more than one time to the ultimate.
Jace TMS would absolutely dominate standard if reprinted in foundations. Modern is just a different game altogether.
12:42
"There wasn't something like you pay 10 energy you win the game"
idk Aetherworks marvel was pay 6 energy you basically win the game
18:44 this is funny because literally the first thing i thought when i read the effect was "you play no lands and this card just reads Win The Game"
Surprised at no mention of winota with agent of treachery. That deck had even crazier nut draws than the Fires deck.
goated series! I am a prior HS player, but this series has resparked my interest in card games through Magic!
Regarding ramunap-ruins:
Despite CGB trying to make this look like a silly ban:
Imagine if 1 of the mountains you draw in your mono red aggro deck had the ability to fling itself at the opponent for 2 damage by spending 5 mana. Can‘t be countered, can‘t be prevented. (In 99.9% of cases)
THATS DISGUSTING.
CGB really didn't have any comeback for that "just did really well on Cimo's video" after his own venture into the world of Synchro summoning huh
For Tibalt's Trickery you missed Modern, arguably the format it was best in, where you could cascade into a guaranteed Trickery and flip Emrakul on Turn 3. It got banned around the same time they changed the ruling for Valki/Tibalt, shortly before the Uro ban in multiple formats
I disagree that they didn't know people would counter their own thing with tibalt's trickery, if that were true why would it have the mill clause? I think they just thought that was a good enough dissuasion
The other Ikoria card that got Agent of Treachery banned was Winota. You could hit multiple Agents in a single turn.
Rarran getting hung up on the 'choose' / 'random' part of Trickery is so computer science of him
To put it into yugioh terms, I guess that first desert card is like “cowboy for game”
@gmoney9469 mtg player here, can you elaborate on cowboy?
The reason the desert stuff was good was because it cost you basically nothing to put in your deck. You have to play lands, and for a fast aggro deck that land isn't worse than a mountain in any appreciable way. So it's almost like you're playing the same deck but you only have to do 16-18 damage instead of 20 because they can't stop you from popping a couple deserts.
@@FalseHerald Gagaga Cowboy was an easy to make extra deck monster that could be summoned by overlaying any two level 4 monsters, which are the mainline monsters in yugioh, that could ping the opponent directly for 800 damage.
So you could attack the opponent’s life points with a bunch of level 4 monsters, and if they barely survived, you could make cowboy and end the game there. Hence cowboy for game. People effectively had 7200 life points instead of 8000 because Cowboy was almost always readily available to summon from the extra deck.
@@gmoney9469 Yeah that's a good comparison! It's even lower commitment than that, since you didn't have to burn an exta deck slot for it.
The consternation on rarrans face when he learned that not only was ramunap ruins banned but was the namesake card of the deck is delicious. This is going to be good
If it makes him feel better I've had to explain how Tiblat's Trickery works every single time I've cast it. Every. Single. Time.
As a Yu-Gi-Oh player I immediately thought when I read Tibalt's Trigger, "can you counter your own card?"
I mean modern has/had villanous wealth, which at least used to bob around the 1% mark for a good long while and could at least be considered aspirationally competetive.
So the "What deck are you playing?" "Yours, lol"-archetype from HS _is_ a thing in magic
With Rarran's reaction to Feldon's Cane, I wonder how he would feel when he finds out about the RTR Azorius control deck whose only win con was Elixer of Immortality.
I really love these videos but I sometimes wish he would do a better job explaining the good reasons why many cards got banned. They often seem really confused at the reasoning and the vibe that often comes across is "look at this, isn't this stupid?" Instead of learning about magic and what is good and why compared to other card games
I've barely played MTG, but Ramunap looks so good, like if you run no other Desert it's a normal land except it also Shocks the opponent, with like negligible downside, no?
Belcher is a tier deck right now in modern!
That's quite the understatement on Jace. JtMS was an absolutely dominant card in multiple formats, Standard, Extended and Legacy, and was generally considered one of the strongest cards ever printed. Squadron Hawk wasn't even in Worldwake. Jace's -1 made 4 mana or bigger creatures without ETBs or haste basically unplayable and entirely defined the format and having the same card that's your control and card advantage tool also be a wincon when the game has ground to a halt was very relevant. Getting fatesealed by Jace when you're out of resources and having the card stay on top is an absolutely miserable feeling and means the game is effectively over but it'll take like 7 more turns to finish so yeah, he never ults cause you'd scoop way before that but your opponent doesn't actually need to play anything either when they can just have you draw lands forever. He was something like 70% of the field with 15/16 top decks in big events being CawBlade and warped even deckbuilding to the point people played the 3-mana Jace Beleren to legend-rule him (planeswalker uniqueness rule back then).
