Since comments don't understand, typically you would sign your deck into tournaments. So because he did that, his 60 card deck became 59, therefore against tournament rules and DQed
Oh man...I'm sure there are better ways of doing it, but I'd have done isochron scepter with remand, cast through time shahrazad. shahrazad on a stick, baby!
Probably one of the sickest Magic moments ever caught on camera was a prerelease event by LoadingReadyRun with the release of Unstable, on of the joke sets. One of the guest players, Wedge, played a card called "Spike, Tournament Grinder", which let him get a card from outside the game that's at some point been banned or restricted in a format. He proceeds to ask for the copy of Shahrazad that LRR happen to have in their studio as decoration. He then uses the card "Better Than One", which lets him choose a person outside the game to become his teammate, split up his cards however he wishes, and then plays Shahrazad to make a 2v1 subgame of Magic. They barely have enough cards to win the subgame before decking out, and eventually win the match.
@@mrbigglezworth42 Nah, Shahrazad was designed by Richard Garfield, the inventor of trading card games. MaRo designed every other card involved in the combo, though.
I've heard the creator of Magic said his favorite deck, back before cards were limited to 4 of, was 60 plains and 40 Shahrazad. Since most people had far fewer cards in their deck, they would eventually reach a level where they had fewer than 7 cards in their deck and lost drawing their opening hand. He also admits that, to his knowledge, nobody ever completed a game using this deck.
I kinda love the idea of just an infinitely recursive game of magic the gathering subgames, and when one recursion loop starts, you play another one in the "main" game and it all starts over again. Oh god.
Wiki: “Sometimes a character in Scheherazade's tale will begin telling other characters a story of their own, and that story may have another one told within it” - the concept of multiple layers of subgames is in itself based on One Thousand and One Nights
In the selection and translation I've read, *most* of the stories, including the one told on the first night, consist of a setup for 3-5 other stories to be told inside the story (and often a character in the story making some salient observation of what lesson can be learned from these stories in the stories)... and if I remember correctly, it contains stories nested four layers deep (five if you count the fact that One Thousand and One Nights is in itself a story (so... in the story you are reading, Scheherazade tells a story about someone telling a story about someone telling a story about someone telling a story)).
@@lostalone9320 the premise of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights was a woman, Sheherazad(sp?), attempting to delay her gruesome execution by tempting her captor with intriguing stories that would run so long that the sun would rise and he would be forced to put off her execution so she would be able to tell him what happens next on the next night.
@@HasegawaRayven Basically, yeah. She told a story but didn't finish it until the following night. Then started another story. She basically cliffhangered the dude 1000 times. In that time, she gave him 4 kids. Which is insane, because it implies she KEPT DOING THIS DESPITE CHILDBIRTH AND PREGNANCY FOUR FUCKING TIMES.
26:05 They totally printed a card exactly like this again - Enter the Dungeon from Unhinged. I tell you, I went to an Unhinged prerelease and it was crazy, people having to crawl under tables all over the place. "Enter the Dungeon BB Sorcery. Players play a Magic subgame under the table, starting at 5 life and using their libraries as their decks. The winner searches their library for two cards, puts those cards into their hand, then shuffles." One of the rulings on the card states "If Enter the Dungeon is cast during a subgame, a sub-subgame begins, preferably under a new, smaller table, but do what you can."
There are actually 3 subgame cards besides Shahrazad, one of which was almost eternal legal. They are: "Enter the Dungeon" from Unhinged "The Countdown Is at One" from Unstable "Tug of War" from Unfinity (initially tagged as eternal legal, but made acorn because of how it feels).
Honestly, i liked The Countdown Is At One, had it played against me in an unstable release event. The subgame is really fast since you're only at one life, and it has a noticeable impact on the main game afterward compared to simply halving your life total.
@@connorhamilton5707 It's a shame - Tug of War looks like an actually playable card. (The subgame would probably last seconds, anyway; any deck playing that card probably can deal 5 damage from 3 permanents immediately.)
I love it when people completely unaware of Shaharazad finally see it, it’s like someone walking into a lecture on quantum physics when their major is Accounting
What can I say to praise Magic except that it has survived long enough to make all of the mistakes, to show other successful games what not to do... And still survive.
@@csmead209 THing about MTG at this current day and age, they're almost literally 'too big to fail'. Even if Wizards /Hasbro did something catastrophic, the game itself would not die. Players would pick up the rules part of it if Hasbro dropped it, and there's more than enough cards out there to give plenty of permutations of the game in it's many forms, including draft. As things are though, lotta long term MTG players are going to other CCGs, like Pokemon, flesh&blood, lorcana, even the new One Piece.
@@cabri358 LOL even better than what I was going to suggest. Wound Reflection + Shahrazad. You win the sub game and then go to endstep and everyone immediately dies.
A special context on Juzam Djinn is that hard removal, while common enough, a lot of it was IN Black. And for the first 15ish or so years of Magic, a lot of Black's hard removal only hit "non-Black non-Artifact" creatures, giving Black creatures a bit of extra resistance to removal that other Color+Creature types lacked.
Yeah and you could run your own removal so when you got djinn turn two not only could they not remove it but you could remove their blockers (if you ran the right removal)
There was pretty little removal in general, black had terror and white swords to plowshares. Red removed via direct damage (so dies to bolt was an important factor in deciding what creatures you play). Probably the best early anti creature stuff was in blue since they could copy, steal and counter whatever you had.
@@daftwulli6145At least by ice age white had Reprisal, which takes out any high power creatures. Even Arabian Nights had Abu Jafar for one white mana; block with him and as long as he dies the creature that killed him does too. In fact as early as Beta there was Circle of Protection: Black and alpha had Chaos Orb. I think a bigger problem was not a lot of decks played a lot of creature removal because why would you, creatures sucked!
The three best removal spells at the time were Swords, Bolt, and Terror. Juzam dodged two of the three. And if they used Plow, it gave you back all the life you lost! Win-win!
@@psymar None of them are creature removal spells though (as in remove one creature with one spell). White also had wrath of god as mass removal ,which is still the gold standard for wrath effects, and all wrath effects follow the patterns of wrath of god , like how much a wrath should cost etc. heck it even named the card archetype (which a lot of cards from alpha do, bolt ios another good example The circles where never main deck cards, some people played them in the sideboard, especially the red one since red had a lot of direct damage. But having a circle in the maindeck was a bad idea, since it is a dead card if your opponent does not play that color. Effectively giving your opponent card advantage, since he has 1 more usefull card then you. Chaos orb was probably the best removal ever printed. Provided you are good at flipping it can remove anything for just 3 generic mana, and it being an artifact it can fit into any deck. I play a lot of oldschool (93/94) and chaos orb is a must have for pretty much any deck, except maybe ultra agrro decks. IN GENERAL cards that can remove any permanent are pretty rare, and usually expensive to cast (like desert twister) or give opponent sopmething in return like beast within wherhe they get a grizzly bear (2/2 grteen bear toen vanilkla) or curse of the swine (considered blue´s best removal, XUU exile x creatures and replace them with ........ also grizzly bears, which i always find hilarious since it is in blue buit gives you green creatures) and I think this is the only colorless one.
Fun fact about City in a Bottle: when printing the Arabian Nights expansion, they added a basic mountain to fill out the print sheet. An Arabian Nights Mountain is the only basic land in the set. City in a Bottle's effect was such that (at the time, not sure if it's still the case) if your deck had Mountains with the Arabian Nights symbol, you couldn't play them! It caused a lot of anger and frustration in games at my LGS.
They have changed all of the expansion hosers to check for cards that are originally printed in a given expansion. This list is defined in the CR for each of them.
@@Prinrin And this was why from what I heard. Because Juzam Djinn was so strong a creature back then, people played city in a bottle as specific tech against that. Magic Apocrypha says someone was playing a red deck at a very early event and went to the trouble to bling his deck out with Arabian Nights mountains (which were a mistake, they actually removed all the basic lands from the print sheets, but missed one, so one mountain per print sheet run was printed) which made him just unable to play the game because all his lands were just blown up or unplayable.
