He should not have fetched yet! Land play yes: fetch: no You could draw and discard a Bloodghast with the burning Inquiry and trigger it from the grave.
Sorry, but I don't understand your answer. He should have casted the exact same cards that he did in the example. Use the mountain to play the burning inquiry . He should just have not fetched yet.
Not letting him get Flamewake Pheonix back from graveyard, which is another body and more power on board to hit opponent with. Mallwan is right, best play is play the fetch, burning inquiry, drop 3 random cards, one of which is statistically likely to be something of value going to grave (be it bloodghast or pheonix). If you have a pheonix in the graveyard, you need to pay 1 red to revive it at start of combat. Casting both yes, you now have a 6/2 adept, but no way to bring pheonix back, which would be 8 power hitting them instead of 6, because the pheonix has haste, however you wasted mana on an irrelevant-at-the-moment Faithless Looting when you had all but guaranteed something good was going to be in the graveyard with just the burning inquiry. If you managed to pitch a bloodghast, you would crack the fetch to get the landfall trigger to bring back bloodghast. If you pitched the pheonix, you need the 1 extra mana to bring it back.
Lantern Control exemplifies Magic to me. There is only a finite amount of fun to be had in any given game of Magic, and by harnessing the power of jank uncommons, you can monopolize that fun. Foil out the deck and triple sleeve in waifu sleeves to ensure maximum tear collection.
ccggenius12 I could only agree more if you also mentioned how lantern control perfectly represents the unexpected results that can come from so many unique and interesting cards
I can make a deck that destroys lantern control. makes artifacts obsolete,and I would mill them. just like how I beat mill decks in standard with my 200 card anti mill -mill deck.
@@thoticcusprime9309 If you've built a deck specifically to counter Lantern Control, then the Lantern Control player has already achieved his objective.
God, i remember my friend playing this deck. "what if i discard all my lands" was never an issue for him. it was, however, an issue for me when he turn 1'd a burning inquiry just because he could to try for hollow ones and took all three lands out of my opening hand. never did draw that fourth before i died, was so upsetting
I like how after many years of printed Magic cards, there appeared a deck that defied much of Magic's intended principles. This deck is dredge, whether it's the Vintage, Legacy, or Modern version. Feels very Golgari that such a pile can come together from across Magic's history and be tied together to make such a powerful aggro (?) combo (?) deck. Seems very Magical to me
I think that KCI Eggs is one of the best examples of how to build a self-sustaining deck with low fail probability from basically a scrap and couple enablers, which represents, at least for me, endless possibilities in deckbuilding whilst using cards at their most efficient way possible, turning even wasted pieces of engine into new sources of profit and advancement.
Affinity represents magic pretty well. It was the first modern deck I learned of and the synergy and how good all the weird activated abilities were that seemed bad by themselves blew me away.
Any deck you can't explain how it works to a new player in a short enough amount of time to allow them to borrow the deck at FNM is the epitome of not just Magic, but TCGs in general. Why? Because it's your deck. You built it, you know it inside and out, you've spent time tuning it for the meta you play in. You love that deck. It's an extension of yourself, the ultimate self expression.
For me, Lantern Control represents want Magic can be. We all have boxes and boxes of jank commons and uncommons, with weird effects on them that we all think will never see the light of day. Lantern Control proves that thought process wrong. It takes a few jank uncommons, a few weird rares, and puts them together in a way that doesn't quite make sense, but still manages to win games. Combine that with needing an amazing knowledge of the Modern meta to properly pilot the deck and you have the perfect representation of what skill and cardboard can do.
A few rare? Nearly half the deck is rare, the rest appears to be half uncommon or common. Only the shredder and the bell are low value uncommon and common. How is that representative?
Again! Jon Hitting the ball out of the park into another stadium 3 towns over! Maaan, I love these videos! Quick, snappy, straight to the point, informative, AND fun to watch with the added bonus of some Magic jokes spicing up the video! As far as which deck defines Magic to me... it has to be the very first competitive deck I ever tried... Black/White Tokens in Standard. You know the one. Anointed Procession, Hidden Stockpile, Anointer Priest to gain a billion life, swing wide and swing hard. I love the deck to bits! It's what I feel magic is all about. Again, LOVED the Video, Jon! Keep up the FANTASTIC work! :D
It's one of the few 'good stuff' decks left in modern, in my opinion. A deck that holds up on it's own merit by having a great mix of good cards. Most other 'top' decks in modern are decks built to exploit a single mechanic or single weakness of the current metagame and rely on two or three nut cards. Hollow one... is great in a vacuum don't get me wrong, but it's made unstoppable in the modern format where all those turn 1 or 2 plays (especially a turn one burning inquiry, talk about messing with your opponent's nut draw.) Then you get something like lantern control, not quite at the top any more but the whole idea of just fatesealing your opponent into oblivion is such a Johnny deck, something so out of left field that, when thrown at the wall, just stuck. In short, I guess Jund feels like the essence of a 'Spike' deck, where Hollow One ends up feeling more like a Johnny deck that Spike is borrowing for the Pro Tour.
It even fits the part where Magic players will give decks names that have nothing to do with the contents of the deck, given that Jund hasn’t played anything actually from the plane of Jund since... well, around the time Alara was in Standard.
@@jakemcc8760 Bloodbraid almost certainly originated from Naya given that she is an elf, Maelstrom Pulse is from the combined plane of Alara, and Terminate was a card from Planeshift referencing Darigaaz so iunno what you're on about there.
The Rock, the tap-out Black Green control deck played in Canadian Highlander is one of my favourite decks in Magic. You have outs to everything, you have game against everything, and you always get to make decisions that matter every single game.