Yeah Jace didn't do much in Modern... years later when Modern had already sped up a ton and powercreep pushed him out. UW control still played him though. Modern at its inception wasn't much different from today's Standard, I think it's pretty safe to assume he would have been format-defining there as well.
I think he's a historically important card and deserved more research from CGB. He also absolutely doesn't belong in a "weirdo bans" episode.
I feel like fetch lands also being in Zendikar standard just added another bit of oomph to JTMS's power, being another way to shuffle away any irrelevant cards in addition to the Hawks
If I rember correctly, CGB has never discussed Rukh Egg in any of his videos. This is also a nice case for a card that was banned due to early wording
Yeah. That and Orcish Oriflame (though he might have mentioned that one at some point).
@seandun7083 i guess he mentioned it as being banned but i'm not sure if they talked about the reason (misprint in alpha as 1R instead of 3R and no errata at that time)
I don't understand why it's so hard to get why Ramunap was good. Anyone who has played an aggro burn deck knows the feeling of running out of damage just before killing your opponent. Ramunap is a way to get that extra damage that sits on your board until you need it, and the cost of putting it into your deck is basically nothing. Although, both of these guys are aggro haters lol
When you say that Wizards didn't think of self-targeting with Tibalt's Trickery, I think you're forgetting the random part.
The text to mill at random, is there to try and prevent deck-stacking in my opinion.
So they tried to discourage people from using on self, but clearly underestimated the hook of gambling! :D
Loved the video as always ^^
I love all these videos with you, Rarran, Cimo etc. Please continue tormenting each other in the best ways :)
8:16 Between it and Sunscorched it was a repeatable instance of damage.
16:11 Bazaar mentioned Pog
Juggernaut is the chillwind yeti of mtg
Yeah. Not to mention that it was immune to Terror.
the fun of having a HS player reviewing JTMS and both players likely see Kibler (one of, if not the cawblade architect) as a member of their respective game community 😂
Agent of Treachery was banned because of Winota Jointer of Forces not transmogrify. It was banned with the Companion rules update which means it was banned shortly after ikoria released
CGB: Let me show you the card that got Agent of Treachery banned
[Transmogrify appears on screen]
Me, confused: That's not Winota...
I just don't understand the heavy dislike for Pioneer :(
I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but my friends and I like it, and the snide comments against the format makes me think we shouldn't..?
Feldon’s Cane was initially banned as it allowed you to reuse other restricted cards is what i heard. i think on MaRo podcast
Yup. Regrowth was restricted for a long time for the same reason.
I love playing self-Trickery in non-blue EDH decks because that thrill of “Will I whiff or will I win?” is such a great moment for the table. Last time it got me Llanowar Elves after missing my land drop the turn prior. 🎉
Btw when are you gonna explain magic lore to Rarran, i cant get the thought of it out of my mind ever since it came up in one of your videos.
The thing with Ramunep Ruins is that it plays the role of a normal, untapped land, which you have to bring in you deck anyway, and can eventually double as a 2 damage "spell" as a pure bonus in a deck that aims at doing 20 damage as fast as possible before running out of cards. In the deck it was played in, it was basically two cards in one. Even if the second "card" is a bit crappy in isolation, it's a free bonus.
Juggernaut + Invisibility was a meme combo and was probably the reason why it got banned.
Caw-Blade was a menace. It was *the deck* while legal in standard. The +2 on Jace meant you could put opponents that were behind out of the game. Fetch lands were legal, so the +0 had even more ways to get fresh cards, as well as thinning your deck. The -1 and good removal like Path to Exile dealt with threats efficiently. 4 mana board clear was also legal, and there were good counter spells to control the game. We had went back to Mirrodin, so one of those goofy birds could pick up a sword that untapped all your lands and made the opponent discard a card. That sword was tutored for and could be cheated into play. What a time.
Wild Nacatl (my beloved) makes me think of my favorite deck possibly ever, the worlds winning "Naya Lightsaber". What a deck.
I want Rarran to hear about some of the BTE starts from back in the day. T1 nacatl, t2 BTE, BTE, nacatl, goblin guide, swing for 5 with 12 power on board, etc
Sitting here watching Rarran not understand you don't have to run any lands was painful. Still love you both.
Ramunap ruins: broken because everyone had to run lands.
Belcher: playable because it didn't have to run lands.
Mtg's history is fucked up enough rarran forgot both ways.