@@ericrubyblade8226shahrazad is a woman who was the bride of a sultan/king who had a reputation for killing his wives. In order to escape this fate, she told him a story that did not end so night after night he had to spare her to hear the continuation. This lasted for 101 nights
@@ericrubyblade8226 So basically, most of arabian mythos like Aladdin and Ali Baba comes from the collection of tales called One Thousand and One Nights. The book is about a king who after finding out his wife cheated on him, killed her and decided that he would sleep with a different woman everyday and then have her executed the next, so he couldn't be cheated on again. Knowing this, this woman, Shahrazad, willingly offers to spend the night with the king, even though she would be executed. After the two have sex, she starts telling him a story, her storytelling is so good and mesmerizing that the two stay awake throughout the whole night, and she says she'll finish the story the next night. So the king says "Damn, I can't have this woman killed because I want to hear how the story ends." So he allows her to live another day so she can finish the tale. But, during the second day, her story branches out into another story, that was still related to the original, but still different. She also doesn't finish this story that night, making the king let her live for another day. During the third night, that story branches out again into a third story. She keeps doing this to stall her execution for 1001 nights, hence the name of the book. The obvious flavour is that when you play Shahrazad, you're branching out the story (the game) into another story (the subgame) to keep the king (the opponent) 'entertained'. But there's also thematic implications, cause it makes more sense to play Shahrazad when you're losing, after all, why would you give a chance for your opponent to catch up in the subgame? So by playing Shahrazad you're basically doing what she did in the book, you're stalling your own demise. And by even making the choice of putting her in your deck, you're already basically admitting that you plan to be "losing", the same way she knew that she would be executed. And just like CGB explained in the video, you could have 4 copies of Shahrazad in your deck, making it possible to play a subgame of a subgame of a subgame of a subgame; just like Shahrazad told a story within a story a thousand-fold.
@@davyespectador If your main deck had 4 copies then you could spinoff four subgames just from that, and each of those subgames would potentially have multiple copies of Shahrazad in that deck, so I think you could end up playing upto 15 subgames, many within other subgames, just with the 4 copies from one deck and nothing else bringing them back for a second time round. (I'm guessing the mirror matchup could spawn 255 subgames if they all got played, so that would be fun.)
24:50 The REALLY crazy thing, is that in the subgame, you can use that Ring and similar effects to grab stuff from _the higher games._ If you play cards right, you can go into an infinitely deep subgame-ception.
24:20 i dont know about a 4 player game, but Loading Ready Run had Shahrazad cast in their Unstable Pre-Release when there were 3 players because anorher person had been added to the game from the effect of Better Than One. That person also happened to be Mark Rosewater.
@@munkifaze4331dark ritual is the worst best card still in magic, because yeah, it goes in *every* black deck. It's one of the best mana rituals, especially in black.
@@kalebgray1050I think it's kinda cool though, maybe it was never balanced but the cost is card advantage, and Black is all about making dubious decisions to do cool stuff. The problem is like Lightning Bolt, 2 is okay but meh, 3 is busted, you can't really tune it right without making all Black creatures more expensive.
@@munkifaze4331 Yes, but why would anyone not run it right? My deck back in the day: T1 -> Dark Ritual -> Entomb -> Exhume -> Spirit of the night (6/5 fly/haste/first strike/protection from black)
Another neat bit of trivia is that City in a Bottle actually sees a small amount of play in Vintage in sideboards, even though Arabian Nights barely has any playable cards in those formats. It’s specifically there to stop the aforementioned dredge decks by removing Bazaar of Baghdad and making those decks completely useless.
You'll also see it in '93/'94 format for a variety of reasons. It's good sideboard tech against Ernham Djinn, Juzam Djinn, City of Brass, and some others.
Actually, the magic player is wrong. You are correct, in that City in a Bottle DID actually see significant play in sideboard, because Juzam, Erhnam, City of Brass, Library were so strong throughout all of the early play until standard rules got implemented. Mainly, in the Big Blue deck when Legends came out which I helped my friend develop. Most of the main decks at the time were running Djinn decks, and City in a Bottle crushed their decks. That combined with the Power Blue cards, 8 potential counterspells, meant the Djinn decks got completely trounced by our deck. So, it was a VERY valuable sideboard card to have.
Fun lore fact: Arabian Nights is the only MTG set that takes place on Earth. Every single other set takes place on other plane(t)s. Well, until Fallout I suppose.
@@JoshSweetvalePortal Three Kingdoms is the only non-crossover set that takes om Earth. Arabian Nights was shortly after retconned to take place on the plane (or planes as it fractured into 101 seperate planes) of Rabiah.
Funny interaction with Sharazad : when you play a sub-game of magic, technically the original Sharazad is on the stack of the main game, but it is not in the same game. So... if a card would allow you to "get a card from outside the game"... (link for example, Ring of Ma Ruf) Yes, you can grab the original Sharazad and play it inside its own subgame. And with a few other cards to shuffle the ring in the deck before playing Sharazad, you can have infinite subgames of magic one into another.
I have a commander deck built that plays it, and on cast puts approximately 3,000 copies of it on the stack in the perfect setup. Rule 0'd it to play it once. Worth it.
Your videos with CGB are possibly the most enjoyable pieces of content out there! If my Magic player heart can make a wish, it would be for more content of you two together!
If we talk about technicalities, magic used to have joke sets and one of the cards from the set unsanctioned works like Shaharazard. Except you play the subgame under the table at 5 starting life and winner gets to search for 2 cards. It's called Enter the Dungeon.
@@xenok42 And if we're talking about Ring of Ma'ruf slowing down games as people searched their collection, how about Ashnod's coupon? I sent someone to walk half half a mile to McDonald's and get me a milkshake mid game.
Re: Ali from Cairo: the difference between "lose X life" and "take X damage" now also exists in Hearthstone too - previously if you made your hero immune to damage you would negate the health cost of any card that costs health instead of mana, but now paying health is treated as its own thing.
I'm a very old Magic player and I was present at a T1 tournament table where the following turn one happened: Player A: Mox Jet, Black Lotus, Juzam, Player B: Plains, Black Lotus, Moat (Creatures without flying cannot attack)... Player B was a "bubble" deck (WU Control in modern terms) and never allowed the Juzam to leave the battlefield despite Player A'a efforts...
I mean, Spirit Link made most Djinn decks much harder to win. That was usually the go-to for Control decks back in the day to counter all the Djinn decks and it was from the same expansion as Moat. Plus, it had the extra benefit of giving you 1 life every time the Juzam damaged the opponent during upkeep.
Juzam was way better. Comes out on turn 1 with lotus + land and drawing at least 1 land is basically guaranteed since its 1/3rd of your deck. Kills in 4 turns instead of 5. Cant be targeted by common black removal (terror - similair to doomblade now) or counterspells (too early). Damage dealt to creatures isnt permanent so you cant remove it over multiple turns with damage.
Originally, Ring of Maruf did not specify that it had to be a magic card. This was later clarified by judges when it mattered. But at the time, I would search for all sorts of dumb stuff, like an Ace of Spades or an F-16.
But how do you play any card that isn't from magic? After all the Ring of Maruf brings that card into your hand, not into play, so you still have to play it somehow and if it's not a magic card, than well...
There were a few set hosers in Magic the Gathering for the first two sets and a set called Homelands, though City in a Bottle is the only continuous one. The explanation was that when Richard Garfield initially invisioned Magic/trading card games he didn't want people to be forced to buy cards from a new set so City in a Bottle would help with that.
@@NotYourAverageNothing there are three expansion hosing cards that are allowed in competitive gameplay. Apocalypse Chime from Homelands which for 2 mana is an artifact that you pay 2, sacrifice and tap to destroy all nontoken permanents that were originally printed in Homelands and they can't be regenerated. Similarly in Antiquites Golgathian Sylex is a 4 mana artifact which for 1 mana and tapping forces all players to sacrifice nontoken permanents originally from Antiquites. City in a Bottle was talked about in the video. Lastly there is a draft event with crazy test cards which has a hoser called Crux of Mirrodin which is a sorcery that destroys all nonland permanents originally printed in either the first 4 sets of Mirrodin or the 3 sets of Mirrodin after New Phyrexia really appears.
Can't believe this didn't come up - Ali from Cairo was actually banned, with the justification being that it being legal would force decks to run removal... Very weird to think about in today's card game landscape
I don't think the Magic guy brought it up, because it became unbanned later on because like you said, almost all decks had removal. So, maybe the Magic guy didn't play in tournaments while Ali was banned or didn't think it was relevant after they removed Ali from the banned list.
I remember the Unstable PPR where Wedge used Spike to get Shahrazad, then used Better Than One to make Mark Rosewater his teammate, then cast Shahrazad to take himself, Mark, and his opponent Cameron, into the subgame.
Ali from Cairo was on the original restricted list! In hindsight, this is a hilarious decision, especially since cards like Channel, Demonic Tutor, and Library of Alexandrai were not restricted. But Wizards back then was terrified of good creatures.
For more context on what cgb means by shahrazad being super banned, there are a few cards that are just automatically banned in every format including the "no banlist formats". This isn't due to power but them not being functional cards. Shahrazad, Chaos Orb, and the parody cards are all examples of those kinds of cards.
