Viridian Longbow is 1 (to cast) + 3 (to equip) that lets your deathtouch creatures ping any creature on the board. I love Viridian Longbow in my Shelob tribal spider commander deck since everything I run gets deathtouch (and I get a food artifact copy of the crature killed).
Kinda like old Yugioh. Pot of Greed (draw 2) and Graceful Charity (draw 3, discard 2) will probably never come back to legal status, while monsters went from "remove its +300 ATK counter to destroy a spell/trap" and "if this monster is summoned, add a HERO monster from deck to hand" were both banned for a time, while now Raidraptor - Rising Rebellion Falcon (a 4000 ATK beatstick) has "Unaffected by other cards' effects. If this card is Xyz Summoned: You can destroy as many cards your opponent controls as possible, then if this card has 3 or more "Raidraptor" Xyz Monsters with different names as material, inflict damage to your opponent equal to the combined original ATK of the destroyed monsters. Once per turn: You can detach 3 materials from this card, then target 1 "Raidraptor" Xyz Monster in your GY; this card gains that monster's effects until the End Phase." and it's the boss monster of a deck that's barely even rogue tier.
Just like a lot of beginners, Wizards thought life points were much more importat than they actually are, so effects like life gain or damage prevention were considered very strong.
@@hermodnitter3902 House rule, Aladdin's Lamp gives you there wishes! Choose from the following: Tutor a card into your hand, Gain 10 life, Take an extra turn after this one, Tap all permanents you don't control, Draw 7 cards. 🤔
Alladin's Ring was actually a pretty good win condition in early sealed deck. Games would often stall out, and spending 8 a few turns in a row would close things out well.
Believe it or not, Apocalypse Chime DID see some sideboard play. The reason was that Homelands still had some finishers that were pretty hard to deal with by Targeted Removal. Autumn Willow, for example, was a 6 mana 4/4 creature with Shroud. You can pay 1 green mana to allow any target player to target Autumn Willow with effects until end of turn. Pump her with Auras and she becomes a legitimate threat with little fear from the enemy sniping it with Dark Banishing or the like. The Chime gave non-white players a Mass Removal effect to deal with these. Fringe, sure, but it STILL had its day in the sun for a bit. Also, for entry: Delif's Cube. 1 Mana Artifact. 1 mana and tap: This turn, if target creature you control attacks and is not blocked, put a cube counter on Delif's Cube and that creature deals no combat damage this turn. 2: remove a cube counter from cube: regenerate target creature Delif's Cone: 0 Mana Artifact. Tap: Sacrifice Delif's Cone: This turn, if target creature you control attacks and isnt blocked, you gain life equal to that creature's power. That creature deals no combat damage this turn Runesword: 6 mana Artifact. 2 Tap: target attacking creature gets +2/+0 until end of turn. If that creature deals combat damage to another creature this turn, that creature cannot regenerate and exile if it leaves the battlefield. If target creature leaves the battlefield, sacrifice Runesword
Good picks. Runesword was on my mental list also - I remember opening that card early on and thinking it was awesome; it was not. War Barge was another along the same lines. Did you know that they removed the creature death clause from Flying Carpet? I just looked it up, and for some reason it gets preferential treatment! 😂
Aladdin's lamp is also a major flavor miss. It should come into play with 3 wish counters, remove a wish counter to tutor a card at instant speed. The bizarre pseudo-scrying effect doesn't say "this grants wishes" at all.
Adding a card to your hand from "outside the game (your sideboard)" is both the canonical and correct card design interpretation of how wishes should work.
@@thatmspaintgirl oddly enough, another artifact from Arabian Nights did exactly this. Ring of Ma'ruf. 5 to cast, then 5 to activate. Remove the ring from the game, and instead of drawing your next card, you put a card you own from outside the game in your hand.
I'm so ashamed that several artifacts I loved as a kid are on here. I used to try to animate artifact my Aladdin's lamp to make a 10/10 ... I moved my Aladdin's Ring to various decks because I liked it so much. Curse you art and flavour! I was blinded by these things as a young player.
I'm honestly surprised not to see Gustha's Scepter in here. Not because it's a bad card (it saw play during Urza's block and enabled certain strong cards to be even stronger) but because it usually ends up on lists like this. You did a good job of really picking some stinkers! I don't think any of these were even good when they were printed.
I think Amulet of Quoz should have been on this list. Even if you manage to find someone who's willing to play for ante, it's an expensive card for an an effect that's often to your disadvantage. If you're currently winning and try to activate it, your opponent would happily have the game decided by a coinflip to give themselves a better shot at victory, so it's actually to their advantage. If you're currently losing, then your opponent just shrugs and offers another card for ante and goes on to win anyway after you wasted 6 mana on it. And just to top it all off, even if there was a circumstance where it would be useful, it can only be activated during your upkeep so you can't even make use of it right away.
First one that came to mind for me too, and probably the single worst rare pull I ever had in a booster besides the lace cards, mostly because we never played for ante, or if we did, we'd throw in for a booster pack or something that the winner would get because none of us wanted to risk losing something expensive and potentially hard to replace while their opponent ended up anteing a giant spider. Part of the problem with ante in general and why it never took off is while you could come to some kind of agreement that both parties are willing to live by, official MTG rules to this day make the ante random, and have no restrictions. If there were some guidelines like it can't be a basic land or perhaps even a common, and you're allowed 1 redraw if you pull something you really don't want to give up (maybe you even have to ante a 2nd card in this case), maybe it would have been received better. Even if logically, lopsided antes will balance out in the long run and you'll be at an advantage as often as you'll be at a disadvantage, it still seems inherently unfair if one player is putting up the best card in their deck while the other is putting up a basic land, and makes people not want to do it. The strategy with the Amulet though is to use it when nobody has a major advantage (or when you have something really good in your hand that your opponent isn't expecting), but it almost has more to do with the cards in the ante already. If your opponent's ante card is way better than yours, they are very likely to pay to avoid the flip because losing a premium card to chance feels way worse than getting outplayed, where if you're playing for the card at least there's some skill involved and you feel like you have some control over the situation. It's also unlikely the next ante card will be nearly as important if one of their best cards is already up for grabs. Might not be good for your friendship, but this creates a situation with anywhere from a small bonus to a major upside if you go on to win the game, and no real downside if you end up in a coin flip, or losing the game.
