I play platinum angel and Abyssal Persecutor so that both players can not lose or win the game then I play Thousand-Year Storm, and get the storm count up to 10 and cast 10 copies of shahrazad.
gabe juhasz: That's evil, you're a horrible person, and it's so beautiful. But remember, I'm pretty sure timestamping will rule over which effect takes priority, so unless you Tooth and Nailed both creatures onto the battlefield at the same time, one ability might override the other's.
@@chaossquall In a sense yes. But with camouflage; they still remained the same power; toughness, and their abilities. It was just to randomize the blocks and make your opponent sweat when choosing which one to block with what
The other problem with the old text is that the defender "block" with some creatures, and then "impossible block are cancelled", which causes a lot of stupid problem if you have an effect that trigger on blocking, or target blocking creatures. While the new text say that the defender "assign pile of creatures to the attacker", and "creatures in those pile than can block have to block". Which is works better since you don't have to roll-back anything.
I remember showing my husband my old cards. "What's banding?" He asked. I tried to explain it. The best I could do... "Uhmmm... It's... You... Nevermind. You'll never use it."
10:20 actually she started a new story every night and finished it in the next day so her husband would not kill her because he was curious how the story would end.
@@sdfkjghYup, and (1) Shahrazad herself is part of the nested stories, which was the whole joke of the book and (2) is the whole reason the card makes sense.
I like the way Ice Cauldron works. You pay X, exile a Banefire, then on your next turn you tap it to get that X back and you can then make even more mana for X and make your banefire more massive. It's the single most roundabout way to make your X spells bigger and I love it.
Yeah, the way it is written is super complicated, but it makes sense once you understand what they were trying to do. You put a spell in the cauldron along with some or all of the mana to cast that spell. On a later turn, you can use that mana as well as more mana if needed to cast that spell. It’s great for casting a spell that takes more mana than you have land or if you just want to pay now and use it later.
Fun fact: The Spanish version of Dead Ringers actually added reminder text to explain what the hell they meant. I don't know if this was true of any other translation but it was a nice touch.
Remove Enchantments is one of those cards that's confusing because someone wanted to go for a specific flavor. It removes all of the Enchantments IN YOUR REALM. That's why it only effects your opponent's attacking creatures. Basically, everything in your kingdom, including invaders, has their enchantments removed.
I used Ice Cauldron and Illusionary Mask in my "Seven Lines of Text" deck. Aside from basics, every card had at least seven lines of text and most were very confusing for my opponents. Usually, I'd get a concession in a few turns. I never really found these cards that confusing. I guess it's because I took the time to use them.
A lot of these cards are simpler conceptually than they are in terms of wording. Despite the mess of text that appears on Ice Cauldron, it's actually a pretty simple card in what it does; it lets you pay for a single spell across two turns. Also, good job Oracle text on making Camouflage infinitely more confusing.
Exactly on both. Camouflage wasn't hard to understand at all. It just randomized the blocking and made your opponent sweat when choosing blockers because they didn't know what creature was what
The thing is if remove enchantments was in modern it would actually be insane in Bogles. Think about it: it protects all your enchantments from board wipes for 1 mana at instant speed, it’s an incredible combat trick against the mirror: say you have some Bogle on Bogle violence in combat, your opponent has a super buff Bogle and you have a Bogle with only 1 or 2 auras. You can ensure they trade in combat by removing all the auras and since your auras go back to your hand you get straight up card advantage from a 1 mana instant in WHITE! This basically gives all your auras the last text of rancor. You know what now I wanna build Bogles if remove enchantments is a common I’m brewing green white Bogles.
Precisely. It was used to combat a deck in those times called the "Flying mutation" deck. Flying men:1/1 flyer for 1 blue. Unstable mutation:enchanted creature gets +3 +3. During each upkeep; put a -1 -1 counter on the creature...also 1 blue. It was a terrifying duo since also in that time you weren't restricted to only having 4 of a certain card in a deck except if it was restricted by WOTC
I will ALWAYS like your subjective lists. Because you spend a good amount of time diving into the cards I've never heard of and MtG continuing to surprise me is one of the reason it owns a portion of my brain space. Keep it up.
I've always liked Raging River since I found out about it, and it made sense to me at least. You basically make two separate battlefields for combat. I even think the Oracle text makes it more confusing.
The best part about Scheherazade is that you can cast one in your subgame, leading to layers and layers of subgames. Then when you go back to your main game you can cast the card if you have extra copies/ways to enable flashback.
Ice Cauldron is at least good for casting a spell over the course of two turns. For instance, you could put 3UU into it, exile Omniscience, then next turn pay the other 4U and cast Omniscience off the Cauldron. Doesn't make it any less confusing.
I used to use Ice Cauldron to store mana in order to cast spells with X in their casting cost, usually red damage cards. I don't think they took this into account when they made the card. It was quite overpowered back then.
It’s also useful to save a card in a pinch if your opponent tries to make you discard. Like, if they use Duress or a wheel effect and you have your wincon or something else you just really can’t afford to not cast, you can exile it in response. The Cauldron lets you play the card as long as it’s exiled, whether Cauldron is still on the field or not, so the only risk to exiling it is that your opponents gain some info on a card you have.
Raging River actually seems cool and pretty good. I might throw it in a commander deck both to confuse my opponents and to make some big creatures have some “evasion”
It was last printed in unlimited, is on the reserved list, and it's average market price is about $110. So unless you have it already it seems like a silly thing to buy. I traded a mox diamond for one back in 2000 and I'm still an idiot for making that trade.
agentofashcroft Ouch. Yeah that would sting for years to come. And if that’s the price then I’m afraid my master plan will have to fall into the shadows
Another idea you could do is a Top 10 list of cards whose original text does not hold up well nowadays. One card that comes to mind for me is the original Rukh Egg printing from Arabian Nights that needed an entire paragraph printed on the card to basically explain what a token is.
I knew Camouflage had to be on here. I get why the text was changed, (Morph, etc.), but BOY is that errata text confusing. One of the few times the errata text actually makes the card MORE confusing and less easy to understand. AAAND that's what makes Camouflage my favourite "Worst" card!
I played shahrazad... My friend at the time also played shahrazed Four turns later I played my second shahrazed First card my friend plays after that turn was there second shahrazed This went on until both of our 4 copies of shahrazed where all use so we where playing like... A game within a game within a game within a game within a game within a game within a game within a game of magic
Yeah there are only 3 cards with phasing that are any good though and 2 of them are Teferi related. Oubliette, Teferi's Protection, and Teferi, Time Raveler as far as I know.
Also; not too hard to understand imo. I run 2 in my legacy deck. In a nutshell; any card a player draws beyond the first must first discard a card before drawing it or must mill a card from their library if they have no cards in hand
Recon 0326 Not quite, excluding the first card a player draws on their draw step, any time they would draw a card... Essential any time you would draw a card other than the one you’re required to draw by the core rules if the game you have to discard or mill, which is important if you would draw on your upkeep or someone else’s turn. It’s also important to be aware all card draw us done individually. So if something says ‘draw two cards,’ you discard, draw, discard, draw; you don’t discard two, draw two. Finally the discard effects stack, but the mill doesn’t.
@@Welverin Correct. That was what I was trying to say. Let's take a card for example: brainstorm. If chains is on the battlefield and you have already drawn your card for your draw step; then you cast brainstorm, before you can draw those three cards, you must first discard for each one drawn. Then you still have to put two back on top of your library. It essentially punishes harshly decks that rely on card draw
@@Recon-cv1fe I figured, but I wanted to clarify for others. It's not hard once you get it, but getting there... It's great fun stopping other people from drawing cards, I actually locked someone out of the game with it and Anvil of Bogardan once. Admittedly I didn't even realize I could before that, he went through his draw phase and said 'I can't do anything.'
@@Welverin Eesh. That's a nasty duo there. Beside the concedement; how did you win that? Because chains affects both players. Did you have a creature on the battlefield or was it just "we go until one of us runs out of cards in our libraries" ?