The fact that inquiry type cards don't require you to pitch as a part of the cost is what makes this so powerful. If they did then this deck would be horrible as while your scenario is far fetched remanding or worse straight up countering would make it a huge risk. As is the number of leovold effects in modern that see even sideboard play are negligible for this deck mostly because it just goes off before they have w chance to come down.
I luv this deck. I have always been into graveyard shenanigans but with the random aspect and the ability to draw so much just puts it over the top. this version and the budget red version are the best deck to come along in forever.
Back when I was first staring to really learn themes and combos while graduating from 60 card table top to edh I built a life-gain defender deck that wad essentially a pillow fort with a voltronned Charging Badger and Scute Mob as my primary attacker. It was slow and janky and required a lot of math to calculate per turn damage and lifegain but it was also a lot of fun and captured the beauty of silliness that I feel magic is at it's best.
I really loved Pod, mainly for the deckbuilding aspect and I grew up building the deck with a community. I still have a casual pod deck that is tuned down for modern. I think as a deck builder I always loved toolbox and in Pod you could fit in pretty muuch anything in any of the 5 colors and it was a big selling point, the infinite was simply a win con.
Midrange decks represent magic to me. They have a lot of fun interactions with the opponent and the games are always fun for both players (in most cases).
Progenitus Cascade EDH with Possibility Storm and Mindmoil. Cast all the things at random all the time and no one knows what's happening, not even you.
I love mono black recursive aggro. It's just kind of cool and flavorful (in my opinion some aggro decks lose some color-related strategy by just playing good fast creature tribal.) UG flash/tempo is also great
Back when I played BR Hollow One as a mid level player you don't feel like you're doing all these calculations in your head or doing all these risk assessments; you feel like you're just playing Burning Inquiry when it seems right. But in reality you, the player, and I were actually doing this the whole time! Instinctively!
I know I'm a little late, but I have an answer sooo... I'ma post it lol. The decks that best represent what Magic is to me are either a control deck using Mystical Teachings as the engine, or Next Level Blue (a control/kinda-aggro deck from the old Extended format, before Wizards killed it for Modern...ugh). The Teachings decks give you so many options, in that you can build it as a tool-box deck (running a ton of singletons with a wide-array of effects/applications to deal w/ any scenario) or a more pure control build, that instead of running singletons as the tool-box, instead you run 4 copies of just all the good counters, kill spells, and bounce spells around. The single copies version is more difficult to pilot, due to needing to choose the exact right silver bullet at the exact right moment to maximize your card advantage. It rewards players for knowing their deck AND the meta inside n' out. And the more pure-control version cuts down a bit on having to make multiple, possibly game-altering choices, in favor of trusting in your abilities to drag the opponent into the deep rounds where you can then take control of the board-state and lock the opponent out of resources bit by bit. Both variations of Teachings reward studying the meta, and tight and precise play to last until the end-game. Next Level Blue represents what Magic is all about (again, just in my opinion) in that, like Teachings before, it rewards tight-play and decision making, and can swap back and forth between control (where it usually starts the game) and aggro, depending on "Who's the beatdown?" (Get it? Hahaha). Also, it used Sensei's Top, which I consider to be one of the most deep and skill-intensive cards ever made. So, in closing, I guess what Magic means to me is knowing your deck inside-out, top-to-bottom, and taking the correct line out of multiple lines of play, to make better use of your resources and maximize every opportunity that comes your way.
Eldrazi are my favorite thing and for me are the manifestation of how cool and creative this game can be. They are basically a faithful rapresentation of Lovecraftian horror and i love it. I still need to figure how to make a good deck with both old and new eldrazi, not for competitive reasons, just for personal fun.
I was playing this deck back in its RG style with Vengevine, I spiced my version with deathshadow, prefering the life-loss risk over the card advantage risk.
I don’t have a specific deck in mind but I feel that Midrange decks best encapsulate the spirit of the game. They are IMO the Swiss Army knives of mtg, rather than throwing your deck at a wall and seeing if it sticks depending on the matchup - Midrange feels pretty okay regardless of most matchups. And even better it’s the most sideboard empowered deck type which to me makes it a skill and judgment reflective deck type as well.
Darth Bernstein yeah, if you keep the fetch open until the last possible minute, you do increase your chances of landfall being relevant, but you also slightly increase your chances of drawing/discarding lands. I think the chance for bloodghast is worth it though.
I run the deck on stream all the time since it's my go to for tournaments since late last year (before Goblin Lore was even in the list) your line I like to think is right. That cracked fetch bothered me since exactly that there's a chance you drop up to 3 Ghasts on that. Unlikely but I like to think the value there is worth it for the added pressure on board to deal with.
for me, the very essence of magic is UW Emeria Titan control, you're playing creatures, casting instants and sorceries, and have to decide turn by turn which cards help you out the most in the exact situation you're in, for me, a long time white wheenie player and creature lover, this deck represents the perfect compromise between playing alot of creature, windmillslamming sun titans and controling the overall state of the game, while trying to stay alive to get emeria online for absolute madness
My favorite deck was the one from a WOTC blog post a freaking decade+ ago involving Haunted Angel. When it triggers, it grinds the game to a halt and everyone hates you. Light of Day + Darkest Hour = Nothing happens. And by favorite, I mean "hilariously unfun to actually play with or against (but still somehow works)."
Death and Taxes in Legacy and Humans in modern is my personal pinnacle of magic. They are creature based decks that rely on match-up information and small incremental denials of value to skate your way past the strongest cards in magic. But my pet deck is a Modern deck called "RUGrats". Its a temur colored prowess deck that has some INSANE blowout turns, kinda like infect but not anywhere near as consistent.
I made this deck right when hour of devastation came out, I originally made a b/r version with vengevines and cathartic reunions instead of goblin lore. I made it to shit on all the deaths shadow decks running around. Going wide and casting 0 mana 4/4s that dodge fatal push and bolt. I played memnites to trigger the vengevines, and goblin bushwhackers because they recur the vengevines before the bushwhackers enter. 3 fatal pushes in the main and 2 liliana of the veil in the board gave me a 100% wr against deaths shadow decks. my version plays really aggressive towards the turn 2 kills.
