Even before I state the obvious, I think it's apt to say that no, it's not one of the worst sets ever, it has the glorious title of not even being the worst sets of its block, that honour going to Prophecy. It's definitely a bottom tier set, but Rishadin Port and Gush definitely redeem it slightly. I mean come on, Gush is restricted in Vintage, that means something, especially in the contexts of it maybe being able to make it onto "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)"! I'm a sucker for bad sets though, I just love wallowing through rubbish trying to find the gold, it's part of why I love Homelands so much.
@@ManaDrain315 The whole set could have been Merchant Scroll and it probably would have been just as strong. But still, I love it. We need to go back to Ulgrotha some time.
Gush IS insane but being restricted in Vintage doesn't really mean anything. I could point to Lodestone Golem, a card that has seen basically no play in any other format and then it doesn't make any sense. Context matters and cards are restricted for a lot of different reasons than just pure power level. In a format with lots original Moxen + Workshop then the 4 on LSG starts to look more like a 1 or 2. But I do share your love for Homelands cards. Garbage cards are really fun.
@@mountainwalk Well yes, but it still inherently does come with some rightful significance attached to it. Lodestone is restricted because it's a busted card in a busted set, it being meh everywhere else isn't quite as important to me. But I guess it's obvious how much I like Vintage and favour it over most other formats though.
@@TheGloriousLobsterEmperor I'd push back a bit on Worldwake being busted, a good set but I have a fairly high bar for broken: see Saga or Mirrodin block, maybe Eldraine too. Depends on what we are measuring. If you're thinking "what is the most busted in the widest cardpool/oldest format" then I get that. I evaluate cards like that too. For example. Look at Psychatog, good in every format. But it was absolutely at it's best in Vintage with access to Drain, FoF, GushBond, Yawgs Win, etc. Tog is a card that ran on converting cardboard to more cardboard and it was really easy to do that in Vintage. Don't mean to be too pedantic though haha!
Masques block definitely has a bunch of dumpster-tier cards, but the one broken design they inexplicably decided to keep was being able to play cards for no mana, so it's no wonder a few standout cards like Gush and Daze emerged from it.
That's the thing people forget: balance issues went in both directions. Yeah, the older sets had a lot of stupidly powerful cards, but they had a lot of forgettably weak cards too. For every ancestral recall there is a healing salve.
I think it’s strange that Gush only got 7 points in Extended when it was played in the Miracle Grow and Super Grow sets that dominated for a year. And then there was Psychatog which you mentioned. And Land Grant was basically an extra 4 copies of Tropical Island before there was Misty Rainforest.
It’s not even close to making it onto this list, but man, I love Masques so much for the Monger cycle and whatever you’d call the cycle that includes Hunter Wumpus and Hired Giant. I love those cards so much, and they’re the only reason I’d want to return to Mercadia.
As a fan of the Dominaria lore back in the 90s, MM was certainly underwhelming compared to the fantasy/sci-fi themes of the previous sets. I was reading the novels at the time and I didn't enjoy the strange setting shift with only a few interesting locations and plots. Looking back, I do enjoy some of the gameplay themes introduced, the Rebels stuff was pretty neat. I also see the place in a storyline that needs a sort of "Break" in the action, where the characters are able to sort of rest, or in Squee's case, suddenly realize you are almost royalty!
Love your videos thank you! Video Idea: Overview on all Lotuses and how they performed (Lotus Petal, Guilded Lotus, Black ....) Overview on all Moxen and how they performed....
@@Flum666 The reanimator player needs a 3rd card to exile and they target themself. They don't exile the griselbrand or whatever it is that they want to go in the graveyard.
@@Flum666 Sometimes, and sometimes your opening hand is unmask, swamp, griselbrand, reanimate and some other black card and you put griselbrand into play on turn one. The deck has a number of ways to do it, but that's one of them. And for the record: you couldn't discard your own griselbrand with duress.
Masques was a block I never liked. After my favorite block, Saga, Masques looked like absolute garbage in comparison. I think I quit playing Magic, for a while, after the Nemesis prerelease, when I saw that the block was actually getting worse. I loved Saga, and Masques was underwhelming, to say the least, at the time. I came back during Invasion, which was more to my liking. I was a mercurial child at the time, in all honesty.
Same experience…I started during Tempest - Urza’s Block. Those blocks were fast and aggressive. Masque block focused either on slowing the game down (Port and Parallax Tide/Wave) or Rebel which I personally didn’t like.
Same. I started during Mirage, stopped at MM. Came back right before Onslaught, so I had to go back and look at all the good stuff I missed during Invasion and Odyssey blocks
Masques block was the beginning of my first exodus from M:tG. I lost a lot of interest in Magic during this time period. Invasion block brought me back for a bit, but when the next few blocks went away from Terisiare, the lore then no longer interested me as well.
I called the top 2 as soon as I saw the title of the video. I think that Masque block suffers the same issue of the first trip to Kamigawa: while there are some bangers in the set, the fact that in general the sets had to be significantly powered down after broken blocks like Urza and Mirrodin made them look worse than what they actually were simply by comparison with what came immediately before.