You have never had an opponent exile a card from your hand to Force of Will or Misdirection their resolving Word of Command then. Or have them play the wrong land for you on your upkeep (or any other timing nightmare) Or have a judge call on the card, with a judge not already familiar with it@@Recon-cv1fe
I think you explained Ice Cauldron a little wrong. You dont have to pay the cost of the card when exiling it, you can pay part of the cost, none of it, or more than it when you first tap it. You get to cast the card from Exile no matter what (even if Ice Cauldron gets removed) but can tap the ice cauldron for the mana you spent to tap it before. This sorta lets you split up card costs between turns, or set up a sorcery speed play during an end step using available mana. Not super good, but nothing else does what it does.
You can still play the exiled spell even if ice cauldron is removed? This surprises me, because the text says to put the spell “on” ice cauldron. However, I don’t play mtg, so that could be why I’m surprised. So, if you could cheaply bounce it to your hand and play it again repeatedly, could you hypothetically use this card to make a really big set of cards that you can play as if in your hand, but which don’t contribute to your hand size? That’d be quite something..
@@drdca8263 the card being exiled is in the oracle text, which this is the one card he chose not to show it for. as for using it to make a set of cards you can cast that aren't in your hand, yes, that would work, it also works if you have a way to repeatedly untap it, though it takes more steps. you use it's first ability paying 0, then untap it somehow, use it's second ability to add 0 mana, then untap it again and you can exile another card. the second ability doesn't require you to cast or get rid of the exiled card, it just restricts the mana you create to only be usable on that card.
That one is one I can give you on confusion level. I remember that card well. If I remember correctly it was banned for a time because people just didn't get it edit: and it delayed the game
I think I figured out ice cauldron! Ok, so since you can activate ice cauldron's first ability at instant speed, it serves two purposes: First, storing the leftover Mana from your opponent's end step, at the cost of declaring what card you're going to use it on. This can be a card whose Mana cost is more than what you paid into X. Think, you play the cauldron on turn 4, on turn five you draw Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, play a land, and end turn. On your opponent's end step, you pay 5 Mana for X, exile Ulamog, start up your turn, play a land, and cast Ulamog, on turn six. The other purpose is to temporarily protect a card in your hand. After all, it can't be discarded or exiled from your hand if it's not there when the spell or effect resolves.
Ice cauldron just seems confusing, it literally just stores a spell and the needed mana for casting it. After that you just kinda "release" the spell from the cauldron at the time you seem adequate.
The Cauldron is much better than it seems....if used in a certain way. Specifically, you spend zero on X. This effectively give you an "extra hand". Even if the Cauldron leaves the battle field you can still play the cards in your "extra hand". So you pay zero, tap, then exile a card. Next turn tap add zero mana AND do nothing with that zero mana. Next turn pay zero, tap, exile a card. Rinse and repeat. Works very good with Ensnaring Bridge and hellbent.
Grendel Nin What about the “use this ability only if there are no charge counters on Ice Cauldron” line? Don’t you have to get rid of the charge counter before you can use it to store another card?
the thing about ice cauldron is...it is really good with X spells like braingeyser or fireball. at end of your opponent's turn you can set it up for your turn. if you put a braingeyser with a charge counter for 5 mana on the cauldron at the end of their turn, during your turn you can geyser for at least 3 cards, but usually 7 or more (you can add more mana to X when you cast the geyser). not exactly amazing, but not entirely useless either ;)
It's also great for board wipes like armageddon and wrath of god. Put a creature in the cauldron if it's full mana cost was paid; wipe the board with wrath of God, then you got a creature ready to play
Lmao but that's cheese though. A lot of the silver border cards are meant to be confusing. Look at "bureaucracy". That thing confused the hell out of people lmao
How do Camouflage and the Raging River interact? You have two piles of creatures, and creatures of each of these will be randomly combined with their respective blockers?
Ice cauldron is easy to explain mechanically. Tap it, pay some amount, exile a card and put a counter on it equal to the mana paid. Can only be used if it does not have a counter. Tap it, remove a counter, add the amount paid above to your mana pool, it can only be used to play the most recently exiled card. You may play any card exiled by ice cauldron as if it was in your hand.
@@kumabear5229 Terrain? You mean lands? Terrain reminds me of the card type from Wyvern back in the day. I never played but I have some cards. Is that where you're getting the card type names juxtaposed? It's so obscure, I would think not. Probably from some newer game. I used to do the same thing when I switched from Yu-Gi-Oh to MTG though with creature and monster.
I have very fond memories of my old Shaharazad deck. I won more games with that from people just giving up than me actually winning. Four Sha and a fork, we took up an entire table at our game shop at one point with five games deep. One guy just wanted to beat it and we went on for several hours. By the end, he was so stressed out. We finally make it back to the main game with me winning the subgame set and eventually the actual game. We had people occasionally just staring at us and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. After that, no one wanted to play it. I would get asked if I was playing the Shaha deck and if yes they would get up and say no.
Maybe I’m misreading it, but the ice cauldron effect makes sense to me? You store a spell and some mana on it (and tap it and put a charge counter on it), and then later you can use that mana (and also mana from other sources) to play that spell. Basically, allows you to split the casting of a spell across two different turns. Putting it “on ice” if you will. You exile the card and pay some portion of its mana cost at some point (and I guess you could also put other mana in there that can’t contribute to that card, but not sure why you would), and then later (probably on a later turn, unless you untapped it somehow, but idk why you would do this), you can finish casting the card, possibly providing more mana to it. I don’t play mtg, but the intent behind the card seems fairly clear. Seems like a neat card imo.
All of these are not difficult to understand. But you would have had to be playing in those times where they were present. BTW; I absolutely love Raging River; Chains of Mephistopheles, and Ice Cauldron. Once you learn how they work; they are excellent cards
Many of the cards are convoluted, but if you're used to the weird way they used to word cards back then, it's not very confusing. They are much less straight-forward than modern cards. It's certainly better the way they word cards now.
What is good about ice cauldron edit: nvm its basically like if you have a big spell you dont have enough mana for, put it on the cauldron then next turn when you untap you have the mana from cauldron plus your other mana
@@christianrule02 Yes. Or you can store the spell to cast later if you don't need it yet, but don't have any other good plays on that turn. This is especially useful in a game with more than 2 players where the stored spell becomes a threat that causes your enemies to harm each other instead of you. It has several uses.
@@Obversechaos Now; there is only one excemption to the cards on the list. Illusionary Mask. Not because of its text; but how many damn times they changed the rulings on it. In those times the rules were simple. At one time it was banned because WOTC could not come up with a proper ruling for it. In my opinion it should have been #1
Actually, you can ONLY use the mana that you sink into X on Ice Cauldron to cast the spell that was exiled onto Ice Cauldron, so it isn't a mana rock by any means. The Ice Counter simply represents that you have paid the mana for the spell, and that you have yet to actually cast that spell. Once it is removed, you have to pay another X for another Ice Counter, then remove it again to recast that spell. It's a pretty bad card, but it is supposed to allow you to reuse resources. Think about it like a crappy Isochron Scepter.
It can be considered a mana battery, which is a mana rock since it has potential to ramp. Ice cauldron on turn 4, pump 5 mana into it turn 5, and you have access to 11 mana for the exiled card on turn 6. And, technically, you can use it to to slowly "increase" your hand size every other turn in an extremely slow deck by using the first ability X=0 and exiling a card. Next turn tap, remove the counter, then repeat as needed. The exiled card doesn't care if ice cauldron is in play, so as long as it remains in exile it's safe. The only downside besides speed is that it is forever revealed to the opponent that you have access to that card. The above process can also be used with X=0 to protect a card from discard. It was printed at a time where Hymn to Tourach was at common and I'm sure that has come up at least once in a practical game
@@tommylanders1997 that is a really interesting analysis, and I havent had the opportunity to play with an Ice Cauldron myself- I simply read the card while it was on the video and thought that he made a mistake when describing its properties. Still, it is considerably slow and could only have one charge counter on it at a time, so the stored mana could only be used on the single spell exiled under it and once it was cast you couldn't use that spell again without exiling another copy of it from your hand. I can definitely see how it would dodge Hymn to Tourach though and that is a sweet interaction!