Important context for this, Shahrazad isn't perma-banned because of subgames not working in the rules. They work perfectly fine, in fact, and Tug of War from Unfinity (another subgame card) was initially tagged as eternal legal, only being made an acorn card due to how it feels. The reason Shahrazad is perma-banned is that for tournament play (what banlists are generally relevant for), Shahrazad takes too much space. Every additional subgame basically expands your needed table space by another whole game. In other words, it's perfectly functional in the rules, but doesn't function within the limitations tournament settings have to deal with.
The follow up alternate ending of the Chaos Orb story is the judge declared in a legal move, but the player was disqualified because he now had a 59 card deck.
My favorite version of the Chaos Confetti story ends with the opponent looking in disbelief at the player and the board, then calling a judge to come over and do a card count, as they think the player's deck doesn't match the decklist submitted at tournament start, resulting in an instant DQ.
The chaos confetti story as I first heard it ended with the guy being disqualified because after ripping up Chaos Orb, his deck now had less than 60 cards, but honestly the "he went on to win the tournament" ending is so much better.
I never heard that version back in the day, but now it's everywhere. I think someone appended it after getting tired of people popping off for such a silly story.
Shahrazad used to be legal in Legacy and Vintage. Before "exile" became a thing, "remove from the game" was sticky in the sense that cards in subgames would not return to the parent game. So it was good in some mill decks. Also it was pretty good in zoo.
Yah and there was the dirty trick of recurring Shahrazad via Regrowth/Timetwister/Fork shenanigans to stall the entire round, giving you a draw when you went to time. Or if you won game one, you would win the whole round 1-0. That was the main reason it got banned in Vintage, instead of getting restricted to one per deck. Even though the subgames wouldn't turn into more subgames, it was just the fact you could play games two, three, four, and so on and so forth when you technically haven't even finished game two.
Also played in a very strong white aggro deck with Tormond's Crypt. It was basically "WW - Half target player's life total", which is pretty good when you're playing beat down. If they tried to win the sub-game but got hit with Crypt in the process it could render their deck unplayable in the parent game. You'd have to concede the sub-game in response to crypt just to preserve your win conditions or you end up with a non-functional deck in the game that actually matters, so the aggro deck would basically always win the sub game one way or another.
Fun Fact: City in a Bottle is extremely relevant in the highest level of play Vintage currently. Basically there’s a deck that’s taken over the format (thank you Modern Horizons 2) and the engine of the deck is a particular land from Arabian Nights. As a result of the absurd power level of this deck City in a Bottle is in almost every Vintage Sideboard to neutralize the deck. And those that are wondering… look up Vintage Bazaar Aggro.
25:00 And here's the thing that's even funnier, since the cards that are in the original game are technically "outside the game" when you are playing the subgame, you can possibly loop Sahrazads 8nfimotely by using effects like Ring of Ma Rul or Wish.
One of my favorite moments in casual Magic from back in the day, was playing a white/red deck and playing Shahrazad, and then Fork (to duplicate the Shahrazad). My opponent just scooped. :D HOWEVER, it has not always been banned in competetive play. It has been on and off the banned list several times. During the mid 2000s Wizards printed a set of cards called Leylines, which were enchantments, which would enter play if they started in your opening hand. The black Leyline of the Void said that any of your opponents cards that would enter the graveyard were instead exiled. Exiled cards in a subgame stayed exiled when the players returned to the main game. Shahrazad wasn't banned at that particular time. So there was a deck that played those two cards, along with discard and removal IIRC. The correct move for the opponent was usually to immediately concede the subgame and lose half their health. They eventually both rebanned Shahrazad and changed it so exiled cards were shuffled back. :D
Shahrazad is one of the most on flavor cards in MTG history. Shaharazad is a reference to the character Scheherazade from the Book ONE Thousand and One Arabian Nights. She is a woman who offered herself up to a king who has been marrying virgins and killing them after sleeping with them. On their wedding night, she starts to tell the king a story but cleverly does not finish it. The kind keeps her alive so he can hear the end of the story. After she finishes the one story, she transitions to another sorty, again not finishing the story so she can survive another day. She repeats this process for 1001 nights. The king finally decides not to kill her, and they live on together. The stories she tells include famous Arabic folk tales like Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, and Ali Baba. The card delays players with other games, just like how Scheherazade delayed he demise with new stories.
Ring of Maruf: The joke on this one was "You know.. it doesn't say it has to be a card from Magic the Gathering." and people joking summoning Vampires or playing reverse Uno cards.
Dude the final animation is amazing. Also thanks to you I started watching more covertgoblue content, even tho I ve never played magic. Keep the good work
They have printed at least one card similar to Sharazed that I can think of, Karn Liberated. He's a planeswalker with a + ability to exile cards from hands, a - ability to exile cards from play, and a big ability to restart the game, but you start with all the cards you exiled with Karn in the first game.
Shahrazad's flavor is nuts, considering the whole thing for One Thousand and One Nights is connecting night after night with stories within stories to save her own life.
We did an unglued/tempest tournament back when it first released... it was a magical day of people clucking like chickens to grant flying, doing the hokey pokey to give protection from colors and tearing up chaos confetti's and even a Blacker Lotus to cast a Verdant Force on turn 3. It was absurd and amazing.
To be fair, they have printed cards like Shahrazad, BUT only in Silver Border/Acorn/Non tournament legal magic. That said, every newer card like that usually has some stipulation of like setting your life in the sub game to 5 or 1 or giving everyone big creatures just so that it's over very very quickly because the designers now know better than to stick people in a subgame for too long.
The fact you used Sirius's boss music when showing Chaos Orb, considering how much of a fan the PoE devs are of Magic(and modeled the Chaos Orb currency after the card)is amazing
They have printed 3 cards like Shahrazad since. "Enter the Dungeon" in Unhinged, "The Countdown is at One" in Unstable, and "Tug of War" in Unfinity. All of which are not legal for play.
Wait. Exiling Ring of Maruf is part of the effect and not the cost. Assuming you have enough mana, you can hold priority to activate it multiple times 23:10 If you automatically conceide the side game, Shahrazad reads "2 white mana, all players but target player chosen randomly lose half their life points rounded down"
The best Shaharazad story happened at the Unstable PrePrerelease. Wedge played a Spike, used her to fetch the copy of Shaharazad that LRR had on set, then cast Better Than One, asking MaRo to be his teammate, then resolved the Shaharazad, leading to a 2v1 subgame. Needless to say Cameron got absolutely dumpstered. It’s somehow always Cameron who ends up on the other side of the table from the shenanigans lol. “UNSTABLE Highlight - Wedge vs. Cameron” is the title of the video. Highly recommend.
Fun fact: We don't play Magic as Richard Garfield intended. When he first conceived of Magic, he never envisioned anyone would attempt to fill out play sets of the best cards. He actually intended Magic to be more... mystical, if you will. You play with whatever you can find. That was one of the reasons why prints were so limited. Once they started making expansions, Richard actually thought about including a rule that said you can't have more than 15 cards from any given expansion. That's why an "expansion hoser," like City in a Bottle was printed. It could potentially lock someone out of, at most, 25% of their deck, but never completely shut them out. Then, they ended up not implementing that rule.
Reasons I know the Chaos Confetti story to be an Urban Legend: 1. Every schoolyard tale from this era fits a similar mold and almost none are true. It's why Snopes was a big hit in the early days of the post-dial up, intro to cable modems era. 2. No one has ever been named as the player who did it, the player had it done to them or as a judge or organizer. Magic was a small world, especially then. As for today, the tale has lived long enough that someone would've tried to clout-chase for it if they could. Most importantly... 3. I started playing in a Brooklyn Middle School in 1994-95 with the set: Revised. At my local game store, the story was already circulating, even then a year into the game's existence. Every version I ever heard when I was just an evil little boy attributed it to have taken place at the fabled "New York Magic"--Which locals would know as the biggest game store in the city, the famed "Neutral Ground." This store opened in 1995 (So it must've happened rather quickly) and The Pro Tour would hold events there starting in 1996. By then the story was already well, well known yet again, no one named on the scene. I was be a regular at NG until the early 2000s. The clientele was very, very loyal and everybody knew everybody. We even told the story in the shop a few times but no one could name the players, the date, the tournament or even game night such an event would have transpired. In short, if it had happened in NY in the early days of Magic I probably would have known someone involved or, at the least, known their name. This narrows down where it could have taken place if we remove kitchen and lunchroom magic out the equation. It didn't happen at GenCon '94, home of the first World Championship. That event was recorded as well as anything pre-internet. We know it cannot be Dragoncon, since the handout Nalathni Dragon was the talk of the CCG world and the Orb-story would've been easily pinpointed at an event that had a ton of print before and after. So where COULD such a game have taken place, in the limited amount of time possible? Answer: It didn't. Someone, probably a few people simultaneously in fact, saw Chaos Orb and thought "Wouldn't it be funny if--" and the jibber jabber survived to this day.