Misdirection is a card that keeps popping up in vintage in random blue decks because the prospect of misdirecting an opposing Ancestral Recall is pretty sweet :D It is still a bit lacking in terms of power level for the blue decks in that format so it remains somewhat of a joke there but every once in a while you do get to see it happen
Can also help you win counter wars and its better than force against thoughtseize and other discard. Before force of negation came out, it was often used as the 5th or even 6th FoW
You know what, for some reason I always thought that Land Grant's cost-removing ability only worked with your starting hand. I have NO idea why. Only now it clicked for me that it's free anytime you don't have any lands in hand, d'oh...
There is more than 1 way to define a set as 'bad', I feel like Masques Block was a really wimpy block, and people remember that and have distaste for it, even if it has individual cards that were extremely pushed. Masques is very much a set with some quite decent to excellent cards, but with tons of stuff that wouldn't see play in any other standard environment seeing play here, hence people calling it a 'bad set/block'. I actually like some cards from Masques, it was a fairly creative set, even if it wasn't very pushed. The Monger cycle was nifty, but Rebels were about as interesting/inspiring as plain oatmeal imho, while Mercenaries were much less appealing than plain oatmeal somehow, being both deeply unpleasant flavourwise and deeply flawed mechanically. I like the Kyren goblins I think, Kyren Negotiations is a hilarious piece art.
MM is one of my favorite sets for commander. I even have a spellshaper tribal deck. Reverent Mantra is also a really underrated card for white decks imo
As someone who mostly plays commander, I can say this is not the worst set; I use way too many cards (mostly enchantments) from this set in several decks. Crackdown works great in any Mono-white deck as well as great support in Zur-Voltron. Spidersilk Armor helps compensate for greens lack of flyers. Vernal Equinox works well in enchantress decks. War Tax is a good alternative to Propaganda. Spiritual Focus is good at deterring and/or undoing any issues with an opponent's discard strategy. Energy Flux is good for dealing with annoying artifact decks. Uphill Battle is great for any red-aggro strategy and is one of the few red cards with a (usually) blue effect.
Masques was actually the first set for me when it comes to MtG (with the exception of a couple of Urza's Saga fat packs the local shop kept on excavating until Planeshift) and yes, looking back at it, it was... controversial. However, it will still have a special place in my heart, purely for the nostalgia reason. Also, the artwork on Dark Ritual was IMO the best one (hello, Rebecca Guay).
Thought I knew which artwork you meant and it wasn't. And the one I thought of was apparently never Dark Ritual and I have no idea how to ever find out what it was without looking through 50k cards or so
I finally got a Rishadan Port (masq) for Christmas last year. I have no use for it, it has just been my favorite magic card art for years and I've always wanted one.
I knew Rishadan Port was from Masques, but I had no idea Misdirection and Gush were from Masques! It really goes to show ya, a small handful of very powerful cards doesn't mean the standard meta is going to be powerful at all.
I loved mercadian MM. I started playing right around urzas saga (Wish I still had my cards they would have been worth a boatload) I had a mean red land destruction deck with a full set of rishadan port. I was beating grown men in tourney’s at 11 years old. And yes they were super salty losing to a child and having the unfortunate displeasure of playing against land destruction 😂
So, before actually watching the video, let me say this: a friend of mine and I actually had a discussion about this set, cause they insisted it was so bad. We spent a whole night looking though every card listed, and came up with a very scientific test: does it die to spark spray. We determined MM was good, and had a lot of solid cards. It also had a LOT of things that died to spark spray. Also, it had almost 100 more cards then most current set releases. More cards, more likely to be chaff
Nice intro but you could also have mentioned the mighty reprints - brainstorm, dark ritual, Stone rain and counterspell; masques had alot going on. Wasn't vendetta also okay?
@@NizzahonMagic There's clearly something wrong with your lists if Ivory Mask has no points. It was in Bob Maher's Oath deck that beat Brian Davis in the finals a Pro Tour, and there have been a couple recent You Tube videos that looked back on that match.
@@stevenglowacki8576 I didn't say it had no points. Read more carefully before attacking my methods! I explicitly said "It has points," It just doesn't have enough.
I'm surprised Food Chain didn't make it. I know it’s kind of a niche Legacy deck, but Goblin Food Chain was a thing for a while. How many points did that card get?
I have a soft spot for Masques. It was the first real set I got into bc it was designed with an accompanying novel, & it was rly cool seeing the things from the novel interpreted as cards. Old me based the power of a card based off it's importance in the story.
No, and I could swear this was previously covered. Prophecy might be the worst set ever. Mercadian Masques has a few powerful cards and the best art in all of Magic.
I'm always so confused y people use the term Eternal Formats only for Vintage n Legacy even tho the term refers to the fact that those formats didn't rotate the way Standard n Extended do/did so technically that means Modern, Pioneer, n Pauper r all Eternal Formats too n I want people to start recognizing that. N anyone who disagrees, then wut do u call those formats if not Eternal? I think the term just got used for so long that people forgot wut it really meant n just took it as a synonym for Vintage n Legacy
I mean, I agree. At most, I can see people saying an eternal format is a non-rotating format with no cut off date. (Which the other formats have) Note, despite my explanation, I am I agreement with your post. I always took the definition as "non-rotating format" as well
I thought you overlooked Brainstorm at first, as I was confident it would take the number 1 spot. However, I remembered the cards on this list are exclusive to Mercadian Masques. Brainstorm has been printed in tons of sets and supplementary products.