I used the Aladdin's card in a titania's song deck, I never used the lamp's abilities, it was in there to be a 10/10 artifact creature. The ring I sometimes activated to deal damage while I was waiting for the opportune time to drop the titania's song. The problem with the deck was that it was really slow, even with all those mana producing sources you had back in the early days. You could slow your opponent with winter orbs and icy manipulators but it didn't do well against creature spam.
My friend, who regularly placed into National/world rankings for a time, declared it his mission to destroy every copy of Razor Boomerang he came across. The early box he kept of the card scraps attests to that!
I've played all of these in decks except arcum's sleigh and apocalypse chime, so I think those deserve to be higher on the list. Those were terrible even back in the day. Most of the rest of these are only so bad in today's world of cards. Though I admit none were *good* back then either.
I used obelisk of undoing in my stasis deck to return my stasis at the end of their turn and replay it on mine. With multiple moxen, sol rings, and tron lands, the cost wasn't high but the misery was.
Razor boomerang can actually get some kills with something like jeskai ascendancy. There's a lot of ways to reduce equipment casting and equip costs, so you can make it close to free with stuff like bureau headmaster, fighter class, etc. There's even some good dorks in the colors, like dalakos, renowned weaponsmith, grand architect, and Urza. Since so many of them cost 3, drift of phantasms can tutor for ascendancy, a dork, or the boomerang it's self. There's even a snazzy backup combo with intruder alarm and either stonybrook schoolmaster, or warchanter skald (again, all at 3 mana). There are easier combos to pull off, but it's neat that it's there, and I had fun brewing a jeskai equipment deck around it.
I actually once figured out a recursive combo using razor boomerang. It required like 7 different cards and a lot of mana up front. There were at least 2 cards that did the same thing for less, but I considered this crappy card anyway for redundancy.
Great video. Another card you could compare Aladdin's Lamp to, although not functionally identical, is Soothsaying. You can pay X to reorder the top X. No, it doesn't bottom them if you don't like them, but it's a similar effect where you would keep one of them on top. Soothsaying only cost 1 mana and even has a shuffle option, and it still didn't see play.
I could see a razor pendulum being useful if you have a life-sacrifice/platinum-angel combo going on. Get your life really low and have a card that makes tokens or does damage whenever you take damage etc.
The 500 IQ play with Obelisk of Undoing is to hold Cyclonic Rift mana so you can flash it out and bounce your key permanent. I’m not saying that it’s a good move but it would catch your opponents off guard.
I could replace one or two of these with Delif's Cube. Coral Helm is pretty ludicrous; 6 mana and discard a card at random to give a creature +2/+2 until end of turn. Also, as much as I wanted Runesword to be a thing when I was a kid, 9 mana investment to give a creature +2/+0 is ridiculous, and adding on that the Runesword gets sacrificed if the creature leaves play is just the cherry on the top of awfulness. Then there's Tower of Coireall, Balm of Restoration, Sandals of Abdullah, and Celestial Prism... Early MTG really was full of examples. Dishonorable mention to the early 0 mana artifacts that were never worth it too. Even low powered 0 mana artifacts like Bone Saw, Claws of Gix, Zuran Orb, or Welding Jar have found their niches. But that's half the issue; There's no reason to run an awful 0 mana artifact like Gustha's Scepter, Delif's Cone, or Dark Sphere when there are better options out there. Even Darksteel Relic has more of a niche than most of those.
Obelisk of Undoing + Stasis was a thing back in the day. It was viable as late as Legends. There wasn't another good 2 card combo for Stasis back then (Instill Energy + Birds of Paradise + Stasis). So, the card is bad due to power creep, but back in the day is was a thing until Time Elemental. Also, Aladdin's Lamp was not great, but for its day it made it into decks. I myself activated it a handful of times when I was desperate for a draw engine.
I am experimenting with North Star in a Rasputin Dreamweaver deck. Rasputin goes infinite with a ham sandwich, which means no one lets him hang around, so I've been trying an infiniteless build to use him to cast big mana spells lol Its not good.
The Obelisk of Undoing is not so bad. Think about having cheap artifact mana sources like Moxes and Sol Ring or Mana Crypt and such. You tap all of them, get whatever mana you need, pay the Obelisk and take all of them to your hand to play them again. It would be an incedibly strong Storm engine at your disposal. Just like Paradoxial Outcome.
If razor pendulum were reprinted so it were legal in modern, I wonder it if would be a viable sideboard card to deal with the low life decks like deaths shadow? Probably not though
Get this, Aladdin's Lamp was erratad to be even worse! I was considering putting Aladdin's Lamp in my Starscream deck to get damage off of a massive draw trigger, but it was erratad to say "look at the top X cards. Put all but one on the bottom then draw 1." Can't have shit for Transformer commanders XD
I think thats actually how it always worked in practicality, note how it says "Choose one to PUT in your hand", not Keep, old MtG jank with uncodified wording, I don't think it actually ever counted as drawing all those cards because they never reached your hand
If North Star makes the next spell you cast actually cost generic mana, and doesn't fix that you lands can tap for whatever, then things like Animar could actually net you mana in that exchange by making a big spell free.