Part of what i think is missing from this analysis is also the fact that playing that card that draws three then discard three at random, also brings your opponent for a ride as well.
Burning inquiry is each player.. So your opponent suffers these risks and odds too.. So it's a great play either way as it forces your foe to change their strategy on a whim too.. Especially if they don't benefit from discards
I tend to enjoy leveraging assets in ccg's above and beyond what is required of the game. So I'm a big fan of black sacrifice decks in magic, where your leveraging your life total and your creature count for big risky plays. If you've ever flipped a blood fast, pulled a torgaar out of your graveyard putting your life back to 10, sacrificed a bontu for another 6 life, and attacked with a demon token all during the same turn, then you too know the joy of playing a horrendously inefficient deck.
For me, it's mono blue tempo. Magic has a few tenants that make it so enduring, like economy, speed and sequencing. Mono blue tempo is a deck were you need to think about all these things to pull it off well
ahh this deck reminds me of the good old days, once i rebuilt a crazy similar deck. looters and random shenanigans, ill update with link once rebuilt if any intrest.
When Prosper was released I thought back to this and knew it would become my commander staple. Even before Wizards went fucking nuts with the treasure, I loved it. As long as cards keep moving, we're in business. Which cards specifically? Barely relevant.
I believe the deck which next represents Magic is Prosbloom from Visions standard. The deck requires many complicated decisions every turn and breaks inherent times of the game to do flashy powerful tricks for the win. All bow to the power of Magic's first broken combo deck and Mike Long who could pilot it like no other in his time.
I feel like the best opening hand would either be: 1 Hollow One, 2 Flamewake Phoenix, 1 Street Wraith, 1 Faithless Looting, and 2 Blackcleave Cliffs Or 4 Hollow Ones, 1 Street Wraith, 1 Faithless Looting, and 1 land that taps for red
I'm gonna go with Izzet Aggro as the most representative deck....it has control in the form of counters and burn (plus arti hate in SB), aggressively costed creatures which can have strong individual board value (Young Pyromancer, Snapcaster, etc.), and big late-game plays because of recursion.
Many people - probably most - are fairly risk averse, and it can really cut off opportunities. Magic is one case, of course - sometimes, you just have to play to your outs. Had a recent game where the opponent had gone all in on going wide in the board. I had a fairly full hand and about 12 mana available - but it didn't matter how good a turn I could have; if I couldn't deal with the majority of the horde (ie. all of it) I was dead. My only out was to play either one or two of the three Key to the Archives I had in hand (4 mana, artifact that enters tapped, can tap for 2 mana, lets you draft a powerful card upon ETB, and you discard a card). The first one went down - nothing useful (had a Time Warp been offered I could have taken it to have more options on the second attempt, but no dice). Second Key down - no Wrath of God which is what I was searching for, so GG. Incidentally, the third one also didn't offer it just to rub it in. I'm pretty sure the odds were against me actually seeing it, but I had to play to the out. I'm a semi-pro sports bettor and you spend a lot of time looking at EV (expected value). In my case, my winrate is just over 55% for odds of 2.00 / +100 / 1:1. Just under half the time I'll lose, but that 55% with those odds means I'll always make that bet, if I believe the probability to be accurate. In a similar vein, I'll never place a bet on a market of 1.01 if the probability I've calculated for it is 99% or less - even something as likely as 99% would put it as negative value in the long run. And on the flip side - if someone gave you a wager, that they would roll a dice, and you need a 1 to hit - and they'll pay you 10.00 odds if it does - that's actually a really good bet, because in the long run you'd be making a killing. This is where being risk averse comes in though - I don't go for sub-50% probability bets, because, unsurprisingly, most of the time they lose. In the case of the dice roll, given that I'm not estimating probability - if the die is fair, I know it's 1 in 6 - I would still avoid it if I only had one roll, as the likelihood is that one roll will be a loser. If they let me have at least 4 attempt though? I'm down. At that point it's slightly above 50% that I'll win at least one roll.
Gruul Aggro isn't my favorite deck but it's always gonna be the one I think of first. My first magic tournament like 4 out of 10 people there were playing nearly identical aggro decks.
The deck that best embodies MTG to me? UR Delver. Counter-spells, Card draw, burn, interaction between zones, and a ticking threat. Anyone who has ever played hearthstone can instantly wrap their mind around the driver deck and it’s also something you would never ever see in hearthstone because it doesn’t have instant speed anything. It’s a deck that could exist in lots of TCG games but only exists in Magic.
A black/red goblin deck full of wacky goblins and tons of sacrifice abilities.I think that's the closest you can get to a comedy deck, because things just keep dying for seemingly no reason
I would say the deck I think best represents Magic is Griselbrand, I can't really explain it, it just embodies the entire combo aspect of TCGs such as Magic and Hearthstone and Yugi-Oh!
for me it was day's undiong turns all the way back in origins. it's just a deck that has you thinking and asserting risks all the way down to the last second. in that note modern storm is something like that. tbh everything that's NOT a midrange deck is a good indicator of what magic is supposed to be :P
Probably not a popular opinion, but I'd have to say the deck that best represents Magic for me is either Storm or Prospbloom (which was basically a storm deck before the storm mechanic). The key is that they're creatureless decks (tho I guess modern storm decks are running a few creatures like Baral or Electromancer now) which won by casting a bunch of spells instead of summoning up an army - that, to me, is Magic.