It isn't just cards that were only printed in Masques that are eligible, but it is cards that received their FIRST printing in Masques. It was printed first in Ice Age, so yeah -- not eligible.
Not exclusive (most of the cards on the list have been reprinted at least once, if not all of them), but first printing in Masques. Brainstorm was first printed in Ice Age.
I think people thought it was weak since most people just played casually with the cards they happened to get from booster packs back then. And with those decks, freecasting was far less useful than in a real competitive deck so a lot of those cards didn't seem nearly as strong. It barely had any cards like Gaea's Cradle or that sort of thing that even a novice player can look at and easily tell the high power level of. Also if you look at how many points most of these cards had within the first 10 years of their release, it was probably a lot fewer than now. Those freecasting cards were probably in large part late bloomers compared to most cards, so it was even easier to think the set was weak back when it came out.
@@NizzahonMagic When I was a kid, I found myself and most of my friends would play with our 10 booster packs + 20 random cards we got in some other way. So we basically had no card draw and the game would often lead to a creature stalemate where everyone had plenty of time to cast all of their spells with their normal costs. So in this context, being able to freecast was relatively unimportant. Now that people have the Internet and can look up what a real good deck is, of course freecasting is good because people's decks know how to utilize it now. And I'm sure people know how to do so back then as well, but it seemed like most people I knew back when Masques came out were at a much more amateur level.
@@NizzahonMagic I think he means you are less likely to be able to exploit it in a casual deck. Time Walk is an awesome card, but in a casual deck it usually means you get to attack twice and draw an extra card, not roll over your opponent.
@@krvys7226 It's been supported by WoTC for a while, but I think niz's numbers date back to when they started running the challenges (I think they're called) on MTGO, which was somewhat after gush had been banned. (And well after most of the storm decks had been banned, though not the second round of storm that was kicked off by chatterstorm).
Land grant sometimes also gets played in pauper elves, but it's a controversial card there, since letting your opponent know exactly which elf "lords" you have in hand just to thin your deck slightly isn't great.
@@tomscud I was specifically talking about when they officially merged online and paper. I expressed this better in a later comment, but was not clear on that here. I also assume those challenges started around that merger as well
Rebels didn't really coalesce as a deck until lin-Sivvi came out in Nemesis. Then it was Rebel mirror in every tournament. To the point that they had to change the Legend rule.
Los costes gratis actuales son lo que hace a los decks rotos e injustos, en cambio en Mercadia esta mas balanceado el costo alternativo y el efecto es modesto.
It's an Ice Age card. Fun fact: this was considered a crap card when Ice Age first came out. It was (unfairly) considered to be a sh!tty version of Ancestral Recall.
I know it's not originally from this set but still... And yes, brainstorm can be pretty bad in certain situations. I can visualize it being bad in the Ice Age environment for that matter.
@@terryprentice9657 Before there were good fetchlands and other good ways of shuffling, Brainstorm really wasn't that great. You got to see two cards two turns sooner, but you were generally stuck with whatever junk you had. Mirage gave us the tutor cycle plus some (crappy by today's standards) fetch lands that made shuffle effects more common.
@@davidminor4213 I wonder if there is a dated ban list on Pauper. The fact that Gush has no points in Pauper is usually a sign the card was banned before it could make a mark on the format (Lutri being banned in Commander for example). I'd love to know how long Gush was legal in Pauper.
I mean, you can call it "aggro-control" or "tempo" if you want, but it is a deck that runs a whole bunch of cheap creatures. They just happen to be disruptive, so I don't think "aggro" is the wrong label. Keep in mind I did a whole deck history on the deck!
I hated this set so much because of the Rishadan Port trash chase card broken design. Aside from Tinker and Stasis it is one of the worst unfun cards that breaks the game that was ever printed.
I stopped playing in 2006 after playing for 10 years. At the time of quitting mercadian masque block was the most boring, dog shit block. It almost killed the local standard tournament scene.
well, how can mercadian masques be one of the worse set ever after fallen empires or homelands. the latter is an entirely garbage set and has been since it was printed since people really struggled to find cards from it to put in their decks even if obliged by the rulings of that era, and fallen empires has only 1 playable card in hymn to tourach. the 3rd worse may be debatable... but I would go with ice age by today's standards even if some cards like jester's cap were thought to be good when it was around. or maybe the dark, I don't know
Fallen Empires is definitely one of the worst sets ever, no dispute there! But I think Prophecy is actually worse - prophecy doesn't even have a Hymn to Tourach-like card. And whether those two sets are bad or not, people talk about Masques in the same breath, and that's kind of the problem!