@@09Dragonite One last thing to note, it can only have one counter /put there by it's own effect/. If you were to, say, proliferate and use an "untap artifact" effect the cauldron can have as many counters as you please and remembers the noted mana for each. I agree that is is generally slower than your best options, but slower than the best is still pretty good in my experience.
Very nice list :) Even though I personally never thought of Phasing as complicated - to me, the mechanic made perfect sence from the moment I read what it does..
Personally, I don't think of phasing as that confusing a mechanic... but maybe that's just me Here's something I found helps to understanding phasing. When a creature phases out, it's not going anywhere, it's traveling in time to the future, and when it phases back in, your time as the player has caught up to the time of the permanent that phased out. That's why it never leaves or enters the battlefield, from the creature's perspective, it was in play the entire time, but since it time traveled into the future, it was not present for any effects that might have otherwise impacted it such as wrath effects or targeted removal. Hope that helps.
No; phasing wasn't hard to understand at all. It was simply that each turn the permanent left the battlefield until the next turn came around; then it was brought back into play. What got a lot of players in that era was if creatures with phasing returning back to the battlefield were again affected by summoning sickness. But that was not the case
Don't forget that in 1001 Arabian Nights, Shahrazad didn't just tell a new story every night, she told stories-within-stories, and stories-within-stories-within-stories, and.... you get the idea. That's the true power of this card if you're playing it in an unrestricted (home table game) format; not just the time-wasting subgame, but the subgame-within-a-subgame, repeated multiple times. A single full game of MTG could literally take hours, so it's very easy to win with this card; your opponent concedes the entire game long before anyone actually wins it. But that strategy only works once: usually your opponent tells you afterward to never play Shahrazad again against him or he will never play MTG with you again.
I LOVE Ice Cauldron, and use it in several of my EDH decks, especially Mayael Eldrazi. It serves as a way to cheat on mana costs for those big monsters, and also gives cards pseudo-flash, since you can leave your mana up until end of turn, then charge the Cauldron and use the charge to play the card "for free" on your own turn.
My favorite phasing interaction is when you tide charm a token with an equipment and the equipment is just gone forever. Quick edit here, was unaware this was changed a few years back, apparently tokens no longer state based poof away when they phase.
I like how Wall of Caltrops' flavor text starts immediately on the same line as the rules text instead of on the next line, it makes me imagine that the rules is being read off by some narrator who gets cut off mid-explanation by the character in the art going OW OW OW
Me and a small group of friends spent an hour debating how Ice Cauldron really works while tripping on shrooms. Good times. We still weren't sure at the end. :)
I always thought of phasing this way: the section of the battlefield a permanent is on, along with the permanent, is cut out and moved somewhere else temporarily-it doesn’t ‘leave the battlefield’ but that section of battlefield it’s on becomes inaccessible
For me, the most complicated card is Humility. The text box is pretty damn clear, but the possible interactions in the game are such a pain... E.g. How does it work with Enchantment-Gods?
The Enchantment Creature -- God would lose it's "ability" of not being a creature unless you have X devotion and be a creature, turning it into a 1/1 vanilla.
A friend of mine came up with an idea for shahrazad on the old-school format. You play shahrazad, then again the the sub-game, then again in the sub-sub-game, then again in the sub-sub-sub-game. When he told us, everyone in our lgs decided he'd be banned from playing shahrazad.
Spectacular video but your lack of explanation on Ice Cauldron had me wanting to say a few more things such as- 1) You can still cast the exiled cards even if Ice Cauldron is otherwise removed 2) You don't have to spend any mana to exile the card, you just have to tap Ice Cauldron 3) You can exile multiple cards with Ice Cauldron without having to play the earlier cards first This card can essentially make it impossible for your opponent to target your hand, you can exile all your cards and still cast them making them pretty much untouchable and giving this card some interesting uses.
Ponder, portent, preordain. Gitaxian probe. Dig through time, treasure cruise. Consecrated sphinx, rhystic study, phyrexian arena, sylvan library, necropotence. Brainstorm, divination, faithless looting, harmonize.. just to name a few
You think Ice Cauldron is confusing? Take a read of any creature card printed in the last few years. They’re all like this now. What ever happened to the days of Kird Ape and Serra Angel? :(
Raging River is a great example of a card that makes intuitive sense as to what it does. But the text required to put it into modern templating and make it all function within the rules and make it clear how it interacts with other things (like multiple copies) is a total nightmare.
I've actually played around with Ice Cauldron, it's actually pretty easy to understand once you cut out the procedural text so it basically reads as an artifact that stores a spell on the board rather than your hand AND can (but doesn't have to) also store mana to play that spell. What makes it neat is that you can do this at ANY time (or in response to anything) so for example putting a ton of general mana into casting an X spell at the end of your opponent's turn to put even more mana in the next turn or putting in specifically colored mana to keep it free the next turn and so on. But if you don't want to / can't pay anything, X can of course be 0 and you can still store that spell. IMO it would be a much more valued artifact if not for the confusing procedural text.
I use ice cauldron in a rosheen meanderer edh deck. It actually works incredibly well there since it allows me to bank mana into x cost spells and go off with an extremely large spell the next turn. Additionally, it can allow you to use rosheen's mana for non x cost spells, by storing the mana in the x ability of ice cauldron and using it to cast the spell later. If you want a card I play that really confuses everyone, try magnetic web. It always throws people for a loop, mostly because of the huge wall of text.
Honestly Dead Ringers (1:28) should have oracle text saying "Destroy 2 target nonblack creatures. Those creatures must be of identical color. They can't be regenerated." Does the same thing but gets around that pesky double negation.
Elegance is one of the most difficult things to achieve in game design. That is, an object that when interacted with provides emergent outcomes that are unique, deep, simple to understand yet difficult to master.
Maybe I’m the weird one here but phasing always felt kind of intuitive to me? Like I get what the designers intended for those cards and have never been confused by seeing it on a card.
Nice list! Here's my thoughts: 10 Dead Ringers--So the creatures have to have the exact same color(s) or both be colorless...but they also have to be nonblack. It wouldn't be quite so bad if it just dropped the nonblack part. 9 Remove Enchantments--Own and control, own but don't control...wha? I think I need to draw a table to figure this one out. I would put this as Number 3. 8 Time and Tide--"While it's phased out, it's treated as though it doesn't exist" (except Time and Tide somehow knows it exists. Trust us, it just works.) 7 Wall of Caltrops--The flavor text sums up my brain's reaction to that rules text. Why did it have to use the banding keyword when it could have just spelled out that you get to divide up the damage (which is the only portion of banding that is relevant for this card)? 6 Raging River--Flavorful and highly unusual, but not the hardest thing to understand conceptually. Maybe they should have dropped the exception for flying creatures. 5 Camouflage--Probably deserves to be Number 2. 4 Chains of Mephistopheles--Why do people think this is so hard? If this is on the list, Notion Thief should be too, since they apply in the exact same situations. Hmm...now that I think of it, I can see people forgetting to discard before they draw and trying to do it after, or mixing it up with the "normal" discarding in looting/rummaging effects. Still, it doesn't seem that hard to parse what it says compared to the rest of this list. 3 Shahrazad--Confusing to understand? Not really once you strip out the last two sentences that are redundant nowadays. A logistical nightmare in practice? Definitely. 2 Illusionary Mask--Probably deserves to be Number 1. That's a lot of weird edge cases, especially with morph in the mix. 1 Ice Cauldron--Conceptually not too hard to understand...you use it to split up the mana for a spell across multiple turns. It's the edge cases and logistics that really make this one tough, I think...such as, what happens to the card if the cauldron gets removed? (You can still cast it.) What happens if you proliferate the counter? (Not much, you just have to tap the cauldron an additional time to get rid of the excess counter before you can charge the cauldron with a new spell.) Does it deserve to be on the list? Probably, but I don't think it deserves to be Number 1.