Personally, I think Simic is the best representation of Magic the Gathering. It has a lot of card draw - very important for a card game - and it plays large creatures. Those creatures, because they are generally wacky science experiments, have a lot of ability to do cool stuff. On top of that, since creatures are generally how players beat one another, big smashy means big win. You could make the same argument with Gruul by saying that "burn spells are more representative of how the game is meant to be played because you reduce life total more," but I think a better competitor would be Temur for just having all those things. However, since it does all sorts of things, I think the more stable dual-color decks are a better representation of Magic. Hence, I say Simic is cool and you should like it because I play blue, so I am always right. Except when I'm not.
Idk, I think the sheer idiocy I can play with a mono blue Fblthp the Lost commander that has lots of milling and a jace effect that helps me win when library is empty exemplifies magic pretty well. You can have a legitimate, thought out strategy hidden directly behind a false front
I personally think decks like Jund that are just all around good represent Magic well. Jund requires a good amount of planning and thought it seems although my understanding of Modern is limited. What threats should I bolt, when is it best to play Goif, etc.
My favorite "random" deck is T-Woo's all-in goblins. It's lost some power since the banning of gitprobe and friends but it can still just kill you on turns 1-2 and still has a relatively high skill ceiling despite seeming like a "hope I get a nut draw oops I didn't guess I lose" deck.
theres a good modern RDW goblins deck that doesnt run probe but runs bushwhackers (both goblin and reckless), burning trees, goblin grenades, and the rest all goblins link here: mtgtop8.com/event?e=19515&d=324809&f=MO I personally dropped 1 mountain for 1 sacred foundry and added some white to the sideboard. some variants run no bushwhacker + burning trees
In my opinion it would be faeries. Somewhat an underdog nowadays and can do immense work with a good pilot. Learning to play your deck better than your opponent can. That’s what I believe magic is about
Necropotainc black summer leading to combo winter in my opinion but I played both of those formats and I love vintage so I'm really down for random mess deck like this oh and the 1 tournament where meneroy jar was legal that one as well and maybe affinity despite the play drop off because of darksteel and ravenger and the clamp
Personally... I think the best deck that represents magic is the first deck You ever make, and whichever one you have that is most recent. The first deck is going to be bad, there is no denying that... But most likely you saw an idea, You saw something that you liked out of the card you chose and you went with that... Sure it wasn't good, but it was yours. The most recent deck is all of your experience so far combinating into one, everything you have worked up for, everything you've played came down to this deck. My first deck was a red green token deck... It was bad, it was trying to do stuff that I just didn't have really, considering thalids aren't that good of a card If you are doing shenanigans... And funally enough That exact same deck is also my most recent one, having grown and grown As I started actually earning money so I could buy cards, hearing about the commander format that was the most popular in my town And editing my first real deck to one that was mine, a deck that may not be perfect, it may not be able to go into win any sort of tournament... But it's a deck that I love.
I'm mad that they sample lines of play and chose to crack the fetch before Burning Inquiry. Unless I suck at playing the deck you keep the fetch out until you need to crack it. That way if you hit a ghast on those random 3 you can throw it away and immediately get it.
40 bolts and 20 mountains
id go 12mountaine 48 bolt
49 counterspells 1 baral and 10 islands
I'll do you one better--40 ancestral recall, 20 black lotus. Literally cannot lose if it gets a turn.
39 bolts, 1 Rolling Thunder, 20 mountains
40 black lotus so aproach of the second sun
He should not have fetched yet! Land play yes: fetch: no You could draw and discard a Bloodghast with the burning Inquiry and trigger it from the grave.
i also think the looting shouldve been played before inquiry to guarantee the flamewake discard
If he had played looting instead Flameblade Adept would be a 3/2 instead of a 4/2, thus not triggering the Pheonix's Ferocious.
Sorry, but I don't understand your answer. He should have casted the exact same cards that he did in the example. Use the mountain to play the burning inquiry . He should just have not fetched yet.
he has 2 open mana, he can cast burning inquiry after faithless looting....
Not letting him get Flamewake Pheonix back from graveyard, which is another body and more power on board to hit opponent with. Mallwan is right, best play is play the fetch, burning inquiry, drop 3 random cards, one of which is statistically likely to be something of value going to grave (be it bloodghast or pheonix). If you have a pheonix in the graveyard, you need to pay 1 red to revive it at start of combat. Casting both yes, you now have a 6/2 adept, but no way to bring pheonix back, which would be 8 power hitting them instead of 6, because the pheonix has haste, however you wasted mana on an irrelevant-at-the-moment Faithless Looting when you had all but guaranteed something good was going to be in the graveyard with just the burning inquiry. If you managed to pitch a bloodghast, you would crack the fetch to get the landfall trigger to bring back bloodghast. If you pitched the pheonix, you need the 1 extra mana to bring it back.
Lantern Control exemplifies Magic to me. There is only a finite amount of fun to be had in any given game of Magic, and by harnessing the power of jank uncommons, you can monopolize that fun. Foil out the deck and triple sleeve in waifu sleeves to ensure maximum tear collection.
ccggenius12 I could only agree more if you also mentioned how lantern control perfectly represents the unexpected results that can come from so many unique and interesting cards
Lantern really proves that fun is a zero-sum game
I can make a deck that destroys lantern control. makes artifacts obsolete,and I would mill them. just like how I beat mill decks in standard with my 200 card anti mill -mill deck.
@@thoticcusprime9309 If you've built a deck specifically to counter Lantern Control, then the Lantern Control player has already achieved his objective.
Reprint Meltdown into modern.
Tibalt is the best random card! #TeamTibalt
Affinity For Commander Seriously, why isn’t this deck running it?
Tibalt would be hilarious in this thing.
I know a guy who plays tibalt in his hollow one deck. One in the main one in the board and he cuts a push and goes to 17 lands. The man is a savage.
Im all for the Tibalt Team
In all the time I've played with him myself, he has never given me a bad discard. I'm behind this. Team Tibalt.