Unfortunately I don't believe it does, despite the example text, it says "you can pay with any type of mana" but I'm fairly certain thats oracle codified as similar to effects on more modern cards that do shit like steal cards and say "you may cast it using any kind of mana"
I have Aladdin's lamp in my karn deck. Makes karn a 10/ 10 and easy to have the mana to spend on it. Fishing for the right thing late game isnt really a bad thing either if i have the mana.
Hating on Alladin huh? If you're running those, you should have Mana galore, and run spells that care about high Mana cost. Turning the ring or lamp into a creature with Karn, Silver Golem, attack and fling, Bosh the Iron Golem with artifact revival, or simply frustrating the table as you stack your entire deck with the Lamp because you drew a card while playing elves
the coolest combo line I can think of with juju bubble is to combo with Prize Pig you'll need some more support to pull it off, but it's technically a three card combo with pig, bubble, and Rite of replication, and there's lots of other playable cards that can be backup combo pieces probably about as difficult as pulling of sprout swarm combo in commander, but bubble definitely is less useful than sprout swarm
I really like this style of video but comparing this very old cards to the modern design feels unfair, would be more interesting if compared to cards of the same period
Seth you are giving Aladdin’s lamp far too much credit, if the card was 100% cheaper it would still be stone cold unplayable don’t humor the card making it think it’s worth a mana at least
That's Kaja Foglio for ya. He's the artist behind the Girl Genius webcomic, as well as a few Munchkin cards, and is overall very good. It's a shame then that basically all of his MTG art is for really bad cards. They do look really cool though.
@@carissamaceYes, except that Kaja is a she. Kaja and Phil Foglio are a husband and wife team, and they both did a lot of cool early Magic art. Phil’s are more straightforwardly jokes.
@@dementievatz Oh for god's sake. My bad! The website I read that from when I double-checked if that name was who I thought it was was really vague because it phrased it like: "The comic [Girl Genius] is written and drawn by Phil and Kaja Foglio. He [Phil] was..." So it was really hard to tell which name applied to who at first glance, especially since there was only a photo of Phil and not Kaja.
Magic in 1994 was way different. Drop your Will O The Wisps and Walls of Air, then draw into enough mana to cast your Aladdin's Ring. Your opponent is guaranteed to be dead before turn 20 or 30, since their Serra Angel can't break through your defenses and they're taking 4 to the face each turn. Unless they Healing Salve to delay the inevitable. Maybe the repeatable damage prevention of Rakalite would be a hard counter? Hmm...
I actually play Rakalite as a one-of toolbox card in an oldschool deck that uses 4 x Power Artifact and 4 x Basalt Monolith to provide infinite mana, and I can find it with Transmute Artifact if I need to survive until I find my other win-cons. So some of these here in this list actually have utility if youngot infinite mana, like Juju Bubble.
Why I liked my Thrull Champion/Breading Pit deck. Try and defend against me getting one or even two 2/3 thrulls per turn. Just have to keep the Champions alive and paying an upkeep of 2 black Mana per turn per pit. There's some value.
While Aladdin's Ring is definitely pretty overcosted, it actually has a really good effect. The ability to deal 4 damage at instant speed each turn is no joke, and can absolutely win games. For its time, Aladdin's Ring was actually a pretty solid control finisher. The idea is that you'd use the rest of your deck to remove boards that Aladdin's Ring is too slow to handle, then late in the game, when the coast is clear, you play Aladdin's Ring. From that point onward, if your opponent plays a creature, you kill it with Aladdin's Ring at the end of their turn, or if they don't play a creature, you burn them for 4.
yeah, I won games that way! And by putting an animate artifact on Alladin's lamp of course. In theory I could have put my animate artifact on Alladin's ring, give it vigilance with Arcum's sleigh, attack for 8 AND then ping for 4 afterwards :D
There is a picture from an article in the local paper published in summer of 1994 of a bunch of us playing Magic at the local shop. I have TWO Aladdin's Rings in okay on the board. The ability to deal 4 damage & kill Sera Angel, Sengir Vampire, & Air Elemental plus White/Black Knights. It was actually pretty useful.
Yeah, I think it's weak, but it's not actively bad. 4 damage sorceries/instants always have the hidden effect that all spells have: "discard this card". Is a 4-5 mana premium, plus an up front 8, worth removing that discard issue? Probably not, but it's definitely worth some amount of mana extra/upfront cost.
Throw it into a Megatron commander deck where bigger is better.....even if you don't use the excess mana from sacrifices, you can use it for fuel to sacrifice for his ability. I'd say it's a "potential" but again, other options may be better, 😅
It was never "Good", but in the revised era of casual MTG the ring was played enough because it did something, which is more than the worst cards here. Seth's list of worsts cards are never very accurate. He can't seem to tell "underpowered" or "not good" from actually "worthless". He also doesn't know the context of what older cards played at the time.
I feel like the 1 mana do nothing cards should be near the bottom of the list, because at least it only cost you 1 mana and a card. And you might be able to sacrifice it with deadly dispute or something
True story: I played with both the Aladdin artifacts back in the day. The 'combo' was to put Animate Artifact on them and attack. Early MTG didn't have much expensive artifacts to do this with, so they went in. At least the ring did something if I couldn't animate it; the lamp is just the absolute worst. Honestly I think Delif's Cone should be on the worst artifacts list over the ring.