How does Raging River stack with itself? I think if you have n of them, attacks and blockers get divided into 2**n "matching sets". The first RR divides into left/right. The second resolving RR also divides into left/right, but it remembers who can't block whom from the first RR-so in effect, it divides blockers into a left-then-left, left-then-right, right-then-left and right-then-right, each blocker being able to block only attackers in the same group. With three RRs, you would get LLL, LLR, LRL, LRR, RLL, RLR, RRL, RRR. So with just two RRs, if your opponent control at most three blockers they must leave one group empty; you can send your attackers there by putting all of them into whatever side has the fewest defenders. (Similarly, if you have 4 RRs and they "only" have 15 creatures, you can get all your attackers through.) That's rather crazy.
Ice Cauldron did have the record when it came out for most number of words on a text box, at 105. That said, it honestly plays really simply. Instead of paying 4GG for your spell at once, you pay 2GG this turn at the remaining 2 the next turn. That's it, that's the whole card. (Also hilarious that for all the meming people have done on Ice Cauldron's wordiness, several cards from recent years have surpassed it, largely thanks to 2-sided cards)
I'm pretty sure banding works as follows. Your two creatures attack as a band and are blocked as a band. Then, the player who controls the band assigns combat damage. So, if you have a 2/2 and a 2/3 being blocked by a 3/4, you can assign 1 damage to the 2/2 and 2 damage to your 2/3, preventing both from dying. Very confusing how they explained it though. I think the point of the mechanic was to get more creatures attacking together as a band, then blow out your opponent by assigning combat damage to a low-level threat instead of your big creature while simultaneously getting rid of their blocker.
Yeahhh, I play illusionary mask in my vintage poison snake deck (Black and Green) It actually works reaaally well! As a casual player, this is just a fun random thing thrown in there to have opponents guessing.
I was watching this going "I can't believe ice cauldron hasn't come up yet" - lol. It was in one of the first ice age packs I ever bought. I never played it once. Just figured when I was older I'd understand. I still don't.
It lets you store mana in it, but the mana can only be used to cast that spell. You can still cast the spell as normal and you can also pay mana in addition to the stored mana.
One card that I always found confusing when playing the set was Balduvian Warlord. {T}: Remove target blocking creature from combat. Creatures it was blocking that hadn't become blocked by another creature this combat become unblocked, then it blocks an attacking creature of your choice. Activate this ability only during the declare blockers step. It's not super complicated, but with how many times it says "block", it definitely made me do a few multiple reads of the card to understand it. Also, I'm surprised there wasn't even a mention of the card Ambiguity.
Ice cauldron let's you basically play the spell onto it, by paying x which is equal to said spells coverted mana cost, then you can later tap ice cauldron to play the spell whenever you want. So it's just temporarily suspending it till you want to use it. It's not complicated.
Raging River looks like a fun card. The first thing that popped into my head was have some Menace creatures on the board. This would be a great way to stay aggressive in commander.
Reading old cards you can tell Richard Garfield tried to enbody the idea of D&D into card form. Flying creatures literally fly in the game. Walls are literally walls. And art on cards do in game what they represent; rivers divide creatures. Shahrazad just like in her story delaying her husband from killing her, is delaying the game. The mechanics being interrupted literally is so smart, only few cards still do this now but love them, like 'Blow Your House Down'
Camouflage reads like they wanted to give it the effect as described but they found out that's too powerful, so they decided to errata it via oracle text.
I have actually been using Time and Tide very recently. A buddy of mine has been using Teferi's Protection as his signature spell in a Gideon Ally of Zendikar oathbreaker deck. Abusing Time and Tide is the only way I can force him to even have a board.
You completely misunderstood what ice culdron does. Long story short, it puts a spell on layaway. I could pay 5 mana for its effect on turn 5 and exile ulamog, next turn I tap it, add 5 mana and cast ulamog tapping only 6 lands this turn. It's a pretty cool card, with a really cool effect.
Your explanation on Ice Cauldron is wrong. The mana it creates can only be used in the exiled card. In other words, the use of IC is to divide the cost of a card over two turns. You can exile a Ulamog with 5 mana then the next turn use the caudron to cast it and pay the other 5 mana as the caudron will give back the mana used the last turn. Its not a very good card, but it does have some uses
Possibility Storm is one of my favorite cards of all time. However, it can be tricky to understand and explain to newer players. Honorable mention to Knowledge Pool for being such a funky card
I play platinum angel and Abyssal Persecutor so that both players can not lose or win the game then I play Thousand-Year Storm, and get the storm count up to 10 and cast 10 copies of shahrazad.
If your opponent cannot lose the game, does that (technically) mean they can't even forfeit?
Jason A player can ALWAYS concede.
@@wanderinghistorian conceding is the one thing that breaks the Golden Rule and overrides card text.
gabe juhasz: That's evil, you're a horrible person, and it's so beautiful. But remember, I'm pretty sure timestamping will rule over which effect takes priority, so unless you Tooth and Nailed both creatures onto the battlefield at the same time, one ability might override the other's.
@@keiyakins we just need to have a card that disables the rule that the "conceding rule" cannot be disabled, THEN disables the "conceding rule".
Jesus. Camouflage is a mess with that Oracle text. I can actually understand the original text just fine.
@@chaossquall In a sense yes. But with camouflage; they still remained the same power; toughness, and their abilities. It was just to randomize the blocks and make your opponent sweat when choosing which one to block with what
The other problem with the old text is that the defender "block" with some creatures, and then "impossible block are cancelled", which causes a lot of stupid problem if you have an effect that trigger on blocking, or target blocking creatures.
While the new text say that the defender "assign pile of creatures to the attacker", and "creatures in those pile than can block have to block". Which is works better since you don't have to roll-back anything.
I can see why it was changed though. In the original case, it would flip up morphs and/or be able to do nothing and be cast at any time.
The original text is very unclear what happens to Auras or Equipments 1+/+1 counters and so on.
chaossquall: Morph came about because of the Rules Team's attempts to fully codify and update the Gatherer text for Camouflage and Illusionary Mask.
Richard Garfield likes to put mini-games in his games.
Sometimes that lead to fun gameplay, other times in causes this mess.
Just like real magic
Insert starlord's "gonna make some weird ..." meme
I remember showing my husband my old cards. "What's banding?" He asked. I tried to explain it. The best I could do...
"Uhmmm... It's... You... Nevermind. You'll never use it."
It's really not difficult
@@foca7550 Yeah you can just have them play Shandalar or something
10:20 actually she started a new story every night and finished it in the next day so her husband would not kill her because he was curious how the story would end.
Not so much finish, as start a new nested story each time he came to her for a story.
@@sdfkjghYup, and (1) Shahrazad herself is part of the nested stories, which was the whole joke of the book and (2) is the whole reason the card makes sense.
I like the way Ice Cauldron works. You pay X, exile a Banefire, then on your next turn you tap it to get that X back and you can then make even more mana for X and make your banefire more massive.
It's the single most roundabout way to make your X spells bigger and I love it.
Yeah, the way it is written is super complicated, but it makes sense once you understand what they were trying to do. You put a spell in the cauldron along with some or all of the mana to cast that spell. On a later turn, you can use that mana as well as more mana if needed to cast that spell. It’s great for casting a spell that takes more mana than you have land or if you just want to pay now and use it later.
I do often like these opinionated videos, nice touch.
Now gimme top 10 vintage cards or I'll be forced to reprint all these cards!
I guess he could put the power 9 in one slot and do 9 other interesting cards
Fun fact: The Spanish version of Dead Ringers actually added reminder text to explain what the hell they meant. I don't know if this was true of any other translation but it was a nice touch.
Remove Enchantments is one of those cards that's confusing because someone wanted to go for a specific flavor.
It removes all of the Enchantments IN YOUR REALM. That's why it only effects your opponent's attacking creatures. Basically, everything in your kingdom, including invaders, has their enchantments removed.
this is the first sensible explanation of Remove Enchantments i've ever seen
I may be the only one that thinks the original text is a little easier to understand than the oracle...
I used Ice Cauldron and Illusionary Mask in my "Seven Lines of Text" deck. Aside from basics, every card had at least seven lines of text and most were very confusing for my opponents. Usually, I'd get a concession in a few turns.