@@NizzahonMagic lol I forgot prophecy just because I wasn't playing mtg back then. I took a break after tempest. I remember homelands and fallen empires because that was exactly when I started playing
Mercadian Masques wasn’t necessarily the cliff but definitely the declining slope of Standard being powered down and correcting itself from the mistakes of Urza block. Mercadian masques does have a lot of stronger cards but a lot of them aren’t exactly the type of cardboard pieces people embrace with open and loving arms like how rebels bored you to death with the same linear gameplay because that’s how their searching eachother up gimmick worked (and got even worse when Nemsis dropped Lin Sivvi) or as you all see in this video, Rishadin port existing to stop you from being able to play magic. It’s like all Pain of certain Urza blocks cards like “Plow Under” but without the truly mind boggling pantheon of staple cards aside from Rishadin port and Gush which I wouldn’t be surprised people probably wouldn’t even know came from this block and just assumed they’re also Urza block brain farts.
Have you ever considered just doing the best cards? Like, no topic just the most played cards ever. It doesn't even have to be a good video. I just wanna know what the most played cards out of ALL OF THEM are.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
6 free spells, 2 brokens lands, 1 legendary goblin and 1 bad white card. This top10 is the perfect summary of MTG.
Last Breath was relatively decent back then though. It still sees play in Pauper, as Nizz said.
Having not watched this video yet, let's just say my interest is piqued
Even before I state the obvious, I think it's apt to say that no, it's not one of the worst sets ever, it has the glorious title of not even being the worst sets of its block, that honour going to Prophecy. It's definitely a bottom tier set, but Rishadin Port and Gush definitely redeem it slightly. I mean come on, Gush is restricted in Vintage, that means something, especially in the contexts of it maybe being able to make it onto "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)"! I'm a sucker for bad sets though, I just love wallowing through rubbish trying to find the gold, it's part of why I love Homelands so much.
Ah yes, Homelands. The set with Merchant Scroll and, um, Memory Lapse as the distant second best card.
@@ManaDrain315 The whole set could have been Merchant Scroll and it probably would have been just as strong. But still, I love it. We need to go back to Ulgrotha some time.
Gush IS insane but being restricted in Vintage doesn't really mean anything. I could point to Lodestone Golem, a card that has seen basically no play in any other format and then it doesn't make any sense. Context matters and cards are restricted for a lot of different reasons than just pure power level. In a format with lots original Moxen + Workshop then the 4 on LSG starts to look more like a 1 or 2. But I do share your love for Homelands cards. Garbage cards are really fun.
@@mountainwalk Well yes, but it still inherently does come with some rightful significance attached to it. Lodestone is restricted because it's a busted card in a busted set, it being meh everywhere else isn't quite as important to me. But I guess it's obvious how much I like Vintage and favour it over most other formats though.
@@TheGloriousLobsterEmperor I'd push back a bit on Worldwake being busted, a good set but I have a fairly high bar for broken: see Saga or Mirrodin block, maybe Eldraine too. Depends on what we are measuring. If you're thinking "what is the most busted in the widest cardpool/oldest format" then I get that. I evaluate cards like that too. For example. Look at Psychatog, good in every format. But it was absolutely at it's best in Vintage with access to Drain, FoF, GushBond, Yawgs Win, etc. Tog is a card that ran on converting cardboard to more cardboard and it was really easy to do that in Vintage. Don't mean to be too pedantic though haha!
I started playing when MM was release. So pure nostalgia to me. I played rebels and mercenaries and had great casual fun.
My beard grew abit reading this comment
I have grown to love Snuff Out in EDH. Really great removal card, paying 4 life is pretty negligible
SUPER solid removal.
Masques block definitely has a bunch of dumpster-tier cards, but the one broken design they inexplicably decided to keep was being able to play cards for no mana, so it's no wonder a few standout cards like Gush and Daze emerged from it.
That's the thing people forget: balance issues went in both directions. Yeah, the older sets had a lot of stupidly powerful cards, but they had a lot of forgettably weak cards too. For every ancestral recall there is a healing salve.
That was similar to Kamigawa block. Some really good cards (Jitte, needle, top, gifts, etc), Along with the unspeakable, Numai Outcast, and friends.
I think it’s strange that Gush only got 7 points in Extended when it was played in the Miracle Grow and Super Grow sets that dominated for a year. And then there was Psychatog which you mentioned.
And Land Grant was basically an extra 4 copies of Tropical Island before there was Misty Rainforest.
Extended was a format that was usually only supported for a few months a year, so there wasn't nearly as much time to accumulate those points.
It’s not even close to making it onto this list, but man, I love Masques so much for the Monger cycle and whatever you’d call the cycle that includes Hunter Wumpus and Hired Giant. I love those cards so much, and they’re the only reason I’d want to return to Mercadia.
For some reason I've always thought that "Mercadian Masques" was one of the best set names ever. It sounds pleasant and intriguing, but specific.
What's a Masque though
I wish Weatherlight was better set
@@GigaBoost it's either french for mask or a reference to a specific type of festival from the 16th century
@@Fellturtle which seems to make it a terrible set name 🤔
It's one of my favorite set symbols along with the Urza's Saga gears.
As a fan of the Dominaria lore back in the 90s, MM was certainly underwhelming compared to the fantasy/sci-fi themes of the previous sets. I was reading the novels at the time and I didn't enjoy the strange setting shift with only a few interesting locations and plots. Looking back, I do enjoy some of the gameplay themes introduced, the Rebels stuff was pretty neat. I also see the place in a storyline that needs a sort of "Break" in the action, where the characters are able to sort of rest, or in Squee's case, suddenly realize you are almost royalty!
ooo that background binder. "Minsc, River Hoopoe, Crater Hellion, and Jokulhaups". it gets me every time
Love your videos thank you!
