The 20 Worst Mechanics of All Time
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- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- Following up on his MagicCon: Chicago panel about the 20 best mechanics, Mark Rosewater delves deep into the history of the game for the other end of the debate. What mechanics does Magic's Head Designer see as fundamentally flawed? Will one of your favorites be on the list?
My jaw dropped when MaRo said band with other bears couldn't band with other bear
Me to, I actually have a banding deck and love the mechanic but banding with is actually way to confusing, banding with bears sounds like it should because ã creature with banding can attack with one additional creature without banding but banding with can’t? Do it acts differently but the big issue with banding is blocking and attacking works differently witch causes confusion with players too
It looks like they changed how it works in 2010, so they can now band with any number of bears, which is pretty strong
@@ianohern7855 I believe banding just got significantly better with the update to combat damage assignement as you as the attacking band should be able to assign non lethal damage between your band without needing to assign lethal damage.
@@XenithShadow you could do that before; it was a quirk of how banding worked
@@3OOM9 Previously you would have need to assign lethal damage to one creature before moving onto the next creature (you could overassign lethal previously though). So you attack with a band containing 4 2/2 and they block with a 4/4 you can now assign 1 damage to each of your attackers (so no of the 2/2s in the band die). previously you could assign 4 to one of the 2/2 whereas if the creature had some how block all the 2/2 and they werent a band it would have assign 2 to two of the 2/2/
I've seen UA-camrs tackle this topic before, but it's fascinating to hear it from one of the game's designers.
There's a similar video on this from good morning magic. Basically this again.
Sadly he has some strange opinions on it, like misinterpreting why stickers sucked (you had to bring a deck of them even if you didn't want to play them)
@@gabrote42 Which he sort-of summed up as "logistics", but yeah.
I mean, he already discussed that in the blog. Kinda obsolete though
Timestamps
3:39 Stickers
6:50 Megamorph
12:57 Companion
15:32 Haunt
17:27 Annihilator
19:37 Devoid
23:22 Partner
27:07 Miracle
30:17 Forecast
32:35 Initiative
34:45 Cleave
36:53 Unmemorable Mechanics
37:55 Epic
39:51 Fateful Hour
41:22 Daybound/Nightbound
45:00 Radiance
47:04 Recover
50:16 Sweep
52:09 Gotcha
54:18 Bands with Others
Hero.
I cast Gaea’s Blessing on you.
God created some beautiful humans 👏
It's funny just how terrible the Day/Night mechanic is. Ironic how they made it to try and make werewolves better, but instead made them incredibly worse. I'm so curious as to how they will handle an eventual return to Innistrad and what they are going to do to clean up the Werewolf mess they made. 😂
i totally agree. I hate Day/Night so much that there could be a perfect card to fit into my EDH deck, like to the point where it works with everything I am trying to do... but if it has Day/Night on it .. I just act like it doesn't exist.
Also, the confusion that comes with old Werewolves & new ones is just annoying. My brother loves Werewolves and always has, anything involving one, he will gravitate to. He wanted to make a Werewolf deck until he was shown how annoying they were, so instead he made a regular Wolf deck with Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald.
Night / day should have not been only for werewolves. For example, vampires should turn into useless little piles of ash when it becomes day.
@@Touffy029
Or at least getting a buff when it's night like for werewolves
I really liked Day/Night because it made them consistent, everything is on the same page no matter what.
@@Touffy029 There were several non-werewolves that cared about Night/Day.
"We brought annihilator in Modern Horizons 3 but it was only 1 and 2" Mark, Ulamog the defiler can have the potentially highest annihilator ever with its condition of the highest mana cost in exile.
Yeah, but Ulamog obeys the "end the game by actually ending the game" point. If Ulamog has 10 +1/+1 counters on it, it doesn't actually have annihilator 10, it's actually just an unblockable 17/17. And that'll end the game.
@@fisyx IF. Most of the time, it is going to be annihilator 4 or 5. Still a mistake in design.
@@VexylObby Ulamog will be casted primarily in three spaces.
1. In a modern deck, probably running ways to exile their own very expensive cards, usually cheating it out and ending the game with a single attack.