I never really found these cards that confusing. I guess it's because I took the time to use them.
A lot of these cards are simpler conceptually than they are in terms of wording. Despite the mess of text that appears on Ice Cauldron, it's actually a pretty simple card in what it does; it lets you pay for a single spell across two turns.
Also, good job Oracle text on making Camouflage infinitely more confusing.
Exactly on both. Camouflage wasn't hard to understand at all. It just randomized the blocking and made your opponent sweat when choosing blockers because they didn't know what creature was what
And ice cauldron was awesome if you were using large removal spells so you still had a spell on the back burner
The thing is if remove enchantments was in modern it would actually be insane in Bogles. Think about it: it protects all your enchantments from board wipes for 1 mana at instant speed, it’s an incredible combat trick against the mirror: say you have some Bogle on Bogle violence in combat, your opponent has a super buff Bogle and you have a Bogle with only 1 or 2 auras. You can ensure they trade in combat by removing all the auras and since your auras go back to your hand you get straight up card advantage from a 1 mana instant in WHITE! This basically gives all your auras the last text of rancor. You know what now I wanna build Bogles if remove enchantments is a common I’m brewing green white Bogles.
For pauper. I forgot to mention it’s for pauper
Number 9 actually seems like a pretty sweet sideboard for Boogles in pauper.
Precisely. It was used to combat a deck in those times called the "Flying mutation" deck. Flying men:1/1 flyer for 1 blue. Unstable mutation:enchanted creature gets +3 +3. During each upkeep; put a -1 -1 counter on the creature...also 1 blue. It was a terrifying duo since also in that time you weren't restricted to only having 4 of a certain card in a deck except if it was restricted by WOTC
The letters on my "goblin game" card are starting to ware off from all the ppl reading it over and over again
I feel like Goblin Game can squeeze onto this list somewhere
I was expecting to see it here too especially how much he ranted about how "complex" it is in one of his previous videos
It's complex but not confusing imo
I will ALWAYS like your subjective lists. Because you spend a good amount of time diving into the cards I've never heard of and MtG continuing to surprise me is one of the reason it owns a portion of my brain space. Keep it up.
I've always liked Raging River since I found out about it, and it made sense to me at least. You basically make two separate battlefields for combat. I even think the Oracle text makes it more confusing.
I think it's one of the best flavored card printed. A card that would never come out today.
The best part about Scheherazade is that you can cast one in your subgame, leading to layers and layers of subgames. Then when you go back to your main game you can cast the card if you have extra copies/ways to enable flashback.
Ice cauldron. Because nobody got time for that.
Prototype for suspend
@@Ouja to be fair suspend is still kinda complicated. Took me a while to explain to someone that I can stifle the third ability.
Ice Cauldron is at least good for casting a spell over the course of two turns. For instance, you could put 3UU into it, exile Omniscience, then next turn pay the other 4U and cast Omniscience off the Cauldron. Doesn't make it any less confusing.
I used to use Ice Cauldron to store mana in order to cast spells with X in their casting cost, usually red damage cards. I don't think they took this into account when they made the card. It was quite overpowered back then.
I was just thinking that Ice Cauldron sounds incredibly good for casting expensive spells
bascially fortell
It’s also useful to save a card in a pinch if your opponent tries to make you discard. Like, if they use Duress or a wheel effect and you have your wincon or something else you just really can’t afford to not cast, you can exile it in response. The Cauldron lets you play the card as long as it’s exiled, whether Cauldron is still on the field or not, so the only risk to exiling it is that your opponents gain some info on a card you have.
Raging River actually seems cool and pretty good. I might throw it in a commander deck both to confuse my opponents and to make some big creatures have some “evasion”
It was last printed in unlimited, is on the reserved list, and it's average market price is about $110. So unless you have it already it seems like a silly thing to buy. I traded a mox diamond for one back in 2000 and I'm still an idiot for making that trade.
agentofashcroft Ouch. Yeah that would sting for years to come. And if that’s the price then I’m afraid my master plan will have to fall into the shadows
Still have one in my commander deck. The people I used it on now want one of their own lol
I'm probably gonna ask my friends if I can proxy it. It's such a goofy effect but obviously not worth it
Imma throw everyone of these 10 into a commander deck.
Another idea you could do is a Top 10 list of cards whose original text does not hold up well nowadays.
One card that comes to mind for me is the original Rukh Egg printing from Arabian Nights that needed an entire paragraph printed on the card to basically explain what a token is.
Alot of the first introductions of the mechanic do that
Genuinely surprised Animate Dead didn’t make this list. This are some very interesting cards and I’m glad you made this video.
I totally ran Animate Dead in a deck WAY back in the day.
Animate Dead: A bad, black mana death ward.
@@macjones6394 Animate Dead is a great reanimator. 2 mana for any creature in a graveyard and the big downside is -1/-0, that's nothing.
There should totally be a morph flip card. It would be perfect
with phasing
HAHAHAHAHA, you both are SOBs... ;-)
I want a double faced card with morph which is a flip card on both sides, but Maro says that’s an 11 on the Storm Scale.
I want a card with morph, the flip from Innistrad and the flip from Kamigawa on both sides
Wait. How would a flip card work with illusionary mask?
I knew Camouflage had to be on here.
I get why the text was changed, (Morph, etc.), but BOY is that errata text confusing. One of the few times the errata text actually makes the card MORE confusing and less easy to understand.
AAAND that's what makes Camouflage my favourite "Worst" card!
I played shahrazad...
My friend at the time also played shahrazed
Four turns later I played my second shahrazed
First card my friend plays after that turn was there second shahrazed
This went on until both of our 4 copies of shahrazed where all use so we where playing like...
A game within a game within a game within a game within a game within a game within a game within a game of magic
I about spit out my food. LMAO
And THAT is why old school magic was so damn cool!
Personally I like phasing and I'm glad it's returned in some aspects of MTG.. it really isn't all that confusing, at least when compared to banding.
Yeah there are only 3 cards with phasing that are any good though and 2 of them are Teferi related. Oubliette, Teferi's Protection, and Teferi, Time Raveler as far as I know.
Before the list- Chains of Mephistopheles?
Also; not too hard to understand imo. I run 2 in my legacy deck. In a nutshell; any card a player draws beyond the first must first discard a card before drawing it or must mill a card from their library if they have no cards in hand
Recon 0326 Not quite, excluding the first card a player draws on their draw step, any time they would draw a card...
Essential any time you would draw a card other than the one you’re required to draw by the core rules if the game you have to discard or mill, which is important if you would draw on your upkeep or someone else’s turn.
It’s also important to be aware all card draw us done individually. So if something says ‘draw two cards,’ you discard, draw, discard, draw; you don’t discard two, draw two.
Finally the discard effects stack, but the mill doesn’t.
@@Welverin Correct. That was what I was trying to say. Let's take a card for example: brainstorm. If chains is on the battlefield and you have already drawn your card for your draw step; then you cast brainstorm, before you can draw those three cards, you must first discard for each one drawn. Then you still have to put two back on top of your library. It essentially punishes harshly decks that rely on card draw
@@Recon-cv1fe I figured, but I wanted to clarify for others. It's not hard once you get it, but getting there...
It's great fun stopping other people from drawing cards, I actually locked someone out of the game with it and Anvil of Bogardan once. Admittedly I didn't even realize I could before that, he went through his draw phase and said 'I can't do anything.'
@@Welverin Eesh. That's a nasty duo there. Beside the concedement; how did you win that? Because chains affects both players. Did you have a creature on the battlefield or was it just "we go until one of us runs out of cards in our libraries" ?
Imagine playing against Shahrazad imprinted on Panoptic Mirror. Happened to me once... and I lost.
That would be three very long games lmao
Still sounds faster and a lot more fun than playing against a Nexus of Fate deck...
No, imagine 4 X Shahrazas plus 4 X Soulfire Grand Master, in a deck full of lifegain...that is the dream.
Where the hell is word of command?