Arcum's sleigh is actually *always* a blank piece of cardboard, since it can only give vigilance to creatures that already attacked, due to its oracle text caring about the "defending player"
after a quick check of the CR, it appears that this rule is insane 507.1 says you choose a single defending player at the beginning of combat, and only after attacks there can be more than one the more you know i guess
@@duncancarter9410 802. Attack Multiple Players Option 802.2. As the combat phase starts, the attacking player doesn’t choose an opponent to become the defending player. Instead, all the attacking player’s opponents are defending players during the combat phase. 508.5a In a multiplayer game, any rule, object, or effect that refers to a “defending player” refers to one specific defending player, not to all of the defending players. If a spell or ability could apply to multiple attacking creatures, the appropriate defending player is individually determined for each of those attacking creatures. If there are multiple defending players that could be chosen, the controller of the spell or ability chooses one. So assuming attack multiple players option is enabled, which it usually is, all opponents will be defending players and you can choose any of them to determine if you can activate Arcum's Sleigh, it does not even have to be the one that the creature is attacking. If the attack multiple players option is not enabled then indeed rule 507.1 kicks in and you have to choose one, but then after attacks there still can't be more than one, because you can't attack a player that isn't a defending player.
I like these lists, but historical context is missing for some of these. Arcum's Weathervane came out in Ice Age. A set that gave you Snow Covered Basics in Starter Decks. This was playable, if marginally, in its time. Throwing it in there without acknowledging the proper context is just irresponsible. Apocalypse Chime is next. As you showed in the video, it has context as well. It was probably played in the Pro Tour shown. When it was in Standard it was probably played as well. Imagine a card that destroys all Modern Horizons cards or Outlaws of Thunder Junction cards. It would see play. There is no mention of City in a Bottle, which kills all Arabian Nights cards. Why not mentioned? It still has play in Old School and possibly in Vintage. Context matters. Stop ignoring it.
The biggest problem with Arcum's Sleigh is the only way to guarantee it will work is if you also have Arcum's Weathervane in play so you can make an opponent's land snowcovered (strangely, it's the only card in ice age that will do that). Then, all you get is one creature that doesn't tap to attack? That's really weak for a combo, especially considering the sleigh literally doesn't have any other combos, and the weathervane only has a few, the best ones being in red: it can be used to turn a bunch of enemy lands snowcovered then destroy them with an Avalanche, though it's a slow and expensive process, or it can be used with Barbarian Guides, where you can spend 3 to give target creature a snowcovered landwalk type of your choice...which honestly should be what the Sleigh does, in addition to functioning like a War Barge (which allows you to give an unlimited number of creatures islandwalk for 3 colorless mana each, and also kills any creatures given this ability if the barge is removed from play that turn. This may have been designed as a risk for your attackers, but it turned out that paying to put your opponent's creatures on the barge, then comboing with cards like boomerang, shatter, or disenchant to remove the barge from play and kill a bunch of your opponent's creatures at once probably the most effective way to use it). Anyway, the sleigh is definitely a miss both in power and in flavor, and while the weathervane makes more sense, there's just weren't enough cards that could turn your opponent's lands into snow lands or take advantage of your opponent's lands being snow lands to build a deck around the premise. Basically, unless you were playing an Ice Age Draft game where your opponent was more or less guaranteed to be using snow lands, it really didn't make any sense to be playing the sleigh.
Aladdin's Ring isn't good, but I'll defend its honor slightly. It's definitely not among the WORST artifacts ever. It will win the game for you, and can help you stabilize the board. It doesn't do those things WELL, but it does do them. There are MUCH worse artifacts than that one. Aladdin's Lamp on the other hand is pure trash
There's a great little artifact from Kaledesh called Consulate Turret. Terrible. Tap it to reload the turret with energy and then shock your opponent. Me and my buddy had a blast dueling Consulate Turret decks. Lol
Each expansion up to Homelands had a card that wiped all cards from its own expansion. It's just a coincidence that Chime happens to be in one of the worst sets ever printed.
The thing to remember, especially with Aladdin's Lamp, is that back in the early days of Magic you could have 4 copies of Sol Ring in your deck--you could play a land, tap it to play Sol Ring, then tap Sol Ring to play a second Sol Ring (then take 1 damage from mana burn), or even Swamp > Dark Ritual > Sol Ring > Demonic Tutor > Sol Ring then have {2}{b} to play something else on turn 1. Anyway, getting to 10 mana wasn't out of the ordinary, especially one Antiquities hit and you could hit Tron with Sol Rings--in the ideal scenario, you could tap your Urza lands, spend 3 mana to unatp them with your Candelabra of Tawnos, then tap them again to have 11 mana available. If you also had a way to get a "draw a card" effect for yourself like Jalum Tome, then you could afford to spend 7 mana during your opponent's end step to look at 5 cards, pick the best one, then move on to your turn and get your regular draw. Yes, there are many similar effects which are much more efficient these days, but way back then you worked with what you had. These days, we would *never* spend 10 mana for the Lamp, not when Trash for Treasure can put it onto the battlefeild for 3 mana or Dr. Madison Li can get it for a mere 5 energy. After that, the effect is actually pretty good--x mana to look at x cards on the top of your library, put one on top, then draw it.
Despite the poor rate, Aladdin’s Ring was a reasonable pickup in some core set limited environments. If things are slow enough, just tapping out for 4 damage every turn is not that crazy. Could easily be replaced with the likes of Delif’s Cone or Dark Sphere or like a dozen other pointless old artifacts.
Yep, this. Delif's Cone is easily worse. Impements of Sacrifice? 3 colorless to get 2 of the same color and it only works once? Elven Lyre? 3 for +2/+2 on one creature for one turn that only works once? Tower of Coireall: Tap: Target Creature can't be blocked by walls this turn. All of these seem beyond pointless definitely less useful than the Ring, probably the Lamp too.