2. In commander, where getting any less than 6 would be shocking.
3. In limited, were if you're not horribly far behind when casting him, the mill half your deck is probably enough to win the game on it's own.
@@VexylObby Very much a mistake to have such Annihilator. There definitely needs to be some sort of anti-forced sacrifice in the 0-3 mana range, call it STability Bauble, your opponent's spells or abilities cannot make you sacrifice permanents. Annihilator is so brutal, please Mark stop printing these.
@@foxokon94 I'm talking about Commander. You really think people are running more than one 8 drop in EVERY deck?
Mark blaming glue for the reason why stickers were bad is wild. Gameplay was bad because you needed to have a separate deck of 15 to use them and then pick a few at random before the game starts, on top of some needing tickets to get them, and you got tickets by using attractions, and you need dice roll to get the proper attractions activated (attractions were also a random deck).
tournament issues were also there because everyone had to bring a sticker deck in case someone used a sticker card of their own and you might have something in your deck that could clone or steal cards from your opponent. Complexity was also an issue because as seen in the gameplay bit, it;s overly long and convoluted to use.
I know it's his baby, but the fact that he still won't do a mea culpa and blame something other than himself is just insane.
I wanted to comment similar. I can't believe he thought it played well, I thought it was handily the worst un-mechanic I've ever seen.
You do not need attractions to get tickets, in fact the majority of cards that use stickers generate tickets themselves, sort of how energy works.
But yeah, he acknowledged that they missed on the power of __________ Goblin and it created tournament issues (similar to what he said later about initiative). But the biggest issue with stickers was that it wasn't fun even for the players it was meant for. I did an Unfinity Draft and built a sticker deck. It was really fun for about the first match but by halfway through game 2 I was thoroughly sick of having to unstick all my cards at the end of the game and hunting for stickers that fell on the ground.
People like separate decks. Contraptions are one big example. Just because they aren't for everyone doesn't make them bad.
I think a few of these mechanics had multiple problems but he also wanted to make 20 different points so he focused on 1 each, (side note I'm not necessarily sure that other mechanics wouldn't have made the bottom 20 list except they failed for a reason already mentioned and he just chose the most egregious example in each case).
He said at the beginning that this is all his opinion. He likes weird stuff, and that's OK.
This is the first time I've ever heard his voice and that is not at all what I expected.
You know Companion was more than a Miscalculation bc a Miscalculation asks you to pay 2 mana, not 3. 😛
Good joke!
HAHAHAHHA I GET THE JOKE
IT'S A MAGIC JOKE, GUYS, AN MTG REFERENCE... INSIDE JOKE,!
@EastWindCommunity1973
You are correct! In jokes are a common feature internet and hobby cultures; they rely on shared experiences and demonstrate cohesiveness of the 'in' group through exclusivity. I'm glad you were able to enjoy this little reference so much, though your enthusiasm comes off quite strong!
I was wondering why Ante wasn't on here, but then I remembered that it's not a keyworded mechanic
i think he did a similar presentation years ago and he went over ante
Having Devoid be a Super Type is genius. We need to have a set errata old cards and create this. Such a good design space.
Love this type of thing! Game design talk are so awesome, I learn a lot from these guys experiences making the game.
"That is an example of physical humor" that's gold Mark. Underappreciated sense of humor on this guy
Cleave was so weird to put into crimson vow. Putting brackets on cards and removing them feels much more like an izzet guild mechanic.
When he said it was originally a Brokers mechanic it made so much more sense. (corrupt cops at the time, but lawyers work too, if not even better.)
Cleave could have had a home in Strixhaven. It makes sense to have a nerdy, language-based mechanic in the school set, and it would make players feel like they were solving a problem on a test.
Miracle should be #1. Its honestly embarrassing it ever got printed on cards
@@overtonwindowshopper
While the physical implications are problematic as MaRo said, it's still a flavorful and (imo) fun mechanic, especially in a casual setting where honesty is less of an issue; the same can not be said for those further down the list.
I'm still confused why it *didn't* get used for the brokers like the capenna devs were testing, why did they end up with shield counters instead?