Word of command wasn't complicated though. You got to gain control of an opponents turn and play it for him. Not too confusing imo
@@Recon-cv1fe The intent of the card is very simple but the oracle text, to make the card function under modern rules, is extraordinarily complicated.
@@maskedfox5440 Oracle text seems to ruin stuff sometimes lol
You have never had an opponent exile a card from your hand to Force of Will or Misdirection their resolving Word of Command then. Or have them play the wrong land for you on your upkeep (or any other timing nightmare)
Or have a judge call on the card, with a judge not already familiar with it@@Recon-cv1fe
I think you explained Ice Cauldron a little wrong. You dont have to pay the cost of the card when exiling it, you can pay part of the cost, none of it, or more than it when you first tap it. You get to cast the card from Exile no matter what (even if Ice Cauldron gets removed) but can tap the ice cauldron for the mana you spent to tap it before. This sorta lets you split up card costs between turns, or set up a sorcery speed play during an end step using available mana.
Not super good, but nothing else does what it does.
You can still play the exiled spell even if ice cauldron is removed? This surprises me, because the text says to put the spell “on” ice cauldron. However, I don’t play mtg, so that could be why I’m surprised.
So, if you could cheaply bounce it to your hand and play it again repeatedly, could you hypothetically use this card to make a really big set of cards that you can play as if in your hand, but which don’t contribute to your hand size? That’d be quite something..
@@drdca8263 the card being exiled is in the oracle text, which this is the one card he chose not to show it for.
as for using it to make a set of cards you can cast that aren't in your hand, yes, that would work, it also works if you have a way to repeatedly untap it, though it takes more steps. you use it's first ability paying 0, then untap it somehow, use it's second ability to add 0 mana, then untap it again and you can exile another card. the second ability doesn't require you to cast or get rid of the exiled card, it just restricts the mana you create to only be usable on that card.
you forgot about Goblin Game. I remember playing it in Commander and people were confused on how it even worked.
That one is one I can give you on confusion level. I remember that card well. If I remember correctly it was banned for a time because people just didn't get it edit: and it delayed the game
Camouflage was obviously changed because face-down became an actual game mechanic in Morph. That would've lead to some weird interactions.
It honestly wasn't that confusing until Oracle messed it up. It just randomized blind blocks
I think I figured out ice cauldron!
Ok, so since you can activate ice cauldron's first ability at instant speed, it serves two purposes:
First, storing the leftover Mana from your opponent's end step, at the cost of declaring what card you're going to use it on. This can be a card whose Mana cost is more than what you paid into X. Think, you play the cauldron on turn 4, on turn five you draw Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, play a land, and end turn. On your opponent's end step, you pay 5 Mana for X, exile Ulamog, start up your turn, play a land, and cast Ulamog, on turn six.
The other purpose is to temporarily protect a card in your hand. After all, it can't be discarded or exiled from your hand if it's not there when the spell or effect resolves.
Holy crap... That feels very not useless lol.
Ice cauldron just seems confusing, it literally just stores a spell and the needed mana for casting it. After that you just kinda "release" the spell from the cauldron at the time you seem adequate.
The Cauldron is much better than it seems....if used in a certain way.
Specifically, you spend zero on X. This effectively give you an "extra hand". Even if the Cauldron leaves the battle field you can still play the cards in your "extra hand".
So you pay zero, tap, then exile a card. Next turn tap add zero mana AND do nothing with that zero mana. Next turn pay zero, tap, exile a card. Rinse and repeat.
Works very good with Ensnaring Bridge and hellbent.
Grendel Nin What about the “use this ability only if there are no charge counters on Ice Cauldron” line? Don’t you have to get rid of the charge counter before you can use it to store another card?
drdca
Yes.
Turn 1) tap/pay *zero*: exile a card.
Turn 2) tap/remove the charge counter: add *zero* mana.
Turn 3) tap/pay *zero*: exile a card.
Rinse and repeat.
I do enjoy these subjective Top 10's
the thing about ice cauldron is...it is really good with X spells like braingeyser or fireball. at end of your opponent's turn you can set it up for your turn. if you put a braingeyser with a charge counter for 5 mana on the cauldron at the end of their turn, during your turn you can geyser for at least 3 cards, but usually 7 or more (you can add more mana to X when you cast the geyser). not exactly amazing, but not entirely useless either ;)
It's also great for board wipes like armageddon and wrath of god. Put a creature in the cauldron if it's full mana cost was paid; wipe the board with wrath of God, then you got a creature ready to play
Pot of Greed.
KingToll bUt WhAt DoEs It Do
@@nicholasmays4257 GreED ur Pot
Lmao but that's cheese though. A lot of the silver border cards are meant to be confusing. Look at "bureaucracy". That thing confused the hell out of people lmao
Nicholas Mays draw three cards
Imagine playing wall of caltrops and another wall with illusionary mask, and then attacking with them using camouflage!
How do Camouflage and the Raging River interact? You have two piles of creatures, and creatures of each of these will be randomly combined with their respective blockers?
@@gregorwinkels6278 The blocks would be completely random if any happen.
Before: Scrambleverse is definitely going to be in the list
After: oh shit nevermind
Ice cauldron is easy to explain mechanically.
Tap it, pay some amount, exile a card and put a counter on it equal to the mana paid. Can only be used if it does not have a counter.
Tap it, remove a counter, add the amount paid above to your mana pool, it can only be used to play the most recently exiled card.
You may play any card exiled by ice cauldron as if it was in your hand.
@@kumabear5229 Terrain? You mean lands? Terrain reminds me of the card type from Wyvern back in the day. I never played but I have some cards. Is that where you're getting the card type names juxtaposed? It's so obscure, I would think not. Probably from some newer game. I used to do the same thing when I switched from Yu-Gi-Oh to MTG though with creature and monster.
I have very fond memories of my old Shaharazad deck. I won more games with that from people just giving up than me actually winning. Four Sha and a fork, we took up an entire table at our game shop at one point with five games deep. One guy just wanted to beat it and we went on for several hours. By the end, he was so stressed out. We finally make it back to the main game with me winning the subgame set and eventually the actual game. We had people occasionally just staring at us and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. After that, no one wanted to play it. I would get asked if I was playing the Shaha deck and if yes they would get up and say no.
Maybe I’m misreading it, but the ice cauldron effect makes sense to me? You store a spell and some mana on it (and tap it and put a charge counter on it), and then later you can use that mana (and also mana from other sources) to play that spell.
Basically, allows you to split the casting of a spell across two different turns. Putting it “on ice” if you will.
You exile the card and pay some portion of its mana cost at some point (and I guess you could also put other mana in there that can’t contribute to that card, but not sure why you would), and then later (probably on a later turn, unless you untapped it somehow, but idk why you would do this), you can finish casting the card, possibly providing more mana to it.
I don’t play mtg, but the intent behind the card seems fairly clear.
Seems like a neat card imo.
These cards make my head hurt! Fantastic video! 😃
All of these are not difficult to understand. But you would have had to be playing in those times where they were present. BTW; I absolutely love Raging River; Chains of Mephistopheles, and Ice Cauldron. Once you learn how they work; they are excellent cards
Many of the cards are convoluted, but if you're used to the weird way they used to word cards back then, it's not very confusing. They are much less straight-forward than modern cards. It's certainly better the way they word cards now.
What is good about ice cauldron edit: nvm its basically like if you have a big spell you dont have enough mana for, put it on the cauldron then next turn when you untap you have the mana from cauldron plus your other mana
@@christianrule02 Yes. Or you can store the spell to cast later if you don't need it yet, but don't have any other good plays on that turn. This is especially useful in a game with more than 2 players where the stored spell becomes a threat that causes your enemies to harm each other instead of you. It has several uses.
@@Obversechaos Exactly. Very underrated and misunderstood card
@@Obversechaos Now; there is only one excemption to the cards on the list. Illusionary Mask. Not because of its text; but how many damn times they changed the rulings on it. In those times the rules were simple. At one time it was banned because WOTC could not come up with a proper ruling for it. In my opinion it should have been #1
that river card could actually be really really good
Actually, you can ONLY use the mana that you sink into X on Ice Cauldron to cast the spell that was exiled onto Ice Cauldron, so it isn't a mana rock by any means. The Ice Counter simply represents that you have paid the mana for the spell, and that you have yet to actually cast that spell. Once it is removed, you have to pay another X for another Ice Counter, then remove it again to recast that spell. It's a pretty bad card, but it is supposed to allow you to reuse resources. Think about it like a crappy Isochron Scepter.