Video Idea:
Overview on all Lotuses and how they performed (Lotus Petal, Guilded Lotus, Black ....)
Overview on all Moxen and how they performed....
Reanimator can use unmask to discard their own creatures for no mana (pitching a 3rd card and targeting themself)
that would be pretty dumb, since you exile a card to cast it for free
@@Flum666 The reanimator player needs a 3rd card to exile and they target themself. They don't exile the griselbrand or whatever it is that they want to go in the graveyard.
@@Riiccck again, that would be pretty dumb, since you want the unmask to take the counter spell from your opponent
There is also this amazing b spell called duress, maybe you've heard of it?
@@Flum666 Sometimes, and sometimes your opening hand is unmask, swamp, griselbrand, reanimate and some other black card and you put griselbrand into play on turn one. The deck has a number of ways to do it, but that's one of them. And for the record: you couldn't discard your own griselbrand with duress.
Masques was a block I never liked. After my favorite block, Saga, Masques looked like absolute garbage in comparison. I think I quit playing Magic, for a while, after the Nemesis prerelease, when I saw that the block was actually getting worse. I loved Saga, and Masques was underwhelming, to say the least, at the time. I came back during Invasion, which was more to my liking. I was a mercurial child at the time, in all honesty.
Exactly my experience!
Same experience…I started during Tempest - Urza’s Block. Those blocks were fast and aggressive. Masque block focused either on slowing the game down (Port and Parallax Tide/Wave) or Rebel which I personally didn’t like.
Same. I started during Mirage, stopped at MM. Came back right before Onslaught, so I had to go back and look at all the good stuff I missed during Invasion and Odyssey blocks
Masques block was the beginning of my first exodus from M:tG. I lost a lot of interest in Magic during this time period. Invasion block brought me back for a bit, but when the next few blocks went away from Terisiare, the lore then no longer interested me as well.
I called the top 2 as soon as I saw the title of the video.
I think that Masque block suffers the same issue of the first trip to Kamigawa: while there are some bangers in the set, the fact that in general the sets had to be significantly powered down after broken blocks like Urza and Mirrodin made them look worse than what they actually were simply by comparison with what came immediately before.
Yep, I said that in the video, so obviously I agree.
Misdirection is a card that keeps popping up in vintage in random blue decks because the prospect of misdirecting an opposing Ancestral Recall is pretty sweet :D It is still a bit lacking in terms of power level for the blue decks in that format so it remains somewhat of a joke there but every once in a while you do get to see it happen
Can also help you win counter wars and its better than force against thoughtseize and other discard. Before force of negation came out, it was often used as the 5th or even 6th FoW
You know what, for some reason I always thought that Land Grant's cost-removing ability only worked with your starting hand. I have NO idea why. Only now it clicked for me that it's free anytime you don't have any lands in hand, d'oh...
I was today years old...
Cho-Manno, rebels, add a Lin Sivvi and some other white utility spells from the rest of the block... that was my first deck.
I love MM so much.
There is more than 1 way to define a set as 'bad', I feel like Masques Block was a really wimpy block, and people remember that and have distaste for it, even if it has individual cards that were extremely pushed. Masques is very much a set with some quite decent to excellent cards, but with tons of stuff that wouldn't see play in any other standard environment seeing play here, hence people calling it a 'bad set/block'. I actually like some cards from Masques, it was a fairly creative set, even if it wasn't very pushed. The Monger cycle was nifty, but Rebels were about as interesting/inspiring as plain oatmeal imho, while Mercenaries were much less appealing than plain oatmeal somehow, being both deeply unpleasant flavourwise and deeply flawed mechanically. I like the Kyren goblins I think, Kyren Negotiations is a hilarious piece art.
My first ever deck was mono black mercs, memories.
What's the thing in your shelf with the Strixhaven logo?
Been collecting the foil unmasks forever. One of my favorite arts in magic. The foil is stunning
Land grant sees some play in pauper too, elves and sometimes some combo decks too
MM is one of my favorite sets for commander. I even have a spellshaper tribal deck. Reverent Mantra is also a really underrated card for white decks imo
As someone who mostly plays commander, I can say this is not the worst set; I use way too many cards (mostly enchantments) from this set in several decks.
Crackdown works great in any Mono-white deck as well as great support in Zur-Voltron.
Spidersilk Armor helps compensate for greens lack of flyers.
Vernal Equinox works well in enchantress decks.
War Tax is a good alternative to Propaganda.
Spiritual Focus is good at deterring and/or undoing any issues with an opponent's discard strategy.
Energy Flux is good for dealing with annoying artifact decks.
Uphill Battle is great for any red-aggro strategy and is one of the few red cards with a (usually) blue effect.
could you misdirect a counterspell onto misdirect?
Before watching I’m thinking some reprints. Wait does he allow that?
Cuase then brainstorm would be up there. And maybe dark ritual?
I thought Food Chain was gonna be in the list. Guess the hype for that is a lot like Slippery Bogle. Very naughty cards, but not that played.