I built a commander deck with Ursa, high Lord artificer, and the theme was unplayable artifacts to prove that Ursa is broken, and I have most of these cards in the deck
Apocalypse Chime actually saw play in sideboards in Standard to get rid of Autumn Willow since most decks didn't have access to Wrath of God. She replaced Erhnam Djinn in Erhnamgeddon decks after the Djinn rotated out of Standard. With Shroud and a 4/4 body, she was hard to kill and that was the only way to do it. I'm glad not to see Golgothian Sylex on this list because it does have a home in Old School 93/94. Antiquities has a lot of powerful lands in Workshop and Factory, mainstays of the format, and the Sylex is a strong card against the powerful Workshop Robots deck in the format. It's a card that's better now because of card availability; "back in the day," people wouldn't have had playsets of all those powerful cards but now they do.
Aladdin's Lamp would be better if it costed 55 mana. Then you can sneak it into play and have Imskir Iron-Eater chuck it at an opponent, killing them instantly in Commander.
I mean....yes? It costs 8 to use anyway so it doesn't seem like there would be too many instances where you'd have enough mana to use it more than once per turn, but it's not like it gets discarded once you use it; it untaps during your next upkeep....unless you do something like Twiddle it for 1 blue so you can use it again. You could also pay 2 blue to enchant it with Power Artifact to reduce the activation cost by 2, and animate it into an 8/8 creature, but even without all that it was a decent way to remove mid-range creatures from the board, or even big creatures with a little help, which could break a late game stalemate and allow your attackers to get through, or just deal direct damage from the ring to win.
Aladin's Lamp for 1 mana isn't stone cold unplayable! In a Zirda deck, you can now pay 1 mana and tap it to look at your top 3 if you would draw, and instead take one of those! Not exactly great, but not embarrassing!!
Alladins ring is only activated once a turn, as "mono artifacts" just mean you can use its abilities once per turn, as tapping an artifact back then meant "turning it off", which is why winter orb and trinisphere only work untapped, as they mimic how they used to work, this is shown by newer printing of Alladins ring requiring you to tap
won a ton of games with aladdin's lamp back in the day- erratic explosion (now calibrated blast) for that sweet 10 damage to the face is always a fun time. OG draco for 16 was better but my lamps were 5 pence each :)
How does the Apocalypse Chime affect those cards that are originally printed at Homelands and get reprinted later and the card's holder is not using the Homelands version? Will they still get destroyed?
Commander brainrot made me think that North Star would actually be pretty fun to use with Mana Geyser but I re-read the card and realized it only works for a single spell. At that point if you have that much mana and can't cast a single spell that's just straight up bad deckbuilding.
I have a Haldan Pako deck, where every card needs to play into the idea that Haldan’s just taking his boy out for a walk. Razor Boomerang has a place in the list as one of Pako’s dog toys. And I refuse to cut it.
I think if you can cheat Aladdin’s lamp in and you have a creature or enchantment that activates dealing damage or gaining life when you draw a card, you could make Aladdin lamp, pretty powerful. But I’m not good at magic and never was, my ideas are overly complicated and that’s like a four or five card combo.
Aladdin's Ring and (especially) Lamp weren't used as much for their abilities as they were for being the endgame of the gimmicky but fun Animate Aladdin's Artifact deck. Urzas Lands, Sol Ring, Basalt Monolith, High Tide and Sindbad to help with mana production, Counterspells and Mana Shorts to slow down your opponent, Burn cards, ornithopters, and dancing scimitars for creatures that make it onto the battlefield. Power artifact to reduce the cost of the ring's ability, Aladdin and Flying Carpet mostly for flavor, things like city of brass, elephant graveyard and Ali from Cairo if can manage to get them, then Animate one of Aladdin's artifacts as your finisher.
Early MTG design is so funny: fast mana, cheap tutors, cheap counterspells = meh ok. Damage prevention, life gain, mana fixing, ping for 1 = BROKEN!
Viridian Longbow is 1 (to cast) + 3 (to equip) that lets your deathtouch creatures ping any creature on the board. I love Viridian Longbow in my Shelob tribal spider commander deck since everything I run gets deathtouch (and I get a food artifact copy of the crature killed).
Don’t forget how bad creatures were too
Kinda like old Yugioh. Pot of Greed (draw 2) and Graceful Charity (draw 3, discard 2) will probably never come back to legal status, while monsters went from "remove its +300 ATK counter to destroy a spell/trap" and "if this monster is summoned, add a HERO monster from deck to hand" were both banned for a time, while now Raidraptor - Rising Rebellion Falcon (a 4000 ATK beatstick) has "Unaffected by other cards' effects. If this card is Xyz Summoned: You can destroy as many cards your opponent controls as possible, then if this card has 3 or more "Raidraptor" Xyz Monsters with different names as material, inflict damage to your opponent equal to the combined original ATK of the destroyed monsters. Once per turn: You can detach 3 materials from this card, then target 1 "Raidraptor" Xyz Monster in your GY; this card gains that monster's effects until the End Phase." and it's the boss monster of a deck that's barely even rogue tier.
Just like a lot of beginners, Wizards thought life points were much more importat than they actually are, so effects like life gain or damage prevention were considered very strong.
You are allowed to play, but not win.
How do we print 10 mana on Aladdin's Lamp ? how about two 5's......why not just make it cost 9? NO WAY, then it would be busted.
Don't forget, It's a Mono Artifact. That means it has to tap to activate.
One thing he didn't mention on the Aladdin's Lamp segment was that it's actually been erratad to be even worse.