It can be considered a mana battery, which is a mana rock since it has potential to ramp.
Ice cauldron on turn 4, pump 5 mana into it turn 5, and you have access to 11 mana for the exiled card on turn 6.
And, technically, you can use it to to slowly "increase" your hand size every other turn in an extremely slow deck by using the first ability X=0 and exiling a card. Next turn tap, remove the counter, then repeat as needed. The exiled card doesn't care if ice cauldron is in play, so as long as it remains in exile it's safe. The only downside besides speed is that it is forever revealed to the opponent that you have access to that card.
The above process can also be used with X=0 to protect a card from discard. It was printed at a time where Hymn to Tourach was at common and I'm sure that has come up at least once in a practical game
@@tommylanders1997 that is a really interesting analysis, and I havent had the opportunity to play with an Ice Cauldron myself- I simply read the card while it was on the video and thought that he made a mistake when describing its properties. Still, it is considerably slow and could only have one charge counter on it at a time, so the stored mana could only be used on the single spell exiled under it and once it was cast you couldn't use that spell again without exiling another copy of it from your hand. I can definitely see how it would dodge Hymn to Tourach though and that is a sweet interaction!
@@09Dragonite One last thing to note, it can only have one counter /put there by it's own effect/. If you were to, say, proliferate and use an "untap artifact" effect the cauldron can have as many counters as you please and remembers the noted mana for each.
I agree that is is generally slower than your best options, but slower than the best is still pretty good in my experience.
Very nice list :) Even though I personally never thought of Phasing as complicated - to me, the mechanic made perfect sence from the moment I read what it does..
Ice Cauldron actually seems really powerful. If you cast the spell attached to the cauldron, does the spell stay attached, or is it discarded?
Personally, I don't think of phasing as that confusing a mechanic... but maybe that's just me
Here's something I found helps to understanding phasing. When a creature phases out, it's not going anywhere, it's traveling in time to the future, and when it phases back in, your time as the player has caught up to the time of the permanent that phased out. That's why it never leaves or enters the battlefield, from the creature's perspective, it was in play the entire time, but since it time traveled into the future, it was not present for any effects that might have otherwise impacted it such as wrath effects or targeted removal.
Hope that helps.
No; phasing wasn't hard to understand at all. It was simply that each turn the permanent left the battlefield until the next turn came around; then it was brought back into play. What got a lot of players in that era was if creatures with phasing returning back to the battlefield were again affected by summoning sickness. But that was not the case
Don't forget that in 1001 Arabian Nights, Shahrazad didn't just tell a new story every night, she told stories-within-stories, and stories-within-stories-within-stories, and.... you get the idea. That's the true power of this card if you're playing it in an unrestricted (home table game) format; not just the time-wasting subgame, but the subgame-within-a-subgame, repeated multiple times. A single full game of MTG could literally take hours, so it's very easy to win with this card; your opponent concedes the entire game long before anyone actually wins it. But that strategy only works once: usually your opponent tells you afterward to never play Shahrazad again against him or he will never play MTG with you again.
I LOVE Ice Cauldron, and use it in several of my EDH decks, especially Mayael Eldrazi. It serves as a way to cheat on mana costs for those big monsters, and also gives cards pseudo-flash, since you can leave your mana up until end of turn, then charge the Cauldron and use the charge to play the card "for free" on your own turn.
There’s a particular episode of Vikings which makes Raging River super intuitive.
Ok now I want to run Time and Tide to beat a Teferi's Protection
oh my god i suggested this video and it showed up on your channel. i am the happiest.
I think the rest of magic, including mechanics such as face up/down, transforming, mutating, are just as confusing as phasing/banding if not more.
Had to share this with my Local magic group. Some of these cards are older than those poor kids lol
Oh wow something different. This is an awesome idea. Do more of this.
I do subjective lists from time to time, you can find more on my playlist!
@@NizzahonMagic Will definitely do. Please bring back the history of band and restrictions series. Loved everything about it.
My favorite phasing interaction is when you tide charm a token with an equipment and the equipment is just gone forever.
Quick edit here, was unaware this was changed a few years back, apparently tokens no longer state based poof away when they phase.
I should make a deck with these
You're a sadist...and I love it
I like how Wall of Caltrops' flavor text starts immediately on the same line as the rules text instead of on the next line, it makes me imagine that the rules is being read off by some narrator who gets cut off mid-explanation by the character in the art going OW OW OW
Me and a small group of friends spent an hour debating how Ice Cauldron really works while tripping on shrooms. Good times. We still weren't sure at the end. :)
I always thought of phasing this way: the section of the battlefield a permanent is on, along with the permanent, is cut out and moved somewhere else temporarily-it doesn’t ‘leave the battlefield’ but that section of battlefield it’s on becomes inaccessible
THANK you, so validating that I wasn't the only one completely stumped by Dead Ringers.
Ice Cauldron, so confusing that my local shop handed them to me and said, "Take these! no you don't have to pay for them."
For me, the most complicated card is Humility. The text box is pretty damn clear, but the possible interactions in the game are such a pain... E.g. How does it work with Enchantment-Gods?
The Enchantment Creature -- God would lose it's "ability" of not being a creature unless you have X devotion and be a creature, turning it into a 1/1 vanilla.
A friend of mine came up with an idea for shahrazad on the old-school format. You play shahrazad, then again the the sub-game, then again in the sub-sub-game, then again in the sub-sub-sub-game. When he told us, everyone in our lgs decided he'd be banned from playing shahrazad.
Spectacular video but your lack of explanation on Ice Cauldron had me wanting to say a few more things such as-
1) You can still cast the exiled cards even if Ice Cauldron is otherwise removed
2) You don't have to spend any mana to exile the card, you just have to tap Ice Cauldron
3) You can exile multiple cards with Ice Cauldron without having to play the earlier cards first
This card can essentially make it impossible for your opponent to target your hand, you can exile all your cards and still cast them making them pretty much untouchable and giving this card some interesting uses.
Top 10 cards that draw cards from your library would be awesome!!
Ponder, portent, preordain. Gitaxian probe. Dig through time, treasure cruise. Consecrated sphinx, rhystic study, phyrexian arena, sylvan library, necropotence. Brainstorm, divination, faithless looting, harmonize.. just to name a few
Derek Walter You forgot about the most obvious one: Ancestral Recall
@@melvinfz0301 Oh, I didn't forget. I left it out because for the average player it is unobtainable.
@@melvinfz0301 A lot have forgotten others like braingeyser; prosperity, necrologia, yawgmoths bargain...the list is indeed long
You think Ice Cauldron is confusing? Take a read of any creature card printed in the last few years. They’re all like this now. What ever happened to the days of Kird Ape and Serra Angel? :(
Raging River is a great example of a card that makes intuitive sense as to what it does. But the text required to put it into modern templating and make it all function within the rules and make it clear how it interacts with other things (like multiple copies) is a total nightmare.
I've actually played around with Ice Cauldron, it's actually pretty easy to understand once you cut out the procedural text so it basically reads as an artifact that stores a spell on the board rather than your hand AND can (but doesn't have to) also store mana to play that spell. What makes it neat is that you can do this at ANY time (or in response to anything) so for example putting a ton of general mana into casting an X spell at the end of your opponent's turn to put even more mana in the next turn or putting in specifically colored mana to keep it free the next turn and so on. But if you don't want to / can't pay anything, X can of course be 0 and you can still store that spell.
IMO it would be a much more valued artifact if not for the confusing procedural text.
I use ice cauldron in a rosheen meanderer edh deck. It actually works incredibly well there since it allows me to bank mana into x cost spells and go off with an extremely large spell the next turn. Additionally, it can allow you to use rosheen's mana for non x cost spells, by storing the mana in the x ability of ice cauldron and using it to cast the spell later. If you want a card I play that really confuses everyone, try magnetic web. It always throws people for a loop, mostly because of the huge wall of text.