I played a lot of Magic back when it was first released. My friend had three Library of Alexandria and four Ivory tower. I think I lost 95% of the games we played or possibly more. This card was restricted around the exact time I got my 4th strip mine and my friend has not played Magic since.
"The Countdown Is At One" was printed in Unstable and does require players to play a Magic subgame, but each player starts at 1 life and the losing player(s) recieve double damage for the rest of the normal game.
"If you can have fun while making your opponent's life miserable - that's what card games are about." This has been my entire strat in playing card games since the 90s and likely a key to why I don't have any friends.
In the version of the Chaos Orb story I've heard, the person who tore up his Orb lost on the spot, because the judge ruled his deck was illegal as it no longer had enough cards 🤣
I've been in a three shahrazad game. Three of them were cast, one in the main game, and one in each shahrazad game. It's powerful, but it's more about the fact that getting through one game, if you dare, it's brutal. The correct play is to scoop. Always. Also, owned a Library once. It's the second most powerful card I've ever played, right behind Tolarian Academy.
Glad we also got the Chaos Confetti story. Some Un cards might be fun for one of these reviews. Obviously not for real or competitive value, but just for the ridiculous effects and artwork they have. Like that one video with Hearthstone fan cards.
As a Yu-Gi-Oh player, Bazaar of Baghdad is one of the most mind bogglingly broken cards I've ever seen in my entire life Adding two cards from deck to hand then discarding them for effect is so insanely strong that it would absolutely shatter the meta
The fun part of ring of ma'ruf was when the owner of the LGS is playing casual games and drops this, then goes into the store's inventory to get something
I am immediately reminded of a game me and 5 friends were having. Everyone has a troll in their friend group. This guy... had 4 sharazads in his deck, a chaos deck as it were. The rest of the cards don't really matter because after forking a Sharazad after playing a sharazad and a friend hive minding a sharazad... the silent one in our group screamed at the top of his lungs, punched the sharazad owner in the face, and stormed off to his class before he was late.
Shaharzad's effect was printed again with "Karn Liberated" his Ultimate/highest loyalty cost ability says [-14]: Restart the game, leaving in exile all non-Aura permanent cards exiled with Karn Liberated. Then put those cards onto the battlefield under your control. not the exact same but pretty close also it WAS legal in EDH before the format was "officially" supported by Wizards
With Sharazad you can use cards that pull cards from outside the game ( like Ring of Ma Ru that was shown earlier) to pull Sharazad into the new subgame and then play Sharazad again to create a subgame within that subgame and then use other cards to either pull your Ring of Ma Ru or Sharazad into the new subgame so you can create another subgame and continue to repeat until you've created infinite subgames.
The chaos orb story - from what I recall, the facts of the story is true, player was behind in a tournament, drew Chaos orb and then sprinkled his orb all over his opponents side. HOWEVER, the opponent challenged the move, and the player who sprinkled the orb was disqualified from the game, BECAUSE - he no longer had 60 playable cards in his deck and therefor lost that game.
I do wish Arabian Nights mountains were mentioned during the city in the bottle discussion. As there are few things funnier than playing it against a mono red player who only has Arabian nights mountains
8:51 what’s seemingly busted about Old Man of the Sea is it doesn’t say “target” so it gets around hexproof. So the card is REALLY good today. Also its ability works at instant speed (since I don’t see it say it either can only be activated on your turn on as a sorcery).
You two are my favorite card-guessers. Whether it's Magic or Hearthstone, you guys are so fun and energetic that I always love listening to you guys having fun.
One of the most fun games I've ever played was when my opponent cast Shahrazad...and forked it. We had a subgame start, draw the initial hand, set it aside, and then immediately start a sub game of the sub game. I was losing the main game, but won both sub games.
I still remember the Rukh Egg the first card to cause errata . A 0/3 creature that created a 4/4 flyer when it went to the graveyard. Back then it didn’t say it had to enter the graveyard from play and it was actually common enough that someone made a deck entirely of the card
Even considering that it's an old card, I'm still blown away that *anyone* would have taken a look Shaherazade and said "Yup, this is a perfectly rational card to send to print."
On Shaharazad: There was 1 month where Sharazad and Black Lotus were legal AND there was no limit to the number you could play in your deck so you could play a deck with nothing but the 20 copies of two cards in the deck
Shaharazad was actually legal until like 5ish years ago. It got banned in eternal formats because it was used as part of a strat to play a powerful but very easily countered strategy for a win in game one, and then you'd just start as many sub-games as possible trying to run out the clock for a 1-0 win
I love how Shahrazad refers to both ante and 40 card deck sizes. Also City was a thing they did in early sets as a sort of "safety valve" like if they overshoot and make AN cards too powerful, City would keep them in check.
My favorite version of the Chaos Confetti story is that the Judge immediately disqualified the player for having 59 cards in his deck.
Alternatively, it's marking your cards.
Easy fix.... have 61 cards in your deck.
Not kidding - nobody played 60 cards back then
40 cards was the minimum back then
Since comments don't understand, typically you would sign your deck into tournaments. So because he did that, his 60 card deck became 59, therefore against tournament rules and DQed
My FLGS once did a "Proxy Anything, No Banlist" tournament.
Every one after was "Proxy anything, No Shahrazad" tournament.
Oh man...I'm sure there are better ways of doing it, but I'd have done isochron scepter with remand, cast through time shahrazad. shahrazad on a stick, baby!
what about ante? Conspiracy?
Don't
Ess ga6
Wpw a way
Probably one of the sickest Magic moments ever caught on camera was a prerelease event by LoadingReadyRun with the release of Unstable, on of the joke sets.
One of the guest players, Wedge, played a card called "Spike, Tournament Grinder", which let him get a card from outside the game that's at some point been banned or restricted in a format. He proceeds to ask for the copy of Shahrazad that LRR happen to have in their studio as decoration. He then uses the card "Better Than One", which lets him choose a person outside the game to become his teammate, split up his cards however he wishes, and then plays Shahrazad to make a 2v1 subgame of Magic. They barely have enough cards to win the subgame before decking out, and eventually win the match.
Worth watching for the reactions of the people around them alone.
Especially the judge.
Worth noting is that the player he chose as his teammate was Mark Rosewater, Magic's lead designer.
@@gregoryhayes7569 He forced the guy who would've come up with Shahrazad, to play with Shahrazad? That feels like next level trolling.
@@mrbigglezworth42 Nah, Shahrazad was designed by Richard Garfield, the inventor of trading card games.
MaRo designed every other card involved in the combo, though.
@@mrbigglezworth42 Shaharazad was printed before he worked at WotC, so no not quite. Still funny though.
I've heard the creator of Magic said his favorite deck, back before cards were limited to 4 of, was 60 plains and 40 Shahrazad. Since most people had far fewer cards in their deck, they would eventually reach a level where they had fewer than 7 cards in their deck and lost drawing their opening hand. He also admits that, to his knowledge, nobody ever completed a game using this deck.
Perfectly Vorthos, as all things should be.
Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today
Magic as Rich Garf intended
That isn't a deck, that is a scheme to legally kidnap your opponent via magic the gathering.
I kinda love the idea of just an infinitely recursive game of magic the gathering subgames, and when one recursion loop starts, you play another one in the "main" game and it all starts over again. Oh god.
Wiki: “Sometimes a character in Scheherazade's tale will begin telling other characters a story of their own, and that story may have another one told within it” - the concept of multiple layers of subgames is in itself based on One Thousand and One Nights
There's a reason it took so long to tell the stories...
In the selection and translation I've read, *most* of the stories, including the one told on the first night, consist of a setup for 3-5 other stories to be told inside the story (and often a character in the story making some salient observation of what lesson can be learned from these stories in the stories)... and if I remember correctly, it contains stories nested four layers deep (five if you count the fact that One Thousand and One Nights is in itself a story (so... in the story you are reading, Scheherazade tells a story about someone telling a story about someone telling a story about someone telling a story)).
This is when the flavor and the mechanics of the card work terribly TERRIBLY well xD
@@lostalone9320 the premise of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights was a woman, Sheherazad(sp?), attempting to delay her gruesome execution by tempting her captor with intriguing stories that would run so long that the sun would rise and he would be forced to put off her execution so she would be able to tell him what happens next on the next night.
@@HasegawaRayven Basically, yeah. She told a story but didn't finish it until the following night. Then started another story. She basically cliffhangered the dude 1000 times.
In that time, she gave him 4 kids. Which is insane, because it implies she KEPT DOING THIS DESPITE CHILDBIRTH AND PREGNANCY FOUR FUCKING TIMES.