It's the quest of getting there... For me, getting to cast Aladdin's Lamp equals a win ;)
@@hermodnitter3902
House rule, Aladdin's Lamp gives you there wishes!
Choose from the following:
Tutor a card into your hand,
Gain 10 life,
Take an extra turn after this one,
Tap all permanents you don't control,
Draw 7 cards.
🤔
@ty_sylicus Choose: "gain 10 life"
*One of these is not like the others*
Alladin's Ring was actually a pretty good win condition in early sealed deck. Games would often stall out, and spending 8 a few turns in a row would close things out well.
Believe it or not, Apocalypse Chime DID see some sideboard play. The reason was that Homelands still had some finishers that were pretty hard to deal with by Targeted Removal. Autumn Willow, for example, was a 6 mana 4/4 creature with Shroud. You can pay 1 green mana to allow any target player to target Autumn Willow with effects until end of turn. Pump her with Auras and she becomes a legitimate threat with little fear from the enemy sniping it with Dark Banishing or the like. The Chime gave non-white players a Mass Removal effect to deal with these. Fringe, sure, but it STILL had its day in the sun for a bit.
Also, for entry:
Delif's Cube. 1 Mana Artifact. 1 mana and tap: This turn, if target creature you control attacks and is not blocked, put a cube counter on Delif's Cube and that creature deals no combat damage this turn. 2: remove a cube counter from cube: regenerate target creature
Delif's Cone: 0 Mana Artifact. Tap: Sacrifice Delif's Cone: This turn, if target creature you control attacks and isnt blocked, you gain life equal to that creature's power. That creature deals no combat damage this turn
Runesword: 6 mana Artifact. 2 Tap: target attacking creature gets +2/+0 until end of turn. If that creature deals combat damage to another creature this turn, that creature cannot regenerate and exile if it leaves the battlefield. If target creature leaves the battlefield, sacrifice Runesword
Good picks. Runesword was on my mental list also - I remember opening that card early on and thinking it was awesome; it was not. War Barge was another along the same lines.
Did you know that they removed the creature death clause from Flying Carpet? I just looked it up, and for some reason it gets preferential treatment! 😂
Oh Runesword. I tried to make you useful....
Aladdin's lamp is also a major flavor miss. It should come into play with 3 wish counters, remove a wish counter to tutor a card at instant speed. The bizarre pseudo-scrying effect doesn't say "this grants wishes" at all.
In this version of the story, Aladdin’s wish is always to kill a Serra Angel. - Oops, wrong card! Yes, you’re right.
I don't think there were any counters back when Lamp was designed.
Adding a card to your hand from "outside the game (your sideboard)" is both the canonical and correct card design interpretation of how wishes should work.
They kinda put this on Ring of Ma'rûf instead.
@@thatmspaintgirl oddly enough, another artifact from Arabian Nights did exactly this. Ring of Ma'ruf. 5 to cast, then 5 to activate. Remove the ring from the game, and instead of drawing your next card, you put a card you own from outside the game in your hand.
I'm so ashamed that several artifacts I loved as a kid are on here. I used to try to animate artifact my Aladdin's lamp to make a 10/10 ... I moved my Aladdin's Ring to various decks because I liked it so much. Curse you art and flavour! I was blinded by these things as a young player.
Aladdin's Ring actually used to be a "good" finisher, like Millstone. But playing it without Tron Lands is kinda hard to manage
My jaw dropped multiple times. I can't believe there are worst things than Apocalypse chime
I'm honestly surprised not to see Gustha's Scepter in here. Not because it's a bad card (it saw play during Urza's block and enabled certain strong cards to be even stronger) but because it usually ends up on lists like this.
You did a good job of really picking some stinkers! I don't think any of these were even good when they were printed.
Seth mispronouncing “bubble” as “bauble” may be his magnum opus
Or perhaps his Magma Opus?
Magma opals
I understand it this time since I’d also expect that card to be bauble instead of bubble. I wonder if the makers of the card got it wrong.
I think Amulet of Quoz should have been on this list. Even if you manage to find someone who's willing to play for ante, it's an expensive card for an an effect that's often to your disadvantage. If you're currently winning and try to activate it, your opponent would happily have the game decided by a coinflip to give themselves a better shot at victory, so it's actually to their advantage. If you're currently losing, then your opponent just shrugs and offers another card for ante and goes on to win anyway after you wasted 6 mana on it. And just to top it all off, even if there was a circumstance where it would be useful, it can only be activated during your upkeep so you can't even make use of it right away.
Yes, excellent pick!
First one that came to mind for me too, and probably the single worst rare pull I ever had in a booster besides the lace cards, mostly because we never played for ante, or if we did, we'd throw in for a booster pack or something that the winner would get because none of us wanted to risk losing something expensive and potentially hard to replace while their opponent ended up anteing a giant spider. Part of the problem with ante in general and why it never took off is while you could come to some kind of agreement that both parties are willing to live by, official MTG rules to this day make the ante random, and have no restrictions. If there were some guidelines like it can't be a basic land or perhaps even a common, and you're allowed 1 redraw if you pull something you really don't want to give up (maybe you even have to ante a 2nd card in this case), maybe it would have been received better. Even if logically, lopsided antes will balance out in the long run and you'll be at an advantage as often as you'll be at a disadvantage, it still seems inherently unfair if one player is putting up the best card in their deck while the other is putting up a basic land, and makes people not want to do it.
The strategy with the Amulet though is to use it when nobody has a major advantage (or when you have something really good in your hand that your opponent isn't expecting), but it almost has more to do with the cards in the ante already. If your opponent's ante card is way better than yours, they are very likely to pay to avoid the flip because losing a premium card to chance feels way worse than getting outplayed, where if you're playing for the card at least there's some skill involved and you feel like you have some control over the situation. It's also unlikely the next ante card will be nearly as important if one of their best cards is already up for grabs. Might not be good for your friendship, but this creates a situation with anywhere from a small bonus to a major upside if you go on to win the game, and no real downside if you end up in a coin flip, or losing the game.