God, i remember my friend playing this deck. "what if i discard all my lands" was never an issue for him. it was, however, an issue for me when he turn 1'd a burning inquiry just because he could to try for hollow ones and took all three lands out of my opening hand. never did draw that fourth before i died, was so upsetting
How did he discard the cards from your hand?
@@Dracinard burning inquiry has everyone draw and discard randomly, he got my lands with the random discard
This is a great breakdown for a deck I dont have complete knowledge about! I think I understand it a bit more now. Thank you!
So if I'm understanding this correctly, this deck basically plays like you'd play Texas Hold-em? That's super cool!
I think the most representative deck in mtg is the one you throw together on the sidewalk without sleeves.
Just as Richard Garfield intended
agreed
I really like the tempo/delivery in your speech/script. Highly watchable videos
I like how after many years of printed Magic cards, there appeared a deck that defied much of Magic's intended principles. This deck is dredge, whether it's the Vintage, Legacy, or Modern version. Feels very Golgari that such a pile can come together from across Magic's history and be tied together to make such a powerful aggro (?) combo (?) deck. Seems very Magical to me
Holy shit you guys nailed this video. Amazing work to everyone involved. More more more of this please.
I think that KCI Eggs is one of the best examples of how to build a self-sustaining deck with low fail probability from basically a scrap and couple enablers, which represents, at least for me, endless possibilities in deckbuilding whilst using cards at their most efficient way possible, turning even wasted pieces of engine into new sources of profit and advancement.
Affinity represents magic pretty well. It was the first modern deck I learned of and the synergy and how good all the weird activated abilities were that seemed bad by themselves blew me away.
The best deck is 5 color good stuff
I prefer five color good pictures
ua-cam.com/video/jw7ajsKmbd4/v-deo.html
"How do you have answers to EVERYTHING?!" - James LRR
I love the fact that you take the time to animate these videos
Any deck you can't explain how it works to a new player in a short enough amount of time to allow them to borrow the deck at FNM is the epitome of not just Magic, but TCGs in general. Why? Because it's your deck. You built it, you know it inside and out, you've spent time tuning it for the meta you play in. You love that deck. It's an extension of yourself, the ultimate self expression.
For me, Lantern Control represents want Magic can be. We all have boxes and boxes of jank commons and uncommons, with weird effects on them that we all think will never see the light of day. Lantern Control proves that thought process wrong. It takes a few jank uncommons, a few weird rares, and puts them together in a way that doesn't quite make sense, but still manages to win games. Combine that with needing an amazing knowledge of the Modern meta to properly pilot the deck and you have the perfect representation of what skill and cardboard can do.
A few rare? Nearly half the deck is rare, the rest appears to be half uncommon or common. Only the shredder and the bell are low value uncommon and common. How is that representative?
my favorite deck has to be abzan midrange, I loved it in standard and love it even more in modern
Again! Jon Hitting the ball out of the park into another stadium 3 towns over! Maaan, I love these videos! Quick, snappy, straight to the point, informative, AND fun to watch with the added bonus of some Magic jokes spicing up the video!
As far as which deck defines Magic to me... it has to be the very first competitive deck I ever tried... Black/White Tokens in Standard. You know the one. Anointed Procession, Hidden Stockpile, Anointer Priest to gain a billion life, swing wide and swing hard. I love the deck to bits! It's what I feel magic is all about.
Again, LOVED the Video, Jon! Keep up the FANTASTIC work! :D
Fantastic video. Please make more of those modern decks!
Grixis control is the best deck ever for me, something about those colors all together gets me in my heart every time!
*As Richard Gardfiel intended*
**Garfield
Richard Gardfiel may have also intended it...you don't know him ;)
The deck that best represents magic has got to be Modern Jund. A deck that interacts with almost all types, zones, and aspects of the game.
Jund is my favourite modern deck. But I play on a budget so I made a Mardu version instead with Scullers, Initiates and Heroes of Bladehold.
It's one of the few 'good stuff' decks left in modern, in my opinion. A deck that holds up on it's own merit by having a great mix of good cards. Most other 'top' decks in modern are decks built to exploit a single mechanic or single weakness of the current metagame and rely on two or three nut cards. Hollow one... is great in a vacuum don't get me wrong, but it's made unstoppable in the modern format where all those turn 1 or 2 plays (especially a turn one burning inquiry, talk about messing with your opponent's nut draw.) Then you get something like lantern control, not quite at the top any more but the whole idea of just fatesealing your opponent into oblivion is such a Johnny deck, something so out of left field that, when thrown at the wall, just stuck.
In short, I guess Jund feels like the essence of a 'Spike' deck, where Hollow One ends up feeling more like a Johnny deck that Spike is borrowing for the Pro Tour.
It even fits the part where Magic players will give decks names that have nothing to do with the contents of the deck, given that Jund hasn’t played anything actually from the plane of Jund since... well, around the time Alara was in Standard.
@@TheShinyFeraligatr well bloodbraid, terminate, maelstrom pulse would like a word with you
@@jakemcc8760 Bloodbraid almost certainly originated from Naya given that she is an elf, Maelstrom Pulse is from the combined plane of Alara, and Terminate was a card from Planeshift referencing Darigaaz so iunno what you're on about there.
Thank you so much, this video is what inspired me to get into modern and I have had a blast slinging hollow ones ever since
The Rock, the tap-out Black Green control deck played in Canadian Highlander is one of my favourite decks in Magic. You have outs to everything, you have game against everything, and you always get to make decisions that matter every single game.
In response to your Goblin Lore
I flash in Spirit of The Labyrinth through my Rattlechains
Draw zero, discard your hand.