26:05 They totally printed a card exactly like this again - Enter the Dungeon from Unhinged. I tell you, I went to an Unhinged prerelease and it was crazy, people having to crawl under tables all over the place. "Enter the Dungeon BB Sorcery. Players play a Magic subgame under the table, starting at 5 life and using their libraries as their decks. The winner searches their library for two cards, puts those cards into their hand, then shuffles." One of the rulings on the card states "If Enter the Dungeon is cast during a subgame, a sub-subgame begins, preferably under a new, smaller table, but do what you can."
There are actually 3 subgame cards besides Shahrazad, one of which was almost eternal legal.
They are:
"Enter the Dungeon" from Unhinged
"The Countdown Is at One" from Unstable
"Tug of War" from Unfinity (initially tagged as eternal legal, but made acorn because of how it feels).
That's so funny xD
Honestly, i liked The Countdown Is At One, had it played against me in an unstable release event. The subgame is really fast since you're only at one life, and it has a noticeable impact on the main game afterward compared to simply halving your life total.
@@connorhamilton5707 It's a shame - Tug of War looks like an actually playable card. (The subgame would probably last seconds, anyway; any deck playing that card probably can deal 5 damage from 3 permanents immediately.)
@@therealax6 Yeah, it's a really cool design.
I love it when people completely unaware of Shaharazad finally see it, it’s like someone walking into a lecture on quantum physics when their major is Accounting
What if they're looking for Quantum Accounting?
Isochron scepter + shahrazad is one of my favourite things to do in a commander game
What can I say to praise Magic except that it has survived long enough to make all of the mistakes, to show other successful games what not to do... And still survive.
@@csmead209 THing about MTG at this current day and age, they're almost literally 'too big to fail'.
Even if Wizards /Hasbro did something catastrophic, the game itself would not die.
Players would pick up the rules part of it if Hasbro dropped it, and there's more than enough cards out there to give plenty of permutations of the game in it's many forms, including draft.
As things are though, lotta long term MTG players are going to other CCGs, like Pokemon, flesh&blood, lorcana, even the new One Piece.
@@cabri358 LOL even better than what I was going to suggest. Wound Reflection + Shahrazad. You win the sub game and then go to endstep and everyone immediately dies.
A special context on Juzam Djinn is that hard removal, while common enough, a lot of it was IN Black. And for the first 15ish or so years of Magic, a lot of Black's hard removal only hit "non-Black non-Artifact" creatures, giving Black creatures a bit of extra resistance to removal that other Color+Creature types lacked.
Yeah and you could run your own removal so when you got djinn turn two not only could they not remove it but you could remove their blockers (if you ran the right removal)
There was pretty little removal in general, black had terror and white swords to plowshares. Red removed via direct damage (so dies to bolt was an important factor in deciding what creatures you play). Probably the best early anti creature stuff was in blue since they could copy, steal and counter whatever you had.
@@daftwulli6145At least by ice age white had Reprisal, which takes out any high power creatures. Even Arabian Nights had Abu Jafar for one white mana; block with him and as long as he dies the creature that killed him does too.
In fact as early as Beta there was Circle of Protection: Black and alpha had Chaos Orb. I think a bigger problem was not a lot of decks played a lot of creature removal because why would you, creatures sucked!
The three best removal spells at the time were Swords, Bolt, and Terror. Juzam dodged two of the three. And if they used Plow, it gave you back all the life you lost! Win-win!
@@psymar None of them are creature removal spells though (as in remove one creature with one spell). White also had wrath of god as mass removal ,which is still the gold standard for wrath effects, and all wrath effects follow the patterns of wrath of god , like how much a wrath should cost etc. heck it even named the card archetype (which a lot of cards from alpha do, bolt ios another good example
The circles where never main deck cards, some people played them in the sideboard, especially the red one since red had a lot of direct damage. But having a circle in the maindeck was a bad idea, since it is a dead card if your opponent does not play that color. Effectively giving your opponent card advantage, since he has 1 more usefull card then you.
Chaos orb was probably the best removal ever printed. Provided you are good at flipping it can remove anything for just 3 generic mana, and it being an artifact it can fit into any deck. I play a lot of oldschool (93/94) and chaos orb is a must have for pretty much any deck, except maybe ultra agrro decks. IN GENERAL cards that can remove any permanent are pretty rare, and usually expensive to cast (like desert twister) or give opponent sopmething in return like beast within wherhe they get a grizzly bear (2/2 grteen bear toen vanilkla) or curse of the swine (considered blue´s best removal, XUU exile x creatures and replace them with ........ also grizzly bears, which i always find hilarious since it is in blue buit gives you green creatures) and I think this is the only colorless one.
Was not expecting a whole animation for the last 3 minutes of the video goddam
David’s the goat
Ya know, I read this comment like 2-3 minutes into the video, and still was so surprised when it happened. 😂 it was great!!
@@Rarran David's been playing too much PoE. You can't just drop Orion in there and not give PoE players PSTD from Sirius
@@Adanine THANK YOU
I heard the first three notes and my damn hair stood up on end!
@@AdanineYou really think he wasn't going to use PoE music for a story about Chaos Orb?
Fun fact about City in a Bottle: when printing the Arabian Nights expansion, they added a basic mountain to fill out the print sheet. An Arabian Nights Mountain is the only basic land in the set. City in a Bottle's effect was such that (at the time, not sure if it's still the case) if your deck had Mountains with the Arabian Nights symbol, you couldn't play them! It caused a lot of anger and frustration in games at my LGS.
They have changed all of the expansion hosers to check for cards that are originally printed in a given expansion. This list is defined in the CR for each of them.
@@Prinrin And this was why from what I heard. Because Juzam Djinn was so strong a creature back then, people played city in a bottle as specific tech against that. Magic Apocrypha says someone was playing a red deck at a very early event and went to the trouble to bling his deck out with Arabian Nights mountains (which were a mistake, they actually removed all the basic lands from the print sheets, but missed one, so one mountain per print sheet run was printed) which made him just unable to play the game because all his lands were just blown up or unplayable.
@@ReyosBlackwood The reason for the change was to make it so that printing was irrelevant. All versions of a card should function the same.
Another fun fact: those mountains are $150+ a pop
Shahrazad is not only one of the craziest cards ever, it's also one of the biggest flavor wins ever.
How is it a good fit for flavor? I'm curios as I don't know much about arabian mythos.
@@ericrubyblade8226shahrazad is a woman who was the bride of a sultan/king who had a reputation for killing his wives. In order to escape this fate, she told him a story that did not end so night after night he had to spare her to hear the continuation. This lasted for 101 nights
@@ericrubyblade8226 So basically, most of arabian mythos like Aladdin and Ali Baba comes from the collection of tales called One Thousand and One Nights. The book is about a king who after finding out his wife cheated on him, killed her and decided that he would sleep with a different woman everyday and then have her executed the next, so he couldn't be cheated on again. Knowing this, this woman, Shahrazad, willingly offers to spend the night with the king, even though she would be executed. After the two have sex, she starts telling him a story, her storytelling is so good and mesmerizing that the two stay awake throughout the whole night, and she says she'll finish the story the next night. So the king says "Damn, I can't have this woman killed because I want to hear how the story ends." So he allows her to live another day so she can finish the tale. But, during the second day, her story branches out into another story, that was still related to the original, but still different. She also doesn't finish this story that night, making the king let her live for another day. During the third night, that story branches out again into a third story. She keeps doing this to stall her execution for 1001 nights, hence the name of the book.
The obvious flavour is that when you play Shahrazad, you're branching out the story (the game) into another story (the subgame) to keep the king (the opponent) 'entertained'. But there's also thematic implications, cause it makes more sense to play Shahrazad when you're losing, after all, why would you give a chance for your opponent to catch up in the subgame? So by playing Shahrazad you're basically doing what she did in the book, you're stalling your own demise. And by even making the choice of putting her in your deck, you're already basically admitting that you plan to be "losing", the same way she knew that she would be executed.
And just like CGB explained in the video, you could have 4 copies of Shahrazad in your deck, making it possible to play a subgame of a subgame of a subgame of a subgame; just like Shahrazad told a story within a story a thousand-fold.
@@pintlemounted1001 nights
@@davyespectador If your main deck had 4 copies then you could spinoff four subgames just from that, and each of those subgames would potentially have multiple copies of Shahrazad in that deck, so I think you could end up playing upto 15 subgames, many within other subgames, just with the 4 copies from one deck and nothing else bringing them back for a second time round. (I'm guessing the mirror matchup could spawn 255 subgames if they all got played, so that would be fun.)
24:50 The REALLY crazy thing, is that in the subgame, you can use that Ring and similar effects to grab stuff from _the higher games._ If you play cards right, you can go into an infinitely deep subgame-ception.