I used the Aladdin's card in a titania's song deck, I never used the lamp's abilities, it was in there to be a 10/10 artifact creature. The ring I sometimes activated to deal damage while I was waiting for the opportune time to drop the titania's song. The problem with the deck was that it was really slow, even with all those mana producing sources you had back in the early days. You could slow your opponent with winter orbs and icy manipulators but it didn't do well against creature spam.
That Obelisk does actually go infinite with Urza, Lord High Artificers and a bunch of cheerios, though
My friend, who regularly placed into National/world rankings for a time, declared it his mission to destroy every copy of Razor Boomerang he came across. The early box he kept of the card scraps attests to that!
I've played all of these in decks except arcum's sleigh and apocalypse chime, so I think those deserve to be higher on the list. Those were terrible even back in the day. Most of the rest of these are only so bad in today's world of cards. Though I admit none were *good* back then either.
I used obelisk of undoing in my stasis deck to return my stasis at the end of their turn and replay it on mine. With multiple moxen, sol rings, and tron lands, the cost wasn't high but the misery was.
10:50 most importantly, 1 white mana was added to the cost
Also a “your turn only” restriction.
Counterargument for Aladdin's Lamp, it's Impulse that turns into 10 damage in Bosh, Iron Giant deck
Imagine an Apocolype Chime that requires the player to name a Magic set as it's activated.
Razor boomerang can actually get some kills with something like jeskai ascendancy. There's a lot of ways to reduce equipment casting and equip costs, so you can make it close to free with stuff like bureau headmaster, fighter class, etc. There's even some good dorks in the colors, like dalakos, renowned weaponsmith, grand architect, and Urza. Since so many of them cost 3, drift of phantasms can tutor for ascendancy, a dork, or the boomerang it's self. There's even a snazzy backup combo with intruder alarm and either stonybrook schoolmaster, or warchanter skald (again, all at 3 mana). There are easier combos to pull off, but it's neat that it's there, and I had fun brewing a jeskai equipment deck around it.
I actually once figured out a recursive combo using razor boomerang. It required like 7 different cards and a lot of mana up front. There were at least 2 cards that did the same thing for less, but I considered this crappy card anyway for redundancy.
Great video. Another card you could compare Aladdin's Lamp to, although not functionally identical, is Soothsaying.
You can pay X to reorder the top X. No, it doesn't bottom them if you don't like them, but it's a similar effect where you would keep one of them on top. Soothsaying only cost 1 mana and even has a shuffle option, and it still didn't see play.
For -55- 10 mana, Aladdin's Lamp could have easily X: The next time you would draw a card, draw x cards instead. And still it wouldnt be busted.
Idea to make Juju Bauble useful: Play it in a sacrifice deck. Play it, then immediately play something else to activate all your sac triggers.
In defense of Aladdin's ring if you can cheat it out it can be a consistent source to hit Planeswalkers
I could see a razor pendulum being useful if you have a life-sacrifice/platinum-angel combo going on. Get your life really low and have a card that makes tokens or does damage whenever you take damage etc.
I've seen Razor Boomerang being used as an infinite outlet in EDH (back when Paradox Engine was legal)
Does naming a card "Razor" make a card bad?
Not necessarily but, it's funny that's it's happened twice on this same list.
The 500 IQ play with Obelisk of Undoing is to hold Cyclonic Rift mana so you can flash it out and bounce your key permanent. I’m not saying that it’s a good move but it would catch your opponents off guard.
I could replace one or two of these with Delif's Cube.
Coral Helm is pretty ludicrous; 6 mana and discard a card at random to give a creature +2/+2 until end of turn.
Also, as much as I wanted Runesword to be a thing when I was a kid, 9 mana investment to give a creature +2/+0 is ridiculous, and adding on that the Runesword gets sacrificed if the creature leaves play is just the cherry on the top of awfulness.
Then there's Tower of Coireall, Balm of Restoration, Sandals of Abdullah, and Celestial Prism... Early MTG really was full of examples.
Dishonorable mention to the early 0 mana artifacts that were never worth it too. Even low powered 0 mana artifacts like Bone Saw, Claws of Gix, Zuran Orb, or Welding Jar have found their niches. But that's half the issue; There's no reason to run an awful 0 mana artifact like Gustha's Scepter, Delif's Cone, or Dark Sphere when there are better options out there. Even Darksteel Relic has more of a niche than most of those.
the obelisk was expensive but with stasis it stopped decks in their tracks
Obelisk of Undoing + Stasis was a thing back in the day. It was viable as late as Legends. There wasn't another good 2 card combo for Stasis back then (Instill Energy + Birds of Paradise + Stasis). So, the card is bad due to power creep, but back in the day is was a thing until Time Elemental. Also, Aladdin's Lamp was not great, but for its day it made it into decks. I myself activated it a handful of times when I was desperate for a draw engine.
I am experimenting with North Star in a Rasputin Dreamweaver deck. Rasputin goes infinite with a ham sandwich, which means no one lets him hang around, so I've been trying an infiniteless build to use him to cast big mana spells lol
Its not good.
The Obelisk of Undoing is not so bad. Think about having cheap artifact mana sources like Moxes and Sol Ring or Mana Crypt and such. You tap all of them, get whatever mana you need, pay the Obelisk and take all of them to your hand to play them again. It would be an incedibly strong Storm engine at your disposal. Just like Paradoxial Outcome.