No way they used the troll Purple card back at 31:58
That's actually the Arabian Nights card back
@@artemi7 I think it was just concept but discarded
And also the "sixth color" card back at 9:32
@@nik700 It was discarded, but apparently pretty last minute. The expansion symbol on the front was the compromise. Also I didn't notice purple on the morph side! Nice easter egg.
Top 0 on the list : the secret lair marketing mecanic
i don't like lairs either but surely you have better material
Lazy "joke".
Not a keyword or ability word
The real top 0 is ante, smh
Actually it’s “ruining the game forever by making full universes beyond standard legal sets”
How dare you call Support unmemorable! Everyone loves Saddleback Legac!
Exiling if you didn't put the card in your hand right away is what makes recover bad, both because it was hard to remember, and the cards often weren't very powerful.
I've only listened to Mark Rosewater on the Drive To Work podcast. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it really wasn't someone I can only describe as having "big suburban dad energy" lmao
Awesome discussion. Can you please add bookmarks/chapters to the video? Thanks!
So Day/Night got messed up cause they tried to cut corners too much. The way he described it in the video makes much more sense.
19:30 "We only did Annihilator 1 and 2 [In MH3]"
**laughs in Ulamog Annihilator X**
The head designer of Magic The Gathering sounds exactly like how I imagined the head designer of Magic The Gathering would sound
Glad to see Banding escape the list. I've always had a soft spot for it and it's more powerful than people think. But, yeah, 'Bands with other' can earn its place.
I legit thought pack tactics was just one of the flavor keywords like on clever conjurer
"Gotcha" also plays weird, because Unhinged was only printed in English and for a card like "kill destroy", you have to discuss how this affects you playing in your mother language, in my case: german. Do we use the german translations of the words? Then we need to argue about what the best translations are, etc. - it's a whole job :D
I find it interesting that he talked about the issue of haunt working two different ways, but we had "descend" and "descended" in LCI
Haunt is a single keyword that does two different things that people can mix up, Descend and Desdended are two different keywords that care about the same thing in a intuitive way, that being "permanent cards going to the graveyard".
@@Mordalon I've never played with or against a card with Haunt, but I don't see what is particularly confusing about it.
@@lelandwhitehead56 you know what's the most unintutive thing about Haunt besides it working a bit differently with creatures and with spells? The death trigger part... is not part of the mechanic. It is a part of the rules text on EVERY haunt card, true, but it isn't inherent to the mechanic. You could basically make Haunt cards into Cipher and not much would change (which Cipher was probably meant to be a fixed version of Haunt btw, just only working with spells, not creatures' etbs).
@@lelandwhitehead56 For one example, if someone steals a creature with Haunt and then it dies, the new controller gets to choose what gets haunted, but then the resulting effect from that creature dying is controlled by the original owner. Also, the confusion between the two different versions comes from it being on instants/sorceries is tied to the spell's resolution, where as on creatures it's tied to the Haunt creature dying, not resolving.
. This just isnt true. LCI has both "descend" (cares about the number of cards in your graveyard when cast) and the key term "descend" that refers to the act of putting permanent into your graveyard, using exactly the same term for two thematically similar but very different things. These two things are considerably more different than the different functions of 'haunt.'
The intuitive read of "if you have descended this turn" would mean that a player would expect that triggering a 'descend' ability would be what does it, but it isn't. Having played LCI events with people who were not already long-time magic players that were excited about dinosaurs, this was an actual issue.
There's even an obvious solution to this present with 'fathomless descent,' which functions like a loose version of the descend ability but, much like the descend ability, doesn't care about descending. Descend (x) really should have been descent (x) instead.
It's an obvious bad baming of actions and abilities.
Rhystic was excluded, but Tribute should absolutely have been included
Agreed. Much like the card Browbeat, giving your opponent the ability to choose what your card does, essentially guarantees that you will never get the effect you actually want.
I think Cleave as a mechanic was very easy to understand. The main issues I have with it are these:
1. The cheaper effect wasn't powerful enough to justify playing it.
2. The more expensive effect was more powerful, but also was too overcosted to justify playing it.
There are scenarios where two medium power level effects can combine to make a playable magic card, such as the command cards and mdfc lands, but cleave's juice just isn't worth the squeeze.