Food Chain is a (C)EDH card.
@@IvarTheBonerless well, I thought it's a staple for legacy and vintage decks.
It definitely isn't a "staple." It has some points in Legacy and Vintage, though -- just not enough.
@@NizzahonMagic Ah... Interesting.
As a on again/off again StifleNought player, you always need a Misdirection or two for those Abrupt Decays :)
Masques was actually the first set for me when it comes to MtG (with the exception of a couple of Urza's Saga fat packs the local shop kept on excavating until Planeshift) and yes, looking back at it, it was... controversial. However, it will still have a special place in my heart, purely for the nostalgia reason. Also, the artwork on Dark Ritual was IMO the best one (hello, Rebecca Guay).
Thought I knew which artwork you meant and it wasn't. And the one I thought of was apparently never Dark Ritual and I have no idea how to ever find out what it was without looking through 50k cards or so
I finally got a Rishadan Port (masq) for Christmas last year. I have no use for it, it has just been my favorite magic card art for years and I've always wanted one.
Very nice!
I knew Rishadan Port was from Masques, but I had no idea Misdirection and Gush were from Masques!
It really goes to show ya, a small handful of very powerful cards doesn't mean the standard meta is going to be powerful at all.
I loved mercadian MM. I started playing right around urzas saga (Wish I still had my cards they would have been worth a boatload)
I had a mean red land destruction deck with a full set of rishadan port. I was beating grown men in tourney’s at 11 years old. And yes they were super salty losing to a child and having the unfortunate displeasure of playing against land destruction 😂
So, before actually watching the video, let me say this: a friend of mine and I actually had a discussion about this set, cause they insisted it was so bad.
We spent a whole night looking though every card listed, and came up with a very scientific test: does it die to spark spray.
We determined MM was good, and had a lot of solid cards. It also had a LOT of things that died to spark spray. Also, it had almost 100 more cards then most current set releases. More cards, more likely to be chaff
I lost a rising waters deck in my lgs during the masque block, with four rishadan ports
Misdirection also effectively counters counterspells for free, including the ones that say they can't be.
Nice intro but you could also have mentioned the mighty reprints - brainstorm, dark ritual, Stone rain and counterspell; masques had alot going on. Wasn't vendetta also okay?
Vendetta is basically outclassed by Snuff Out. It's weird that they printed two very similar cards in the same set.
I'd be sure he has a rule that says they need to be original printings if it's about a set
I'm surprised to not see Ivory Mask on the list. Its original printing was in Mercadian Masques, and is a big hoser against burn
I was also surprised at the lack of Food Chain on the list.
It has points, but it is basically a worse version of Leyline of Sanctity or Witchbane Orb, so it hasn't seen play in a very long time.
@@NizzahonMagic There's clearly something wrong with your lists if Ivory Mask has no points. It was in Bob Maher's Oath deck that beat Brian Davis in the finals a Pro Tour, and there have been a couple recent You Tube videos that looked back on that match.
@@stevenglowacki8576 I didn't say it had no points. Read more carefully before attacking my methods! I explicitly said "It has points," It just doesn't have enough.
I'm surprised Food Chain didn't make it. I know it’s kind of a niche Legacy deck, but Goblin Food Chain was a thing for a while. How many points did that card get?
As you noted, it is a little too niche to make it. It has 11 points.
I have a soft spot for Masques. It was the first real set I got into bc it was designed with an accompanying novel, & it was rly cool seeing the things from the novel interpreted as cards. Old me based the power of a card based off it's importance in the story.
looks like free spells are powerful, who would have thunk it
Yugioh hasn't learned thislesson yet
Did not expect the Port to only come in second. I forgot about Gush.
No, and I could swear this was previously covered. Prophecy might be the worst set ever. Mercadian Masques has a few powerful cards and the best art in all of Magic.
It's somewhere between Prophecy, Dragon's Maze, and Homelands (had flavorful cards in it at least)
Snuff Out costs 7 dollars? I have dozens of it, found in boosters pack I opened back in the days! OMG
Time to make some money!
with the continuing devaluation of the US dollar, it might be better in the long run to hang on to the cards
I'm always so confused y people use the term Eternal Formats only for Vintage n Legacy even tho the term refers to the fact that those formats didn't rotate the way Standard n Extended do/did so technically that means Modern, Pioneer, n Pauper r all Eternal Formats too n I want people to start recognizing that. N anyone who disagrees, then wut do u call those formats if not Eternal? I think the term just got used for so long that people forgot wut it really meant n just took it as a synonym for Vintage n Legacy
I mean, I agree. At most, I can see people saying an eternal format is a non-rotating format with no cut off date. (Which the other formats have)
Note, despite my explanation, I am I agreement with your post. I always took the definition as "non-rotating format" as well
It isn't just that they don't rotate, its that they include every single card ever printed (apart from bans in Legacy). Hence, "Eternal."
No mention of legacy Goblins for Rishadan Port? :c
Last Breath is uncommon so how is it played in Pauper?
It was later reprinted at Common.
I thought you overlooked Brainstorm at first, as I was confident it would take the number 1 spot. However, I remembered the cards on this list are exclusive to Mercadian Masques. Brainstorm has been printed in tons of sets and supplementary products.