The funniest part is that the rules now have to have a specific rule covering that case (725.4), because of course they do.
Well you've got to get to 1002 somehow.
@@therealax6Further sub games? That’s 726.6 actually (just for reference of anyone looking for it lol)
@@Muhahahahaz 726.4 after the renumbering, as well as the one you mention.
24:20 i dont know about a 4 player game, but Loading Ready Run had Shahrazad cast in their Unstable Pre-Release when there were 3 players because anorher person had been added to the game from the effect of Better Than One.
That person also happened to be Mark Rosewater.
I think CardMarket also had a EDH game, were someone played Shahrazad
I was going to make this exact comment, link to that game because it's a favorite: ua-cam.com/video/eBMLsY9qSt4/v-deo.html
I still loved the look on everyone's face when he activated the card that let him nab it. The judge literally said "You monster!" exasperatedly.
My Dijinn combo from back in the day was to play it on turn 2 with dark ritual and then win.
I swear, dark ritual has to be a card of all time. I dont think a single black deck I ran didnt have it
Almost an exact copy of innervate + yeti
@@munkifaze4331dark ritual is the worst best card still in magic, because yeah, it goes in *every* black deck. It's one of the best mana rituals, especially in black.
@@kalebgray1050I think it's kinda cool though, maybe it was never balanced but the cost is card advantage, and Black is all about making dubious decisions to do cool stuff. The problem is like Lightning Bolt, 2 is okay but meh, 3 is busted, you can't really tune it right without making all Black creatures more expensive.
@@munkifaze4331
Yes, but why would anyone not run it right?
My deck back in the day:
T1 -> Dark Ritual -> Entomb -> Exhume -> Spirit of the night (6/5 fly/haste/first strike/protection from black)
When I saw Old Man, my big thought was "steal your opponent's Ali, then take them out" so Ali being next made me laugh.
Old Man was great for stealing Birds of Paradise, Royal Assassin, Ali, Hypnotic Specter, and so many more. And that's before adding power.
Another neat bit of trivia is that City in a Bottle actually sees a small amount of play in Vintage in sideboards, even though Arabian Nights barely has any playable cards in those formats. It’s specifically there to stop the aforementioned dredge decks by removing Bazaar of Baghdad and making those decks completely useless.
You'll also see it in '93/'94 format for a variety of reasons. It's good sideboard tech against Ernham Djinn, Juzam Djinn, City of Brass, and some others.
Actually, the magic player is wrong. You are correct, in that City in a Bottle DID actually see significant play in sideboard, because Juzam, Erhnam, City of Brass, Library were so strong throughout all of the early play until standard rules got implemented.
Mainly, in the Big Blue deck when Legends came out which I helped my friend develop. Most of the main decks at the time were running Djinn decks, and City in a Bottle crushed their decks.
That combined with the Power Blue cards, 8 potential counterspells, meant the Djinn decks got completely trounced by our deck. So, it was a VERY valuable sideboard card to have.
Fun lore fact: Arabian Nights is the only MTG set that takes place on Earth. Every single other set takes place on other plane(t)s.
Well, until Fallout I suppose.
What about portal three Kingdoms?
@@darkrexkigntstone8773 Not... sure?
Maybe. It's certainly more obscure.
@@JoshSweetvalePortal Three Kingdoms is the only non-crossover set that takes om Earth. Arabian Nights was shortly after retconned to take place on the plane (or planes as it fractured into 101 seperate planes) of Rabiah.
Funny interaction with Sharazad : when you play a sub-game of magic, technically the original Sharazad is on the stack of the main game, but it is not in the same game. So... if a card would allow you to "get a card from outside the game"... (link for example, Ring of Ma Ruf) Yes, you can grab the original Sharazad and play it inside its own subgame. And with a few other cards to shuffle the ring in the deck before playing Sharazad, you can have infinite subgames of magic one into another.
There's certainly a rule somewhere that limits the amount of subgames Shahrazad can make to 1001.
You are a mad genius
I have a commander deck built that plays it, and on cast puts approximately 3,000 copies of it on the stack in the perfect setup. Rule 0'd it to play it once. Worth it.
This is how Godel demonstrated incompleteness.
You could do that just like you could jump with naked feet on Lego blocks.
Your videos with CGB are possibly the most enjoyable pieces of content out there!
If my Magic player heart can make a wish, it would be for more content of you two together!
If we talk about technicalities, magic used to have joke sets and one of the cards from the set unsanctioned works like Shaharazard.
Except you play the subgame under the table at 5 starting life and winner gets to search for 2 cards.
It's called Enter the Dungeon.
You two need to do one of these for the unglued or unhinged sets.
I want to know what Rarran thinks of "Look at me, I'm the DCI"....
26:11
Wait until they hear about Enter the Dungeon
@@xenok42 And if we're talking about Ring of Ma'ruf slowing down games as people searched their collection, how about Ashnod's coupon? I sent someone to walk half half a mile to McDonald's and get me a milkshake mid game.
Re: Ali from Cairo: the difference between "lose X life" and "take X damage" now also exists in Hearthstone too - previously if you made your hero immune to damage you would negate the health cost of any card that costs health instead of mana, but now paying health is treated as its own thing.
I'm a very old Magic player and I was present at a T1 tournament table where the following turn one happened: Player A: Mox Jet, Black Lotus, Juzam, Player B: Plains, Black Lotus, Moat (Creatures without flying cannot attack)... Player B was a "bubble" deck (WU Control in modern terms) and never allowed the Juzam to leave the battlefield despite Player A'a efforts...
I mean, Spirit Link made most Djinn decks much harder to win. That was usually the go-to for Control decks back in the day to counter all the Djinn decks and it was from the same expansion as Moat. Plus, it had the extra benefit of giving you 1 life every time the Juzam damaged the opponent during upkeep.
Min 11:00 The "Little Danny" story is pure gold and was told with Such Emotion 😂😂😂
2:45 Black Lotus or Dark Ritual + Juzam Djinn definitely gives some real Innervate into Yeti vibes
Juzam was way better. Comes out on turn 1 with lotus + land and drawing at least 1 land is basically guaranteed since its 1/3rd of your deck. Kills in 4 turns instead of 5. Cant be targeted by common black removal (terror - similair to doomblade now) or counterspells (too early). Damage dealt to creatures isnt permanent so you cant remove it over multiple turns with damage.
@@WhirlwindHeatAndFlash but chillwind yeti is a yeti
Fun fact: Kaja Foglio, the artist for Shahrazad, is also the artist for the comic Girl Genius. She did a lot of art for Magic back in the day.
Her husband Phil also had the same style and did many cards and comics
Originally, Ring of Maruf did not specify that it had to be a magic card. This was later clarified by judges when it mattered.
But at the time, I would search for all sorts of dumb stuff, like an Ace of Spades or an F-16.
"Pikachu, I choose you!"
But how do you play any card that isn't from magic? After all the Ring of Maruf brings that card into your hand, not into play, so you still have to play it somehow and if it's not a magic card, than well...
There were a few set hosers in Magic the Gathering for the first two sets and a set called Homelands, though City in a Bottle is the only continuous one. The explanation was that when Richard Garfield initially invisioned Magic/trading card games he didn't want people to be forced to buy cards from a new set so City in a Bottle would help with that.
Can you name some?
@@NotYourAverageNothing Golgothian Sylex comes to mind.
@@NotYourAverageNothing there are three expansion hosing cards that are allowed in competitive gameplay. Apocalypse Chime from Homelands which for 2 mana is an artifact that you pay 2, sacrifice and tap to destroy all nontoken permanents that were originally printed in Homelands and they can't be regenerated.
Similarly in Antiquites Golgathian Sylex is a 4 mana artifact which for 1 mana and tapping forces all players to sacrifice nontoken permanents originally from Antiquites.
City in a Bottle was talked about in the video.
Lastly there is a draft event with crazy test cards which has a hoser called Crux of Mirrodin which is a sorcery that destroys all nonland permanents originally printed in either the first 4 sets of Mirrodin or the 3 sets of Mirrodin after New Phyrexia really appears.
Can't believe this didn't come up - Ali from Cairo was actually banned, with the justification being that it being legal would force decks to run removal... Very weird to think about in today's card game landscape
I don't think the Magic guy brought it up, because it became unbanned later on because like you said, almost all decks had removal. So, maybe the Magic guy didn't play in tournaments while Ali was banned or didn't think it was relevant after they removed Ali from the banned list.
Oh this is the one with Shahrazad isn't it? Can't wait to get there in the video haha
To finish the video you have to watch another subvideo that gets you there
@@MsManuales I watched the one they did after this on CGB's channel a few days ago, that qualifies right?