Living proof that RnD aren’t game design gods?!?!
I truly can’t believe it
Im sad Ingest didn’t even make the forgettable mechanics tier lol.
Too forgetable
Why aren’t we - the viewers - seeing the slides at the start! I know what Mark looks like 😂
Ah - there we go.
Wait, shouldn't that bear with "bands with other bears" be able to band with that regular bear?
If I'm understanding the rules text correctly, yes, if such a card existed, that would actually be how it works. The reason Master of the Hunt tokens don't work like that is because they don't have "bands with other wolves", but "bands with other creatures named Wolves of the Hunt".
By that definition, it is similar to companion, except it allowed the ability of banding together rather than sharing the commander slot. The bear doesn't have the keyword ability, and as such, it could only be banded with by a creature with banding as the instrument for the band was the generic banding rather than the limited version. I really miss banding. Abilities were lost unless all of the banders had the ability, but the ability to define where the damage went was very beneficial.
I would bet that what you said is what most players actually did though. Since it was unintuitive, and the rule set was only available to the person who bought the Legends booster, my guess is that most of the player population at the time didn't know for the first part, and the second part is that they were not played that often even of the players back then.
No, creatures with bands with other [type] all need to have the same bands with other [type] to form a band
Creatures with normal banding can form a band with any number of other creatures with banding, and up to one creature without banding.
its dumb
@@Thalarion 702.22c They may also declare that one or more attacking [quality] creatures with “bands with other [quality]” and any number of other attacking [quality] creatures are all in a band.
As long as one creature has "bands with other bears", it and any number of bears can attack in a band.
@@jaywinner328 the rule was changed with M10. when bands with other was released, every creature needed the same bands with other.
I played with the recover mechanic recently and I can confirm how annoying it is to keep track of. It also requests you time your creatures dying so you have mana to return the card or else you have to exile it. High effort graveyard recursion for sure.
What's funny is Bands with others was later fixed to work the way you would think
Stickers are not fun if you aren’t running them, which I think is a failure of their design. In a tournament setting, it is a disadvantage to not have a sticker sheet, even if you are not planning to use it, because not using a sticker sheet gives away deck information. Not a fun consideration. Also their high variance is not my favorite thing ever. Near impossible to predict what sticker sheet you are playing around so you end up forced into a “gotta have it” mentality game, which isn’t the worst thing but isn’t always the game you want to play.
He's said elsewhere that they wanted unfinity to only be legal in edh. That's not something they've ever done though, so they did their best to compromise. You're right about all this stuff, and he's aware of it.
"Just to remind you we had blocks." Yeah. No idea why we dont anymore...
I bet maro does a sick Sylvester the cat impression
Love you Mark. Wonderful presentation. I appreciate the acknowledgement of so many issues with relatively recent mechanics like Initiative and Day/Night, and getting a nostalgic closer out of Bands With Others was perfect
Number 1 problem auf stickers that maro is deliberately omitting: They tried to cram it into constructed to get the commander crowd to buy the product. That meant that stickers couldn’t actually be wacky and interesting, like in a legacy mechanic. Instead they were all boring and “made to work in constructed” which was both bad for the unset, and bad for constructed
Stickers not being near the top is a real "sure Mark" moment.
How? It's like you didn't actually pay attention.
Nettle Drone is a weird choice for the Devoid example since it's not only an Eldrazi, but an Eldrazi Drone. There were a handful of Eldrazi Drones in Rise of the Eldrazi and they all required colored mana. I remember this because Rapacious One was a card I always ran in red decks back then for ramp. The non-Drone Eldrazi in ROE were colorless.
I think it's an appropriate choice considering how the two sets treated colorlessness. In ROE, limiting the colorlessness to the spawn and the Big Eldrazi made them feel alien and unique, while in BFZ it was overused and made them feel just like any other monster. You had all of these mid-size Eldrazi that did the same things as any other creature that just had Devoid to be a tag they could care about.
I agree with the #1 spot.
I would like to point out that while the Radiance mechanic is on the list, the Radiance card is still amazing.