It isn't just cards that were only printed in Masques that are eligible, but it is cards that received their FIRST printing in Masques. It was printed first in Ice Age, so yeah -- not eligible.
Not exclusive (most of the cards on the list have been reprinted at least once, if not all of them), but first printing in Masques. Brainstorm was first printed in Ice Age.
@@dilbert719 You're right. That's what I meant. Thank you for clarification.
Did land grant not see competitive play in pauper storm?
I’m a big fan of the charge lands from Masques. Pretty neat for proliferate commander decks.
That spot will always be held by Homelands.
I still love you Homelands.
Misdirection and Snuff Out were in a very first booster I bought in my life
cant forget about some other pretty cool cards from the set like bribery black market, conspiracy and food chain.
No matter what card game it is, never underestimate mana cheat.
I took your advice to heart and got beat up by a casino owner. >:(
I have a foil play set of MM counterspell. I always thought that was the best artwork counterspell had
Number 1 is...pretty much brand new to me. A real surprise
what the heck is happening in the art for Misdirection? it's sort of hurting my head to look at it
Something is being misdirected.
I think people thought it was weak since most people just played casually with the cards they happened to get from booster packs back then. And with those decks, freecasting was far less useful than in a real competitive deck so a lot of those cards didn't seem nearly as strong. It barely had any cards like Gaea's Cradle or that sort of thing that even a novice player can look at and easily tell the high power level of. Also if you look at how many points most of these cards had within the first 10 years of their release, it was probably a lot fewer than now. Those freecasting cards were probably in large part late bloomers compared to most cards, so it was even easier to think the set was weak back when it came out.
How is freecasting not good in basically any deck? Enlighten me.
@@NizzahonMagic When I was a kid, I found myself and most of my friends would play with our 10 booster packs + 20 random cards we got in some other way. So we basically had no card draw and the game would often lead to a creature stalemate where everyone had plenty of time to cast all of their spells with their normal costs. So in this context, being able to freecast was relatively unimportant. Now that people have the Internet and can look up what a real good deck is, of course freecasting is good because people's decks know how to utilize it now. And I'm sure people know how to do so back then as well, but it seemed like most people I knew back when Masques came out were at a much more amateur level.
@@NizzahonMagic I think he means you are less likely to be able to exploit it in a casual deck. Time Walk is an awesome card, but in a casual deck it usually means you get to attack twice and draw an extra card, not roll over your opponent.
Can’t believe Unmask targeting yourself to discard a reanimation target was not mentioned. Wow just wow.
Gush in a asie tyrant of the sr deck would be awesome
Port was City of Brass’s worst nightmare
Pauper isn't a"smaller" format though. Shouldn't it be the third largest cardpool after vintage and legacy?
No. Modern has 16,000 cards, Pauper has 8,316. It probably has the 4th largest card pool, but about half the size of Modern is a big difference!
I think this set partially gets a bad rep from the fact a lot of its strongest cards are annoying as all hell
I'm pretty sure Land Grant has points in Pauper because it was played in Storm variants for awhile
Gush is banned in Pauper too, so it definitely has points in Pauper
I think this is only counting pauper events after the format was picked up by WoTC proper. Keep in mind, the format existed a while beforehand
@@krvys7226 It's been supported by WoTC for a while, but I think niz's numbers date back to when they started running the challenges (I think they're called) on MTGO, which was somewhat after gush had been banned. (And well after most of the storm decks had been banned, though not the second round of storm that was kicked off by chatterstorm).
Land grant sometimes also gets played in pauper elves, but it's a controversial card there, since letting your opponent know exactly which elf "lords" you have in hand just to thin your deck slightly isn't great.
@@tomscud I was specifically talking about when they officially merged online and paper. I expressed this better in a later comment, but was not clear on that here. I also assume those challenges started around that merger as well
Surprised invigorate isn't higher up there due to it's usefulness in Infect decks.
i think invigorate is nemesis not masque
Gush, port, and rebels are my guesses. Maybe Tidal Kraken
Rebels didn't really coalesce as a deck until lin-Sivvi came out in Nemesis. Then it was Rebel mirror in every tournament. To the point that they had to change the Legend rule.
@@terryprentice9657 The Legend rule wasn't changed until Kamigawa.
Los costes gratis actuales son lo que hace a los decks rotos e injustos, en cambio en Mercadia esta mas balanceado el costo alternativo y el efecto es modesto.
There's a ton of cards from Masques that I play all the time in Commande. So it can't be that bad
*Laughs in Homelands*
Homelands was Innastrad with no angels or demons
Rhystic Study saves Prophecy all by itself from falling off the plant altogether
It is definitely a contender for worst set.
I never ever saw last breath in my life, didn't even knew it existed, and it's number 4. I was expecting Brainstorm to be number one.
It wasn't originally printed in Masques.
It's an Ice Age card. Fun fact: this was considered a crap card when Ice Age first came out. It was (unfairly) considered to be a sh!tty version of Ancestral Recall.
I know it's not originally from this set but still... And yes, brainstorm can be pretty bad in certain situations. I can visualize it being bad in the Ice Age environment for that matter.