7:01 Haha Camouflage would be soo fun to use, and for only one green. Ohh but what about a Raging River Camouflage Combo!
Done it before lol
Honestly Dead Ringers (1:28) should have oracle text saying "Destroy 2 target nonblack creatures. Those creatures must be of identical color. They can't be regenerated." Does the same thing but gets around that pesky double negation.
Elegance is one of the most difficult things to achieve in game design. That is, an object that when interacted with provides emergent outcomes that are unique, deep, simple to understand yet difficult to master.
Camouflage you don't know what you are blocking until the last second when you cannot change your mind
Even though I don't think it's confusing at all, I frequently play "Timesifter", and my opponents always have to read it multiple times.
Maybe I’m the weird one here but phasing always felt kind of intuitive to me? Like I get what the designers intended for those cards and have never been confused by seeing it on a card.
Back in the day we used to just ignore whenever phasing was written on a card, we could never figure it out.
Raging river is easy to understand and seems pretty cool as well!
Nice list! Here's my thoughts:
10 Dead Ringers--So the creatures have to have the exact same color(s) or both be colorless...but they also have to be nonblack. It wouldn't be quite so bad if it just dropped the nonblack part.
9 Remove Enchantments--Own and control, own but don't control...wha? I think I need to draw a table to figure this one out. I would put this as Number 3.
8 Time and Tide--"While it's phased out, it's treated as though it doesn't exist" (except Time and Tide somehow knows it exists. Trust us, it just works.)
7 Wall of Caltrops--The flavor text sums up my brain's reaction to that rules text. Why did it have to use the banding keyword when it could have just spelled out that you get to divide up the damage (which is the only portion of banding that is relevant for this card)?
6 Raging River--Flavorful and highly unusual, but not the hardest thing to understand conceptually. Maybe they should have dropped the exception for flying creatures.
5 Camouflage--Probably deserves to be Number 2.
4 Chains of Mephistopheles--Why do people think this is so hard? If this is on the list, Notion Thief should be too, since they apply in the exact same situations. Hmm...now that I think of it, I can see people forgetting to discard before they draw and trying to do it after, or mixing it up with the "normal" discarding in looting/rummaging effects. Still, it doesn't seem that hard to parse what it says compared to the rest of this list.
3 Shahrazad--Confusing to understand? Not really once you strip out the last two sentences that are redundant nowadays. A logistical nightmare in practice? Definitely.
2 Illusionary Mask--Probably deserves to be Number 1. That's a lot of weird edge cases, especially with morph in the mix.
1 Ice Cauldron--Conceptually not too hard to understand...you use it to split up the mana for a spell across multiple turns. It's the edge cases and logistics that really make this one tough, I think...such as, what happens to the card if the cauldron gets removed? (You can still cast it.) What happens if you proliferate the counter? (Not much, you just have to tap the cauldron an additional time to get rid of the excess counter before you can charge the cauldron with a new spell.) Does it deserve to be on the list? Probably, but I don't think it deserves to be Number 1.
How does Raging River stack with itself? I think if you have n of them, attacks and blockers get divided into 2**n "matching sets".
The first RR divides into left/right. The second resolving RR also divides into left/right, but it remembers who can't block whom from the first RR-so in effect, it divides blockers into a left-then-left, left-then-right, right-then-left and right-then-right, each blocker being able to block only attackers in the same group. With three RRs, you would get LLL, LLR, LRL, LRR, RLL, RLR, RRL, RRR.
So with just two RRs, if your opponent control at most three blockers they must leave one group empty; you can send your attackers there by putting all of them into whatever side has the fewest defenders. (Similarly, if you have 4 RRs and they "only" have 15 creatures, you can get all your attackers through.)
That's rather crazy.
Ice Cauldron did have the record when it came out for most number of words on a text box, at 105. That said, it honestly plays really simply. Instead of paying 4GG for your spell at once, you pay 2GG this turn at the remaining 2 the next turn. That's it, that's the whole card.
(Also hilarious that for all the meming people have done on Ice Cauldron's wordiness, several cards from recent years have surpassed it, largely thanks to 2-sided cards)
I'm pretty sure banding works as follows. Your two creatures attack as a band and are blocked as a band. Then, the player who controls the band assigns combat damage. So, if you have a 2/2 and a 2/3 being blocked by a 3/4, you can assign 1 damage to the 2/2 and 2 damage to your 2/3, preventing both from dying. Very confusing how they explained it though. I think the point of the mechanic was to get more creatures attacking together as a band, then blow out your opponent by assigning combat damage to a low-level threat instead of your big creature while simultaneously getting rid of their blocker.
Yeahhh, I play illusionary mask in my vintage poison snake deck (Black and Green)
It actually works reaaally well! As a casual player, this is just a fun random thing thrown in there to have opponents guessing.
A few years back I built a deck around Raging River and Camouflage. It was a lot of fun to play with.
I was watching this going "I can't believe ice cauldron hasn't come up yet" - lol.
It was in one of the first ice age packs I ever bought. I never played it once. Just figured when I was older I'd understand. I still don't.
Ice Cauldron is nice for Eldrazi.
It lets you store mana in it, but the mana can only be used to cast that spell. You can still cast the spell as normal and you can also pay mana in addition to the stored mana.
One card that I always found confusing when playing the set was Balduvian Warlord. {T}: Remove target blocking creature from combat. Creatures it was blocking that hadn't become blocked by another creature this combat become unblocked, then it blocks an attacking creature of your choice. Activate this ability only during the declare blockers step.
It's not super complicated, but with how many times it says "block", it definitely made me do a few multiple reads of the card to understand it.
Also, I'm surprised there wasn't even a mention of the card Ambiguity.
Un cards were inelligible
Ice cauldron let's you basically play the spell onto it, by paying x which is equal to said spells coverted mana cost, then you can later tap ice cauldron to play the spell whenever you want. So it's just temporarily suspending it till you want to use it. It's not complicated.
Raging River looks like a fun card. The first thing that popped into my head was have some Menace creatures on the board. This would be a great way to stay aggressive in commander.
Reading old cards you can tell Richard Garfield tried to enbody the idea of D&D into card form. Flying creatures literally fly in the game. Walls are literally walls. And art on cards do in game what they represent; rivers divide creatures. Shahrazad just like in her story delaying her husband from killing her, is delaying the game. The mechanics being interrupted literally is so smart, only few cards still do this now but love them, like 'Blow Your House Down'
Camouflage reads like they wanted to give it the effect as described but they found out that's too powerful, so they decided to errata it via oracle text.
This made my Dyslexia amp up on a whole new level
I have actually been using Time and Tide very recently. A buddy of mine has been using Teferi's Protection as his signature spell in a Gideon Ally of Zendikar oathbreaker deck. Abusing Time and Tide is the only way I can force him to even have a board.
You completely misunderstood what ice culdron does. Long story short, it puts a spell on layaway. I could pay 5 mana for its effect on turn 5 and exile ulamog, next turn I tap it, add 5 mana and cast ulamog tapping only 6 lands this turn. It's a pretty cool card, with a really cool effect.
Time to make a Jeksai EDH deck with Thousand Year Storm and Sharazad. I can't lose the game if there is an infinite paradox of games!
I was laughing through the whole list as I read through the text of each card and glimpsed the Oracle text.
Your explanation on Ice Cauldron is wrong. The mana it creates can only be used in the exiled card. In other words, the use of IC is to divide the cost of a card over two turns. You can exile a Ulamog with 5 mana then the next turn use the caudron to cast it and pay the other 5 mana as the caudron will give back the mana used the last turn.
Its not a very good card, but it does have some uses
Possibility Storm is one of my favorite cards of all time. However, it can be tricky to understand and explain to newer players.
Honorable mention to Knowledge Pool for being such a funky card
Possibility storm's first part is slightly confusing for most.
camouflage is so funny. the original text is actually extremely easy to understand.