Also I have both Enduring Ideal and Eternal Dominion in separate commander decks, the latter now over a decade old in said decklist.
If I were to revisit Epic (I know legendary sorceries were introduced in Dominaria), I would have something like the Refrain cards meets Island Sanctuary, where at the beginning of your upkeep you choose if the spell is copied. If Yes, the spell is copied you cannot cast spells until you next have the choice. If no, you can play as normally but the spell is not copied that round, but more likely for the rest of the game as I think not doing so would cause headaches with additional upkeeps.
Im genuinly surprised storm wasn't on this list.
storm is fun as hell, it was mostly the effects stapled onto it that were incredibly strong.
Adding onto what the other guy said, storm has real use. It can serve a purpose. Epic and gotcha meanwhile are just dumb.
Thanks for uploading for those who couldnt assist
I think the only mechanic from Battle for Zendikar that didn't make this list is converge, and it deserves at least an honorable mention. It was unplayably bad in limited and only "Bring to Light" made an impact in constructed. It being the main mechanic on green cards in the set meant that an entire color of magic was effectively absent in limited and only about fetching the best cards in other colors in standard for several months. I can't name another mechanic that temporarily erased one of the colors in any measurable sense.
The rares were used in standard: Painful truths, Radiant Flames and woodland wanderer appeared in competitive play
There are 3 mono green and 2 UG cards with converge in BFZ... calling it "the main mechanic on green cards in the set" is absurd, sorry. Compare it to 8 mono green cards with landfall and 2 more in RG. yes, green was very fractured with it's mechanics (also having devoid and allys, which didn't go well together). But Tajuru Stalwart had actually pretty nice stats for a common at 3cmc 3/4. And with greens fixing it was easy to get your 3-4 colors for converge.
When a mechenic gets multiple cards (One of witch see´s eternal play) I would hardly call it bad.
@@oblahuwtf5786 It is pretty well known that if you played any amount of green in BFZ Limited you were not winning anytthing, only decent card was the uncommon ally that gave +2+2 but everything else was atrocious.
Haunt is amazing flavor wise. They just needed to lower the mana, and put better abilities on it. Imagine a Legendary Creature that said "All instants and sorceries you cast have 'Haunt'." That Legendary Creature card in commander would shoot to the top of many people's list.
I always thought cipher was worse than haunt i thought cipher was the worst ravnican mechanic hands down
I'm amazed it didn't make the list. It hits a home run on most of the things on his list of what makes a bad mechanic, especially limited design space and confusion.
I could see the "Rhystic" mechanic also belonging on this list.
Seeing Annihilator called out here not long after printing Annihilator X in MH3 is kinda funny.
I remember reading the Coldsnap article back in the day and did not pick up on the joke. It took me many years after that to finally hear the clarification that it wasn't a "lost set" and I do remember feeling a bit betrayed by that since it was presented so straight-faced.
Yeah, telling someone you'll meet them for lunch and then no-showing isn't a joke, that's just lying. I dunno what Buehler was thinking but he did not understand the assignment because the scenario he described was extremely plausible - the early years of Magic WERE a chaotic mess with multiple teams cooking stuff across the country, and there really were cards & mechanics from 1995 or whatever finding print only years later. If there was something to be something funny in there, he totally forgot to include it.
Seems like haunt isn’t the issue itself, just that all the effects waited for the haunted creature to die. As a sort of pseudo-bestow it could still work.
This has some overlap with talking about some of the worst-designed sets. I personally have a lot of love for the Time Spiral block, but it sure is a design mess. However Kamigawa remained legendary for being overall pretty unusable. Alara set some nice gold standards, but it's been power crept out of relevance.
I will have you know that I quite like, and definitely remember, Pack Tactics. There are dozens of us, dozens!
While he's right on Radiance, I feel like the bigger issue is if your opponent is playing red or white (and in Ravnica, there's a very good chance of that), you are either helping them with your buffs, or hurting yourself with your removal. Either way, it feels bad.