YUSSS
That is impossible to do until turn 3 though. All these discard spells are at their best on the 1st 2 turns
Do what I do, and run a minimum 3 of Gemstone Caverns, in a Bant Spirits shell. That will assure a turn 1-2 Spirit of The Labyrinth
Aržang Of the Brothers of Light lmao your trying to come up with the absolute dream scenario
The fact that inquiry type cards don't require you to pitch as a part of the cost is what makes this so powerful. If they did then this deck would be horrible as while your scenario is far fetched remanding or worse straight up countering would make it a huge risk. As is the number of leovold effects in modern that see even sideboard play are negligible for this deck mostly because it just goes off before they have w chance to come down.
I luv this deck. I have always been into graveyard shenanigans but with the random aspect and the ability to draw so much just puts it over the top. this version and the budget red version are the best deck to come along in forever.
Back when I was first staring to really learn themes and combos while graduating from 60 card table top to edh I built a life-gain defender deck that wad essentially a pillow fort with a voltronned Charging Badger and Scute Mob as my primary attacker.
It was slow and janky and required a lot of math to calculate per turn damage and lifegain but it was also a lot of fun and captured the beauty of silliness that I feel magic is at it's best.
Pretty sweet vid. The constant calculations you have to make for this deck reminds me a lot of Pokemon which is neat.
I really loved Pod, mainly for the deckbuilding aspect and I grew up building the deck with a community. I still have a casual pod deck that is tuned down for modern. I think as a deck builder I always loved toolbox and in Pod you could fit in pretty muuch anything in any of the 5 colors and it was a big selling point, the infinite was simply a win con.
Midrange decks represent magic to me. They have a lot of fun interactions with the opponent and the games are always fun for both players (in most cases).
Progenitus Cascade EDH with Possibility Storm and Mindmoil.
Cast all the things at random all the time and no one knows what's happening, not even you.
Pauper tortured existence. Complete with sporefrog and caustic caterpillar.
I love mono black recursive aggro. It's just kind of cool and flavorful (in my opinion some aggro decks lose some color-related strategy by just playing good fast creature tribal.)
UG flash/tempo is also great
Back when I played BR Hollow One as a mid level player you don't feel like you're doing all these calculations in your head or doing all these risk assessments; you feel like you're just playing Burning Inquiry when it seems right. But in reality you, the player, and I were actually doing this the whole time! Instinctively!
This video makes me so nostalgic for Gamble. I want Urza's block back.
I know I'm a little late, but I have an answer sooo... I'ma post it lol.
The decks that best represent what Magic is to me are either a control deck using Mystical Teachings as the engine, or Next Level Blue (a control/kinda-aggro deck from the old Extended format, before Wizards killed it for Modern...ugh).
The Teachings decks give you so many options, in that you can build it as a tool-box deck (running a ton of singletons with a wide-array of effects/applications to deal w/ any scenario) or a more pure control build, that instead of running singletons as the tool-box, instead you run 4 copies of just all the good counters, kill spells, and bounce spells around. The single copies version is more difficult to pilot, due to needing to choose the exact right silver bullet at the exact right moment to maximize your card advantage. It rewards players for knowing their deck AND the meta inside n' out. And the more pure-control version cuts down a bit on having to make multiple, possibly game-altering choices, in favor of trusting in your abilities to drag the opponent into the deep rounds where you can then take control of the board-state and lock the opponent out of resources bit by bit. Both variations of Teachings reward studying the meta, and tight and precise play to last until the end-game.
Next Level Blue represents what Magic is all about (again, just in my opinion) in that, like Teachings before, it rewards tight-play and decision making, and can swap back and forth between control (where it usually starts the game) and aggro, depending on "Who's the beatdown?" (Get it? Hahaha). Also, it used Sensei's Top, which I consider to be one of the most deep and skill-intensive cards ever made.
So, in closing, I guess what Magic means to me is knowing your deck inside-out, top-to-bottom, and taking the correct line out of multiple lines of play, to make better use of your resources and maximize every opportunity that comes your way.
Eldrazi are my favorite thing and for me are the manifestation of how cool and creative this game can be. They are basically a faithful rapresentation of Lovecraftian horror and i love it. I still need to figure how to make a good deck with both old and new eldrazi, not for competitive reasons, just for personal fun.
I was playing this deck back in its RG style with Vengevine, I spiced my version with deathshadow, prefering the life-loss risk over the card advantage risk.
the quality of this video was spot on, noice!
I don’t have a specific deck in mind but I feel that Midrange decks best encapsulate the spirit of the game.
They are IMO the Swiss Army knives of mtg, rather than throwing your deck at a wall and seeing if it sticks depending on the matchup - Midrange feels pretty okay regardless of most matchups.
And even better it’s the most sideboard empowered deck type which to me makes it a skill and judgment reflective deck type as well.
isn't it a misplay to crack your fetch before casting the inquary due to the possibility you draw and discard a (or even multiple) bloodghast?
Darth Bernstein yeah, if you keep the fetch open until the last possible minute, you do increase your chances of landfall being relevant, but you also slightly increase your chances of drawing/discarding lands. I think the chance for bloodghast is worth it though.
I run the deck on stream all the time since it's my go to for tournaments since late last year (before Goblin Lore was even in the list) your line I like to think is right. That cracked fetch bothered me since exactly that there's a chance you drop up to 3 Ghasts on that. Unlikely but I like to think the value there is worth it for the added pressure on board to deal with.
for me, the very essence of magic is UW Emeria Titan control, you're playing creatures, casting instants and sorceries, and have to decide turn by turn which cards help you out the most in the exact situation you're in, for me, a long time white wheenie player and creature lover, this deck represents the perfect compromise between playing alot of creature, windmillslamming sun titans and controling the overall state of the game, while trying to stay alive to get emeria online for absolute madness
these vids are so well made. its bonkers. i love it
God I miss this series.