@@terryprentice9657 Before there were good fetchlands and other good ways of shuffling, Brainstorm really wasn't that great. You got to see two cards two turns sooner, but you were generally stuck with whatever junk you had. Mirage gave us the tutor cycle plus some (crappy by today's standards) fetch lands that made shuffle effects more common.
@@stevenglowacki8576 So, it was all about the shuffle.
Please do Urza's Saga Block Top 10.
It'll happen eventually
I'm guessing Gush
Edit:
I mean yes. Surprised it had no pauper points tho
Oh my gush! You were right! I'll see myself out the door now 🙃
As Nizzahon mentioned Gush is banned in Pauper. I wouldn't be surprised if Gush was one of the first cards banned when Pauper was first created.
@@shuboy05 it wasn't always
@@davidminor4213 I wonder if there is a dated ban list on Pauper. The fact that Gush has no points in Pauper is usually a sign the card was banned before it could make a mark on the format (Lutri being banned in Commander for example). I'd love to know how long Gush was legal in Pauper.
@@shuboy05 Back in 2018, you could run a set of Gush in Pauper.
I am once again asking for “Top 10 worst rares from Urza’s Saga/Mirrodin/Throne of Eldraine”
Death and Taxes isn't an aggro deck
I mean, you can call it "aggro-control" or "tempo" if you want, but it is a deck that runs a whole bunch of cheap creatures. They just happen to be disruptive, so I don't think "aggro" is the wrong label.
Keep in mind I did a whole deck history on the deck!
Surprised Rancor wasn't on the list?
Shouldn't be. It isn't from Masques - not even Masques block!
@@NizzahonMagic dang my memory is horrible. Thanks for the vods!
I was like 16 when this set was released. Is it terrible? Yes. Do I still love it? Hell yes.
I like Masques. There's lots of fun cards for commander.
The problem is it was extremely limited in mechanics and very much stuck in a bad tribal mechanic.
Oh, no Invogorate for my infected heart.
I hated this set so much because of the Rishadan Port trash chase card broken design. Aside from Tinker and Stasis it is one of the worst unfun cards that breaks the game that was ever printed.
I loved MM ! Fun set to Crack Open
After the OP Urza's sets WOTC really nerfed type 2. shame
Masks was beyond broken with all the free stuff.
I love Mercadia, it deserves a better set.
Does anyone call the card Unmask 'Poison Ivy'? Because I really feel people should the similarity of the woman in the card is uncanny.
I stopped playing in 2006 after playing for 10 years. At the time of quitting mercadian masque block was the most boring, dog shit block. It almost killed the local standard tournament scene.
Didn't help that Pokémon broke in the US around that time.
I would like to point out that Nizzahon has not covered Worst Green cards ever. Please finish off the series if you could.
It is coming before the end of the month.
well, how can mercadian masques be one of the worse set ever after fallen empires or homelands. the latter is an entirely garbage set and has been since it was printed since people really struggled to find cards from it to put in their decks even if obliged by the rulings of that era, and fallen empires has only 1 playable card in hymn to tourach. the 3rd worse may be debatable... but I would go with ice age by today's standards even if some cards like jester's cap were thought to be good when it was around. or maybe the dark, I don't know
Fallen Empires is definitely one of the worst sets ever, no dispute there! But I think Prophecy is actually worse - prophecy doesn't even have a Hymn to Tourach-like card. And whether those two sets are bad or not, people talk about Masques in the same breath, and that's kind of the problem!
@@NizzahonMagic lol I forgot prophecy just because I wasn't playing mtg back then. I took a break after tempest. I remember homelands and fallen empires because that was exactly when I started playing
Oh, not even hard, Gush
Playing standard when this block was around was miserable.
Squee was used in decks that played Manticore.
Mercadian Masques wasn’t necessarily the cliff but definitely the declining slope of Standard being powered down and correcting itself from the mistakes of Urza block. Mercadian masques does have a lot of stronger cards but a lot of them aren’t exactly the type of cardboard pieces people embrace with open and loving arms like how rebels bored you to death with the same linear gameplay because that’s how their searching eachother up gimmick worked (and got even worse when Nemsis dropped Lin Sivvi) or as you all see in this video, Rishadin port existing to stop you from being able to play magic.
It’s like all Pain of certain Urza blocks cards like “Plow Under” but without the truly mind boggling pantheon of staple cards aside from Rishadin port and Gush which I wouldn’t be surprised people probably wouldn’t even know came from this block and just assumed they’re also Urza block brain farts.
Hi
Hi, my dude
Hey.
Lesson learned: free spells are good.
Plenty of flavor lore and worldbuilding, definitely not.
Have you ever considered just doing the best cards? Like, no topic just the most played cards ever. It doesn't even have to be a good video. I just wanna know what the most played cards out of ALL OF THEM are.
It is just going to be the Power 9 + Brainstorm probably -- not very interesting.
Island, Forest, Swamp, Mountain, Plains, Black Lotus, pick your 4 favorite Moxen.
@@NizzahonMagic It would be interesting to see what cards have the most points overall in one short video.
Snuff out
Uhhh….. no brainstorm????? Tf
It is a reprint in Masques, so it wasn't eligible.