Oh dang Riley was the MC for this event? Love his podcast too
I can watch Rosewater’s presentation and PowerPoint skills all day. From a phone!❤
inevitability is a valuable lesson for all card games design that needs to be heeded more. Especially for newer players who don't know when to resign
You know, I think Conspire is actually kind of interesting and I can keep it in mind. So at least for me, its memorable among the unmemorable. Looking forward to going back to Lorwyn. It is interesting also how much Innistrad sets in this panel lol
I always felt like devoid should also exile a card from an opponents library on cast, make it feel like its eating the world, and give it synergies with the other exile mechanic
I like Mark but STICKERS ARE GARBAGE. It annoys me greatly that he made excuses/weak straw man arguments for why it failed. It did NOT just fail on the glue front; it failed on all fronts. Obnoxious, inconvenient, bad gameplay, convoluted... you name it. Just own it. It should be waaaaay higher up this list.
How was the gameplay bad? They are just like other counters.
@@Mordalonwaiting on people to get them from sheets and put them on… having to take them off in between draft rounds unless you did the alternative marking options… just time-consuming, messy, and wholly unnecessary. Magic is convoluted enough without additional physical adhesives/markings.
@@Mordalondidn’t mean literal gameplay mechanics. More the annoyance of their applications during the game
UB was...tolerable...when it was effectively Legacy formats only. Now that it's unfortunately coming to Standard, it's going to undermine Magic's core identity.
In the near future, Magic is going to look like a pc that visited questionable sites without protection.
Legacy player here - I don't want any of those in game ads either.
@@DuncanHarbison They are just as much "ads" as any other card. They are all products made to appease gamers.
@mordalon- idk what you mean by that. They’re saying they don’t want ads for other games in their game. Lightning Bolt isnt an “ad” for another game.
And what people are upset about here is the overall feel and identity of magic. Imagine the next Resident Evil or Halo comes out and the playable characters are SpongeBob and Spiderman. That’s just silly
I think Cleave really just had a formatting problem. Trying to make the syntax of every card serve two purposes was cute but it would just be more readable to make the conditional improvement an additional statement. Sometimes more text is a good thing.
Was not expecting to be shouted at by Hamish Blake as soon as I put this video on lol
I always enjoy MaRo talk, he has amazing energy and has humility despite a giant ego
i would love to see Recover return in a modern horizons set. having to manage when creatures die to get value from Recover is a unique minigame that interacts with almost everything else in magic.
Recover is just bad. For ones with a mana cost, it essentially puts a tax on all your mana whenever you have a creature out if you want to pay any recover costs. Remember, if you don't pay the cost when the trigger resolves, the recover card gets exiled.
If it weren't for the exile clause, I might agree with you. But that exile exists, and it exists for a good reason as well (to keep games from being too repetitive)
There's also the issue of being given a creature by your opponent when you aren't prepared to pay. While not a widespread mechanic, it is still a big problem.
Thank you MArk!! So much passion for an amazing game
Epic would have been really cool if you could still cast spells, but it would cancel/exile your epic spell.
Every time I see an official MTG product or person or whatever use the card back that has 6 colors, only because its the first result on google images, my heart, and my view of WOTC"s professionalism, dies some more.
I’m surprised Storm is not on here, as he once named the metric by which a mechanic was likely to return as a Storm Scale, after the mechanic that was least likely to come back 😂. I have a soft spot for Storm, but even I understand why designers would be hesitant to create this mess again. Maybe he changed his mind about it?
He says, every single time every time it's brought up, that the Storm Scale is for returning mechanics to STANDARD. Modern Horizons and Commander decks aren't that, so they get old, niche mechanics like Storm and Dredge. And even with Storm being on Otter Ral, it's only achieved on Instants/Sorceries as an Ult, those aren't regular spells that just have Storm on them.
Storm is unique and has a purpose. There are decks and people that want it. Cleave meanwhile is just impossible to translate and it wasn't in the right set.
Yay, more MaRo talking about game design!
I don't know why Haunt is hated so much, if Ciper is apparently fine and not listed here. Cipher is basically the same mechanic.
Unironically I LOVED devoid, but that's because I was able to use Ancient Stirrings to grab World Breaker and Kozilek's Return back in the good old Modern days
53:00 okay but what kind of joyless soul is out there playing competitive unhinged games?