My favorite deck was the one from a WOTC blog post a freaking decade+ ago involving Haunted Angel. When it triggers, it grinds the game to a halt and everyone hates you. Light of Day + Darkest Hour = Nothing happens.
And by favorite, I mean "hilariously unfun to actually play with or against (but still somehow works)."
Death and Taxes in Legacy and Humans in modern is my personal pinnacle of magic. They are creature based decks that rely on match-up information and small incremental denials of value to skate your way past the strongest cards in magic.
But my pet deck is a Modern deck called "RUGrats". Its a temur colored prowess deck that has some INSANE blowout turns, kinda like infect but not anywhere near as consistent.
This is why I love Anje. It's basically the commander version of this.
I made this deck right when hour of devastation came out, I originally made a b/r version with vengevines and cathartic reunions instead of goblin lore. I made it to shit on all the deaths shadow decks running around. Going wide and casting 0 mana 4/4s that dodge fatal push and bolt. I played memnites to trigger the vengevines, and goblin bushwhackers because they recur the vengevines before the bushwhackers enter. 3 fatal pushes in the main and 2 liliana of the veil in the board gave me a 100% wr against deaths shadow decks. my version plays really aggressive towards the turn 2 kills.
A deck for Tibalt? It is time.
My favorite deck was an Orzhov Weenie deck from Return to Ravnica. Extort was freaking broken. Especially once you knew what you were doing.
Part of what i think is missing from this analysis is also the fact that playing that card that draws three then discard three at random, also brings your opponent for a ride as well.
Burning inquiry is each player.. So your opponent suffers these risks and odds too.. So it's a great play either way as it forces your foe to change their strategy on a whim too.. Especially if they don't benefit from discards
I tend to enjoy leveraging assets in ccg's above and beyond what is required of the game. So I'm a big fan of black sacrifice decks in magic, where your leveraging your life total and your creature count for big risky plays. If you've ever flipped a blood fast, pulled a torgaar out of your graveyard putting your life back to 10, sacrificed a bontu for another 6 life, and attacked with a demon token all during the same turn, then you too know the joy of playing a horrendously inefficient deck.
For me, it's mono blue tempo. Magic has a few tenants that make it so enduring, like economy, speed and sequencing. Mono blue tempo is a deck were you need to think about all these things to pull it off well
ahh this deck reminds me of the good old days, once i rebuilt a crazy similar deck. looters and random shenanigans, ill update with link once rebuilt if any intrest.
My brother and I designed 2 headed giant infect decks together. We consistently win turn 2-3. People get pissed. I love it!
When Prosper was released I thought back to this and knew it would become my commander staple. Even before Wizards went fucking nuts with the treasure, I loved it. As long as cards keep moving, we're in business. Which cards specifically? Barely relevant.
I believe the deck which next represents Magic is Prosbloom from Visions standard. The deck requires many complicated decisions every turn and breaks inherent times of the game to do flashy powerful tricks for the win. All bow to the power of Magic's first broken combo deck and Mike Long who could pilot it like no other in his time.
I feel like the best opening hand would either be:
1 Hollow One, 2 Flamewake Phoenix, 1 Street Wraith, 1 Faithless Looting, and 2 Blackcleave Cliffs
Or
4 Hollow Ones, 1 Street Wraith, 1 Faithless Looting, and 1 land that taps for red
I'm gonna go with Izzet Aggro as the most representative deck....it has control in the form of counters and burn (plus arti hate in SB), aggressively costed creatures which can have strong individual board value (Young Pyromancer, Snapcaster, etc.), and big late-game plays because of recursion.
Many people - probably most - are fairly risk averse, and it can really cut off opportunities. Magic is one case, of course - sometimes, you just have to play to your outs. Had a recent game where the opponent had gone all in on going wide in the board. I had a fairly full hand and about 12 mana available - but it didn't matter how good a turn I could have; if I couldn't deal with the majority of the horde (ie. all of it) I was dead. My only out was to play either one or two of the three Key to the Archives I had in hand (4 mana, artifact that enters tapped, can tap for 2 mana, lets you draft a powerful card upon ETB, and you discard a card). The first one went down - nothing useful (had a Time Warp been offered I could have taken it to have more options on the second attempt, but no dice). Second Key down - no Wrath of God which is what I was searching for, so GG. Incidentally, the third one also didn't offer it just to rub it in. I'm pretty sure the odds were against me actually seeing it, but I had to play to the out.
I'm a semi-pro sports bettor and you spend a lot of time looking at EV (expected value). In my case, my winrate is just over 55% for odds of 2.00 / +100 / 1:1. Just under half the time I'll lose, but that 55% with those odds means I'll always make that bet, if I believe the probability to be accurate. In a similar vein, I'll never place a bet on a market of 1.01 if the probability I've calculated for it is 99% or less - even something as likely as 99% would put it as negative value in the long run. And on the flip side - if someone gave you a wager, that they would roll a dice, and you need a 1 to hit - and they'll pay you 10.00 odds if it does - that's actually a really good bet, because in the long run you'd be making a killing. This is where being risk averse comes in though - I don't go for sub-50% probability bets, because, unsurprisingly, most of the time they lose. In the case of the dice roll, given that I'm not estimating probability - if the die is fair, I know it's 1 in 6 - I would still avoid it if I only had one roll, as the likelihood is that one roll will be a loser. If they let me have at least 4 attempt though? I'm down. At that point it's slightly above 50% that I'll win at least one roll.
That Jace Timesifter deck looks awesome to me!
Gruul Aggro isn't my favorite deck but it's always gonna be the one I think of first. My first magic tournament like 4 out of 10 people there were playing nearly identical aggro decks.
The deck that best embodies MTG to me? UR Delver. Counter-spells, Card draw, burn, interaction between zones, and a ticking threat.
Anyone who has ever played hearthstone can instantly wrap their mind around the driver deck and it’s also something you would never ever see in hearthstone because it doesn’t have instant speed anything.