I heard you like magic so i put magic in your magic
I pray your adventure is glorious and unforgettable. You have risen beyond the common man for that I salute you.
o7
I remember the Unstable PPR where Wedge used Spike to get Shahrazad, then used Better Than One to make Mark Rosewater his teammate, then cast Shahrazad to take himself, Mark, and his opponent Cameron, into the subgame.
Ali from Cairo was on the original restricted list! In hindsight, this is a hilarious decision, especially since cards like Channel, Demonic Tutor, and Library of Alexandrai were not restricted. But Wizards back then was terrified of good creatures.
Using an epic Path of Exile music for the Chaos Orb bit was a great edit
For more context on what cgb means by shahrazad being super banned, there are a few cards that are just automatically banned in every format including the "no banlist formats". This isn't due to power but them not being functional cards. Shahrazad, Chaos Orb, and the parody cards are all examples of those kinds of cards.
Important context for this, Shahrazad isn't perma-banned because of subgames not working in the rules. They work perfectly fine, in fact, and Tug of War from Unfinity (another subgame card) was initially tagged as eternal legal, only being made an acorn card due to how it feels. The reason Shahrazad is perma-banned is that for tournament play (what banlists are generally relevant for), Shahrazad takes too much space. Every additional subgame basically expands your needed table space by another whole game.
In other words, it's perfectly functional in the rules, but doesn't function within the limitations tournament settings have to deal with.
@@connorhamilton5707 And everyone coming back in 2 weeks time for round two might have been an issue as well.
>.> Covert should next time sneak in a couple cards from that one joke set, the one with Hurloon Wrangler
Denimwalk was OP in Canada
He really should have shown him City of Ass.
@@FattoCattoGo we also have seasonal bans on Shoe Tree.
I like to think Rarran released this video for me personally, thank you Rarran ❤
I released this for you
hey bro is it ok if I watch your rarran video rq?
Having Path of Exile music play for the Chaos Orb story was peak.
"This Story is nothing" - Sirius proably
That Chaos Orb Confetti story animation was the greatest thing I've ever seen.
The follow up alternate ending of the Chaos Orb story is the judge declared in a legal move, but the player was disqualified because he now had a 59 card deck.
Back in those days deck minimum was 40 though.
My favorite version of the Chaos Confetti story ends with the opponent looking in disbelief at the player and the board, then calling a judge to come over and do a card count, as they think the player's deck doesn't match the decklist submitted at tournament start, resulting in an instant DQ.
The chaos confetti story as I first heard it ended with the guy being disqualified because after ripping up Chaos Orb, his deck now had less than 60 cards, but honestly the "he went on to win the tournament" ending is so much better.
I never heard that version back in the day, but now it's everywhere. I think someone appended it after getting tired of people popping off for such a silly story.
Rather than less than 60 cards my favorite counter call is “my opponent is now playing with a marked card!”
Shahrazad used to be legal in Legacy and Vintage. Before "exile" became a thing, "remove from the game" was sticky in the sense that cards in subgames would not return to the parent game. So it was good in some mill decks. Also it was pretty good in zoo.
Yah and there was the dirty trick of recurring Shahrazad via Regrowth/Timetwister/Fork shenanigans to stall the entire round, giving you a draw when you went to time. Or if you won game one, you would win the whole round 1-0. That was the main reason it got banned in Vintage, instead of getting restricted to one per deck. Even though the subgames wouldn't turn into more subgames, it was just the fact you could play games two, three, four, and so on and so forth when you technically haven't even finished game two.
Also played in a very strong white aggro deck with Tormond's Crypt. It was basically "WW - Half target player's life total", which is pretty good when you're playing beat down. If they tried to win the sub-game but got hit with Crypt in the process it could render their deck unplayable in the parent game. You'd have to concede the sub-game in response to crypt just to preserve your win conditions or you end up with a non-functional deck in the game that actually matters, so the aggro deck would basically always win the sub game one way or another.
I love you for using Path of Exile's soundtrack during the Chaos Orb bit, it's so perfect!
Fun Fact: City in a Bottle is extremely relevant in the highest level of play Vintage currently.
Basically there’s a deck that’s taken over the format (thank you Modern Horizons 2) and the engine of the deck is a particular land from Arabian Nights. As a result of the absurd power level of this deck City in a Bottle is in almost every Vintage Sideboard to neutralize the deck.
And those that are wondering… look up Vintage Bazaar Aggro.
25:00
And here's the thing that's even funnier, since the cards that are in the original game are technically "outside the game" when you are playing the subgame, you can possibly loop Sahrazads 8nfimotely by using effects like Ring of Ma Rul or Wish.
One of my favorite moments in casual Magic from back in the day, was playing a white/red deck and playing Shahrazad, and then Fork (to duplicate the Shahrazad). My opponent just scooped. :D
HOWEVER, it has not always been banned in competetive play. It has been on and off the banned list several times. During the mid 2000s Wizards printed a set of cards called Leylines, which were enchantments, which would enter play if they started in your opening hand. The black Leyline of the Void said that any of your opponents cards that would enter the graveyard were instead exiled. Exiled cards in a subgame stayed exiled when the players returned to the main game. Shahrazad wasn't banned at that particular time. So there was a deck that played those two cards, along with discard and removal IIRC. The correct move for the opponent was usually to immediately concede the subgame and lose half their health.
They eventually both rebanned Shahrazad and changed it so exiled cards were shuffled back. :D
Island of Wak Wak does not say "until end of turn." So if the card actually functions as it is written, it is a powerful card.
I'm going to say that even if it was just till end of turn it still wouldn't be as bad as 'Undertow'.
Oracle text says until end of turn, so no shenanigans unfortunately
The videos with CovertGoBlue are my favorite (Both with HS and mtg). Keep them coming
13:20 Steve is a savage for doing that to a literal child
Now Rarran has to hear the story of why Yugioh has a max deck size and see the pictures.
Shahrazad is one of the most on flavor cards in MTG history. Shaharazad is a reference to the character Scheherazade from the Book ONE Thousand and One Arabian Nights. She is a woman who offered herself up to a king who has been marrying virgins and killing them after sleeping with them. On their wedding night, she starts to tell the king a story but cleverly does not finish it. The kind keeps her alive so he can hear the end of the story. After she finishes the one story, she transitions to another sorty, again not finishing the story so she can survive another day. She repeats this process for 1001 nights. The king finally decides not to kill her, and they live on together.
The stories she tells include famous Arabic folk tales like Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, and Ali Baba.
The card delays players with other games, just like how Scheherazade delayed he demise with new stories.
Ring of Maruf: The joke on this one was "You know.. it doesn't say it has to be a card from Magic the Gathering." and people joking summoning Vampires or playing reverse Uno cards.
LoadingReadyRun Resolved Shahrazad with the head designer or a pre-prerelease stream for an un-set
Dude the final animation is amazing. Also thanks to you I started watching more covertgoblue content, even tho I ve never played magic. Keep the good work
They have printed at least one card similar to Sharazed that I can think of, Karn Liberated. He's a planeswalker with a + ability to exile cards from hands, a - ability to exile cards from play, and a big ability to restart the game, but you start with all the cards you exiled with Karn in the first game.
Shahrazad's flavor is nuts, considering the whole thing for One Thousand and One Nights is connecting night after night with stories within stories to save her own life.
The sirus theme at the end for the chaos confetti story was so goated
Pretty awesome. (I wonder if it would have been a *tiny* bit better with the Rain Of Stars voiceline... ;) )
I mean the story features a chaos orb so ofc it needs PoE background music ;)
okay, covertgoblue NEEDS to show rarran platinum angel and then tell him the pro tour honolulu story
We did an unglued/tempest tournament back when it first released... it was a magical day of people clucking like chickens to grant flying, doing the hokey pokey to give protection from colors and tearing up chaos confetti's and even a Blacker Lotus to cast a Verdant Force on turn 3. It was absurd and amazing.
"Were you Danny?"
"NO QUESTIONS!!"
To be fair, they have printed cards like Shahrazad, BUT only in Silver Border/Acorn/Non tournament legal magic. That said, every newer card like that usually has some stipulation of like setting your life in the sub game to 5 or 1 or giving everyone big creatures just so that it's over very very quickly because the designers now know better than to stick people in a subgame for too long.
The animation during the Chaos Orb story was so funny, loved it!
The fact you used Sirius's boss music when showing Chaos Orb, considering how much of a fan the PoE devs are of Magic(and modeled the Chaos Orb currency after the card)is amazing
The unwritten rule of shaharazad is that the new game must take place under the table of the first game
They have printed 3 cards like Shahrazad since. "Enter the Dungeon" in Unhinged, "The Countdown is at One" in Unstable, and "Tug of War" in Unfinity. All of which are not legal for play.