The issue I have with cleave is that it's basically just a split card, and a boring one at that. 2 mana, kill 2 or less, 6 mana kill all. That's all it is.
The stickers thing was so stupid
Man was really trying to justify stickers.
Trying to justify? You do know he openly responds to comments on his blog and has often openly talked about mechanics/sets he liked not doing well. Try doing a bit of research.
Love Mark talking game design!
I really like the Cleave mechanic. I think it's neat.
I have a banding deck, and what banding does ends up being fine… when on rare places people manage to steal my lands that give bands with other legends, it becomes chaotic. As people try to understand after I explain in the 10th time in a game.
Would love to see how you'd retroactively fix these mechanics, and which ones you'd just axe from the game entirely.
He answered for a few. Devoid, just make it a super type. Day night, it doesn't track forever. Megamorph, give it a different name to sound less exciting. Partner, make them mono color or have something more niche (doctor's companion, background).
For some reason I still remember what Support does..
As someone who *almost* knows what every named mechanic does, I do as well, though I think a big part of me remembering Support is me disproportionately disliking the mechanic.
If your deck has five goblins your opponent won’t know until you play 6?
He's saying that you can't have a Companion restriction where your deck can't have more than X of a card type, because that's too easy to fake.
@ wierd way to word it
This makes me miss my morph deck with blistering firecat and skirk alarmist. Attack with a 13/13 trample turn 3? Yes please!
I remember beating the crap out of the current champion of the times undertow deck with it.
19:50 we didn't do any big annihilator [in mh3] because it's just not fun.
Also, ulamog that frequently has annihilator 7 or more.
He's talking about the whole set. ROE had twice as many Annihilator cards, with more at lower rarities, with 4 having 3+ Annihilator.
Wow! What a beautiful upload.
Bands with others makes sense from the "why is this in the game at all?" when you recognize it's the sort of set theory nonsense math people find funny.
I do appreciate the banding is not on the list. I agree with the reasoning for wine bands with other is on the list, but back in 93 and 94 banding was fun and useful. And before the game got complicated it was fine.
Please hire me to run your show so that the stream includes the slides and that the presenter can see them.
Mutate is so underwhelming and absolutely should have been in the list
I'm very surprised that Cipher isn't on this list at all, let alone not in the top 5 somewhere.
Top 0: making UB legal in all formats
not a mechanic.
Skill issue
@@PsychoticSashimiS Enjoy your slop like a good paypiggy.
I love Banding. It's one of those mechanics that's hard to explain, but once you get it, it's not bad. I use it to this day in commander (Arcades loves Fortified Area), and someone else at my LGS half my age built a banding centric deck. I even play Tolaria for giggles.
Bands With Others can head right for the bin.
52:30 do the Un mechanics really count?
Gotcha could have been a pokemon mechanic and it would still be here. It's that bad. Also, Maro made it so he cares alot.
A lot of these mechanics I don't know, but I take long breaks sometimes, first started playing back when Future Sight was out, stop for a bit and got back into Magic when Amonkhet was coming out, then stopped playing a lot again but started again a couple years ago but only play now and then. I liked the idea of a few mechanics on this list, Companion, Initiative, and Day/Night.
I believe you can make companion a bit easier and safer for everyone by having the card count as a card in the deck but is set in the command zone, like backgrounds, partners, etc., that way you still only play with cards in your deck and can avoid the "outside of the game" confusion. Then you can cast the card from the command zone like your commander but with the restriction being you must control your commander and your commander must be on your table side. This is how Oathbreaker plays with signature spells in the command zone. Yes the companion would have it's own "commander" tax each time it is played. The idea that players "cheat", which there are a lot of videos that prove players do, will never go away so worrying about that shouldn't be high concern when making a mechanic. Nothing stops the card from being placed in decks normally but players for some reason might still confuse on how you got the card, but this way you could just make it clear that companions are part of the deck at all times.