It’s a deck that could exist in lots of TCG games but only exists in Magic.
u/b control, especially with psychatog and upheaval. u/b control has been winning formats forever, and odyssey was a fun time.
I legit didn’t feel those 5 minutes at all super entertaining
A black/red goblin deck full of wacky goblins and tons of sacrifice abilities.I think that's the closest you can get to a comedy deck, because things just keep dying for seemingly no reason
I would say the deck I think best represents Magic is Griselbrand, I can't really explain it, it just embodies the entire combo aspect of TCGs such as Magic and Hearthstone and Yugi-Oh!
Any deck. Magic is about fun and friends, and anything that gets you around is one that embodies that.
God this video is still so good
1:47 Maybe it would be right to crack the fetch after resolving Burning Inquiry? Could get back a Bloodghast
This..... Is really interesting! I'd love to try it out!
Amulet bloom. Idk why. But I love that deck
Ayyy
for me it was day's undiong turns all the way back in origins. it's just a deck that has you thinking and asserting risks all the way down to the last second. in that note modern storm is something like that. tbh everything that's NOT a midrange deck is a good indicator of what magic is supposed to be :P
Red burn that doesn’t have a spell that costs more than 3 cmc
Probably not a popular opinion, but I'd have to say the deck that best represents Magic for me is either Storm or Prospbloom (which was basically a storm deck before the storm mechanic). The key is that they're creatureless decks (tho I guess modern storm decks are running a few creatures like Baral or Electromancer now) which won by casting a bunch of spells instead of summoning up an army - that, to me, is Magic.
Legacy high tide is what i call Magic turn 3 -4 kill by making your opponent draw all their library,Magic at its finnest
Feels bad man, Faithless lotting banned for the sins of Izzet Pheonix.
Personally, I think Simic is the best representation of Magic the Gathering. It has a lot of card draw - very important for a card game - and it plays large creatures. Those creatures, because they are generally wacky science experiments, have a lot of ability to do cool stuff. On top of that, since creatures are generally how players beat one another, big smashy means big win. You could make the same argument with Gruul by saying that "burn spells are more representative of how the game is meant to be played because you reduce life total more," but I think a better competitor would be Temur for just having all those things. However, since it does all sorts of things, I think the more stable dual-color decks are a better representation of Magic. Hence, I say Simic is cool and you should like it because I play blue, so I am always right. Except when I'm not.
Best representation of magic is any deck that lets you play the card Johan. That’s about it
Idk, I think the sheer idiocy I can play with a mono blue Fblthp the Lost commander that has lots of milling and a jace effect that helps me win when library is empty exemplifies magic pretty well. You can have a legitimate, thought out strategy hidden directly behind a false front
HELL YEAH!! Where my hollow bois at in 2021?
I personally think decks like Jund that are just all around good represent Magic well. Jund requires a good amount of planning and thought it seems although my understanding of Modern is limited. What threats should I bolt, when is it best to play Goif, etc.
My favorite "random" deck is T-Woo's all-in goblins. It's lost some power since the banning of gitprobe and friends but it can still just kill you on turns 1-2 and still has a relatively high skill ceiling despite seeming like a "hope I get a nut draw oops I didn't guess I lose" deck.
theres a good modern RDW goblins deck that doesnt run probe but runs bushwhackers (both goblin and reckless), burning trees, goblin grenades, and the rest all goblins link here: mtgtop8.com/event?e=19515&d=324809&f=MO I personally dropped 1 mountain for 1 sacred foundry and added some white to the sideboard. some variants run no bushwhacker + burning trees
In my opinion it would be faeries. Somewhat an underdog nowadays and can do immense work with a good pilot. Learning to play your deck better than your opponent can. That’s what I believe magic is about
With Faithless banned I'm really thinking about swapping to Hollow One. I've always loved Burning Inquiry, lol
Necropotainc black summer leading to combo winter in my opinion but I played both of those formats and I love vintage so I'm really down for random mess deck like this oh and the 1 tournament where meneroy jar was legal that one as well and maybe affinity despite the play drop off because of darksteel and ravenger and the clamp
Personally... I think the best deck that represents magic is the first deck You ever make, and whichever one you have that is most recent. The first deck is going to be bad, there is no denying that... But most likely you saw an idea, You saw something that you liked out of the card you chose and you went with that... Sure it wasn't good, but it was yours. The most recent deck is all of your experience so far combinating into one, everything you have worked up for, everything you've played came down to this deck.
My first deck was a red green token deck... It was bad, it was trying to do stuff that I just didn't have really, considering thalids aren't that good of a card If you are doing shenanigans... And funally enough That exact same deck is also my most recent one, having grown and grown As I started actually earning money so I could buy cards, hearing about the commander format that was the most popular in my town And editing my first real deck to one that was mine, a deck that may not be perfect, it may not be able to go into win any sort of tournament... But it's a deck that I love.
Great content and video editing!
The Mono-Atog deck.
Sooooo many Atogs!! ❤❤❤
20 black lotuses and 20 plague rats. Now that's real magic.
Can we get these weekly please. Best mtg short vids
Mine is one sided, but I feel Tron is a good canidate, given that many variations exist of it, showing the different ways to execute the same idea
I'm mad that they sample lines of play and chose to crack the fetch before Burning Inquiry. Unless I suck at playing the deck you keep the fetch out until you need to crack it. That way if you hit a ghast on those random 3 you can throw it away and immediately get it.
survival of fittest reacurring nightmare. from tempest times. u forget about morphling or masitcore
Why not first play the 1 mana draw and discard card, dump the phoenix, and then play the random discard card?
As much as I love this deck its far to expensive to actually own, is there any way to make a budget version.
OOPS NO LOOTINGS
Best MtG content ever!