Wait. Exiling Ring of Maruf is part of the effect and not the cost. Assuming you have enough mana, you can hold priority to activate it multiple times
23:10 If you automatically conceide the side game, Shahrazad reads "2 white mana, all players but target player chosen randomly lose half their life points rounded down"
Mono artifacts tap to activate so you'd need a way to untap it.
The best Shaharazad story happened at the Unstable PrePrerelease. Wedge played a Spike, used her to fetch the copy of Shaharazad that LRR had on set, then cast Better Than One, asking MaRo to be his teammate, then resolved the Shaharazad, leading to a 2v1 subgame. Needless to say Cameron got absolutely dumpstered. It’s somehow always Cameron who ends up on the other side of the table from the shenanigans lol.
“UNSTABLE Highlight - Wedge vs. Cameron” is the title of the video. Highly recommend.
CovertGoBlue is excellent at telling the cards' stories, it makes me feel attached to them, love it.
Fun fact: We don't play Magic as Richard Garfield intended. When he first conceived of Magic, he never envisioned anyone would attempt to fill out play sets of the best cards. He actually intended Magic to be more... mystical, if you will. You play with whatever you can find. That was one of the reasons why prints were so limited. Once they started making expansions, Richard actually thought about including a rule that said you can't have more than 15 cards from any given expansion. That's why an "expansion hoser," like City in a Bottle was printed. It could potentially lock someone out of, at most, 25% of their deck, but never completely shut them out. Then, they ended up not implementing that rule.
Reasons I know the Chaos Confetti story to be an Urban Legend:
1. Every schoolyard tale from this era fits a similar mold and almost none are true. It's why Snopes was a big hit in the early days of the post-dial up, intro to cable modems era.
2. No one has ever been named as the player who did it, the player had it done to them or as a judge or organizer. Magic was a small world, especially then. As for today, the tale has lived long enough that someone would've tried to clout-chase for it if they could.
Most importantly...
3. I started playing in a Brooklyn Middle School in 1994-95 with the set: Revised. At my local game store, the story was already circulating, even then a year into the game's existence. Every version I ever heard when I was just an evil little boy attributed it to have taken place at the fabled "New York Magic"--Which locals would know as the biggest game store in the city, the famed "Neutral Ground." This store opened in 1995 (So it must've happened rather quickly) and The Pro Tour would hold events there starting in 1996. By then the story was already well, well known yet again, no one named on the scene. I was be a regular at NG until the early 2000s. The clientele was very, very loyal and everybody knew everybody. We even told the story in the shop a few times but no one could name the players, the date, the tournament or even game night such an event would have transpired.
In short, if it had happened in NY in the early days of Magic I probably would have known someone involved or, at the least, known their name. This narrows down where it could have taken place if we remove kitchen and lunchroom magic out the equation. It didn't happen at GenCon '94, home of the first World Championship. That event was recorded as well as anything pre-internet. We know it cannot be Dragoncon, since the handout Nalathni Dragon was the talk of the CCG world and the Orb-story would've been easily pinpointed at an event that had a ton of print before and after. So where COULD such a game have taken place, in the limited amount of time possible? Answer: It didn't. Someone, probably a few people simultaneously in fact, saw Chaos Orb and thought "Wouldn't it be funny if--" and the jibber jabber survived to this day.
That Chaos Orb clip is probably the great piece of Magic content ever seen. Awesome
I played a lot of Magic back when it was first released.
My friend had three Library of Alexandria and four Ivory tower. I think I lost 95% of the games we played or possibly more.
This card was restricted around the exact time I got my 4th strip mine and my friend has not played Magic since.
"The Countdown Is At One" was printed in Unstable and does require players to play a Magic subgame, but each player starts at 1 life and the losing player(s) recieve double damage for the rest of the normal game.
"If you can have fun while making your opponent's life miserable - that's what card games are about." This has been my entire strat in playing card games since the 90s and likely a key to why I don't have any friends.
In the version of the Chaos Orb story I've heard, the person who tore up his Orb lost on the spot, because the judge ruled his deck was illegal as it no longer had enough cards 🤣
I've been in a three shahrazad game. Three of them were cast, one in the main game, and one in each shahrazad game. It's powerful, but it's more about the fact that getting through one game, if you dare, it's brutal. The correct play is to scoop. Always. Also, owned a Library once. It's the second most powerful card I've ever played, right behind Tolarian Academy.
the chaos confetti story will always be a true story in my heart
Those are my favorite Rarran videos. Please do it for every mtg set, or at least the most iconic ones and the unsets
Glad we also got the Chaos Confetti story.
Some Un cards might be fun for one of these reviews. Obviously not for real or competitive value, but just for the ridiculous effects and artwork they have.
Like that one video with Hearthstone fan cards.
As a Yu-Gi-Oh player, Bazaar of Baghdad is one of the most mind bogglingly broken cards I've ever seen in my entire life
Adding two cards from deck to hand then discarding them for effect is so insanely strong that it would absolutely shatter the meta
The fun part of ring of ma'ruf was when the owner of the LGS is playing casual games and drops this, then goes into the store's inventory to get something
As both a Magic and Hearthstone player this series has been so entertaining I'm actually so adicted.
I am immediately reminded of a game me and 5 friends were having. Everyone has a troll in their friend group. This guy... had 4 sharazads in his deck, a chaos deck as it were. The rest of the cards don't really matter because after forking a Sharazad after playing a sharazad and a friend hive minding a sharazad... the silent one in our group screamed at the top of his lungs, punched the sharazad owner in the face, and stormed off to his class before he was late.
Shaharzad's effect was printed again with "Karn Liberated" his Ultimate/highest loyalty cost ability says
[-14]: Restart the game, leaving in exile all non-Aura permanent cards exiled with Karn Liberated. Then put those cards onto the battlefield under your control.
not the exact same but pretty close
also it WAS legal in EDH before the format was "officially" supported by Wizards
Important to remember: there's no 4-of limit when Shahrazad was printed.
You could theoretically play a deck of 30 shahrazad and 30 black lotus
With Sharazad you can use cards that pull cards from outside the game ( like Ring of Ma Ru that was shown earlier) to pull Sharazad into the new subgame and then play Sharazad again to create a subgame within that subgame and then use other cards to either pull your Ring of Ma Ru or Sharazad into the new subgame so you can create another subgame and continue to repeat until you've created infinite subgames.
The chaos orb story - from what I recall, the facts of the story is true, player was behind in a tournament, drew Chaos orb and then sprinkled his orb all over his opponents side. HOWEVER, the opponent challenged the move, and the player who sprinkled the orb was disqualified from the game, BECAUSE - he no longer had 60 playable cards in his deck and therefor lost that game.
These videos are such a guilty pleasure. Never stop these.
I do wish Arabian Nights mountains were mentioned during the city in the bottle discussion. As there are few things funnier than playing it against a mono red player who only has Arabian nights mountains
8:51 what’s seemingly busted about Old Man of the Sea is it doesn’t say “target” so it gets around hexproof. So the card is REALLY good today. Also its ability works at instant speed (since I don’t see it say it either can only be activated on your turn on as a sorcery).
You two are my favorite card-guessers. Whether it's Magic or Hearthstone, you guys are so fun and energetic that I always love listening to you guys having fun.
City in a bottle in draft sounds so fucking funny. By definition your opponent can play nothing but basics
One of the most fun games I've ever played was when my opponent cast Shahrazad...and forked it. We had a subgame start, draw the initial hand, set it aside, and then immediately start a sub game of the sub game. I was losing the main game, but won both sub games.
I still remember the Rukh Egg the first card to cause errata . A 0/3 creature that created a 4/4 flyer when it went to the graveyard. Back then it didn’t say it had to enter the graveyard from play and it was actually common enough that someone made a deck entirely of the card
Even considering that it's an old card, I'm still blown away that *anyone* would have taken a look Shaherazade and said "Yup, this is a perfectly rational card to send to print."
On Shaharazad: There was 1 month where Sharazad and Black Lotus were legal AND there was no limit to the number you could play in your deck so you could play a deck with nothing but the 20 copies of two cards in the deck
Hearing CGB not in his "entertainment mode" and swear like a real person makes him much more human to me and I'm here for it.
Shaharazad was actually legal until like 5ish years ago. It got banned in eternal formats because it was used as part of a strat to play a powerful but very easily countered strategy for a win in game one, and then you'd just start as many sub-games as possible trying to run out the clock for a 1-0 win
They actually have printed a card like sharazad - it's called Enter the Dungeon, and it's from one of the un-sets.
Holy shit, the Path of Exile music to the Chaos Orb part was perfect.
I love how Shahrazad refers to both ante and 40 card deck sizes.
Also City was a thing they did in early sets as a sort of "safety valve" like if they overshoot and make AN cards too powerful, City would keep them in check.