The Initiative is a nice twist on the dungeon mechanic and the only problem is availability. I understand that both mechanics, Dungeons and The Initiative, are from the DnD cross over sets, which I love the idea, couldn't get any at the time because of life at the time, and would like more of both. I main problem with Dungeons and The Initiative is time. At this time players of Commander want games to be fast and normally build decks with that in mind. But there are some players that don't mind games being a bit longer. With that in mind maybe a redo on the dungeons would be needed or make it that to enter certain dungeons you needed something, that way players just don't always enter one of the three main dungeons. Tomb of Annihilation isn't that great that takes you going into that dungeon 3 - 4 time to get a 4/4 creature with deathtouch. I never seen a game with that played if they could pick the dungeon. Lost Mine of Phandelver I only seen played once as the end of the dungeon only had you draw a card. The only dungeon played a lot was Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which allowed you to cast a card for free at the end. There was only one room that wasn't that good and that was only if you didn't build for that style of play. The undercity was okay and was about the same power level as Dungeon of the Mad Mage, but was harder to complete. The idea it is similar to the monarch is a nice twist but go the full way. Not during your upkeep but during your end step you venture into the undercity. It wouldn't change how the Undercity works but makes playing with the Initiative easier. I believe the main reason it isn't like is because it is at the upkeep and not after combat. The reason I say this is you take the Initiative by either casting a card that allows your to take the Initiative or taking it from someone else that had it before. If you do another DnD set I would like dungeons to come back but maybe make a dungeon(s) based off each color and gives that color more reason to go down into that dungeon but also gives the same bonuses to other colors that struggle doing what the other colors do. Over all the idea of the Initiative and dungeons is nice and I personally would like more of it.
Day/Night mechanic needs help, I for one will not argue against that, and I have a couple ways to help fix some of the problems, but not all of them. First off the wording of the of the mechanic needs to be changed to include all Human Werewolves/Werewolves. Day time - all humans enter either on their daybound or front human werewolf side. Night time - all humans enter either on their nightbound or back werewolf side. This would allow non-werewolf creatures that have daybound and nightbound sides to still enter on the correct side. Also passing and doing nothing doesn't feel great, unless you are a blue player, so making how to change from day to night and night to day a little different would be great. An idea is to make is and upkeep effect, pay (x) amount to have it change from day to night and pay (y) amount to change from night to day, only the player who's turn it is can pay this cost. Having both equal might be the best thing. Also including more cards into the game that can change from day to night or night to day would help. Right now only The Celestus can change it from day to night or night to day. Yes Tovolar get make it always night on your upkeep and you have a card on one of your online games that can always make it day, maybe adding more effects like these into the game would help make the process easier as this mechanic is a core function of werewolves. Another idea on how to help werewolves is to add a cost to flip the card. On Arlinn Kord her 0 effect makes a token and transforms her to the back side. on the back side her -1 ability transforms her back. Yes this would be similar to adept from the simic cards but it isn't adept and could help. This would give the werewolf player a choice to make but this would be harder as you would need to almost get ride of two mechanics, which are similar but different in a small way.
Mutate is absolutely awesome and better not be on this list
If you mutate onto your Commander, and your Commander dies, but you choose to put them into the Command Zone, what happens to the mutated cards?
@@Vesdus because of the Commander dies rules. The whole stack first hits the graveyard, then you have the option to move the Commander (on its own) to the command zone.
It is just like any non mutate Commander when it dies. The Commander goes to grave and you have the option to leave it there or put it back in the command zone.
So many people get this wrong. And usually those are the same people who say mutate is bad, and likely that it's overly complicated. It really isn't.
If you or anyone for that matter want proof or to test it yourself. Build a brawl deck with a mutate Commander like vadrok, illuna, snapdax, etc on Arena. You will find that the mechanic works exactly as explained. While Brawl is not Commander, it speaks to wizards intentions of how mutate was designed to work in Commander style formats. Why would it work one way in brawl and another way in Commander?
"in mh3 we didnt do any big annihilator cause it's just not fun"
Ulamog the defiler in the corner:
55:37 I had a Benalish Hero and I’ve only found out what Bands meant today.😂
i think if epic only restricted some things like you can only cast legendary or epic spells or only cast instants or sorceries of courese it would be weaker
Miracle, my beloved, look how they besmirch your good name.