Hey hey, we used Obelisk of undoing as the final piece of turbo stasis lockdown
If razor pendulum were reprinted so it were legal in modern, I wonder it if would be a viable sideboard card to deal with the low life decks like deaths shadow? Probably not though
The boomerang was useful with paradox engine amd a ton of rocks
Get this, Aladdin's Lamp was erratad to be even worse! I was considering putting Aladdin's Lamp in my Starscream deck to get damage off of a massive draw trigger, but it was erratad to say "look at the top X cards. Put all but one on the bottom then draw 1." Can't have shit for Transformer commanders XD
I think thats actually how it always worked in practicality, note how it says "Choose one to PUT in your hand", not Keep, old MtG jank with uncodified wording, I don't think it actually ever counted as drawing all those cards because they never reached your hand
@@syrelian Oh... weeeeird
Some epic art on these cards!! Old artifacts look so cool. Too bad they’re all unplayable
I love Aladin's Ring. Use it with Seedborn Muse.
Boomerang saw a little play in drafts and sealed
If North Star makes the next spell you cast actually cost generic mana, and doesn't fix that you lands can tap for whatever, then things like Animar could actually net you mana in that exchange by making a big spell free.
Unfortunately I don't believe it does, despite the example text, it says "you can pay with any type of mana" but I'm fairly certain thats oracle codified as similar to effects on more modern cards that do shit like steal cards and say "you may cast it using any kind of mana"
I have Aladdin's lamp in my karn deck. Makes karn a 10/ 10 and easy to have the mana to spend on it. Fishing for the right thing late game isnt really a bad thing either if i have the mana.
Goblin Charbelcher is the worst by far! It kills me everytime.
Is razor boomerang actually worse than runesword.
To be fair obilesk can be very good in vintage with the mana rocks
real shame North Star is considered so bad.
It's got art by one of my favorite artists.
If you have infinite mana aladins lamp is not bad. It's an repeated expensive tutor
if you have infinite mana and can tutor for anything, why would you repeat the effect? remember that you have to TAP the lamp on activation
To kill an opponant with just aladins ring.... you would LITERALLY have to spend FORTY EIGHT FUCKING MANA!!!!! 😂😂😂😂
lamp costs 5 mana, and 5... more mana
Hating on Alladin huh? If you're running those, you should have Mana galore, and run spells that care about high Mana cost. Turning the ring or lamp into a creature with Karn, Silver Golem, attack and fling, Bosh the Iron Golem with artifact revival, or simply frustrating the table as you stack your entire deck with the Lamp because you drew a card while playing elves
North Star could work for zirda lol just a worse mana fixer but the idea is neat
Are there decks that care about artifacts going to the graveyard? If so, juju bubble essentially has a sac outlet built into it.
the coolest combo line I can think of with juju bubble is to combo with Prize Pig
you'll need some more support to pull it off, but it's technically a three card combo with pig, bubble, and Rite of replication, and there's lots of other playable cards that can be backup combo pieces
probably about as difficult as pulling of sprout swarm combo in commander, but bubble definitely is less useful than sprout swarm
Aladdin's ring has to be tapped when activated, as it's a mono artifact.
I really like this style of video but comparing this very old cards to the modern design feels unfair, would be more interesting if compared to cards of the same period
Not sure if Seth can't pronounce bubble properly, or is misreading the card. lol
Seth you are giving Aladdin’s lamp far too much credit, if the card was 100% cheaper it would still be stone cold unplayable don’t humor the card making it think it’s worth a mana at least
I ❤ the artwork of Homelands.
Against the Odds: Aladdin edition. Make it happen Seth
North Stars Art is way too good for a card that bad
That's Kaja Foglio for ya. He's the artist behind the Girl Genius webcomic, as well as a few Munchkin cards, and is overall very good. It's a shame then that basically all of his MTG art is for really bad cards. They do look really cool though.
@@carissamace *Humility has entered the chat*
@@zirilan3398 I did say 'basically' after all, he has done the art for some good cards.
@@carissamaceYes, except that Kaja is a she. Kaja and Phil Foglio are a husband and wife team, and they both did a lot of cool early Magic art. Phil’s are more straightforwardly jokes.
@@dementievatz Oh for god's sake. My bad! The website I read that from when I double-checked if that name was who I thought it was was really vague because it phrased it like: "The comic [Girl Genius] is written and drawn by Phil and Kaja Foglio. He [Phil] was..." So it was really hard to tell which name applied to who at first glance, especially since there was only a photo of Phil and not Kaja.
Magic in 1994 was way different. Drop your Will O The Wisps and Walls of Air, then draw into enough mana to cast your Aladdin's Ring. Your opponent is guaranteed to be dead before turn 20 or 30, since their Serra Angel can't break through your defenses and they're taking 4 to the face each turn. Unless they Healing Salve to delay the inevitable. Maybe the repeatable damage prevention of Rakalite would be a hard counter? Hmm...
I actually play Rakalite as a one-of toolbox card in an oldschool deck that uses 4 x Power Artifact and 4 x Basalt Monolith to provide infinite mana, and I can find it with Transmute Artifact if I need to survive until I find my other win-cons. So some of these here in this list actually have utility if youngot infinite mana, like Juju Bubble.
Why I liked my Thrull Champion/Breading Pit deck. Try and defend against me getting one or even two 2/3 thrulls per turn. Just have to keep the Champions alive and paying an upkeep of 2 black Mana per turn per pit. There's some value.
@@jamesrule1338 Back in those days, we packed 4 Swords to Plowshares and 4 Disenchants in the main deck for a reason. Get reckt!
While Aladdin's Ring is definitely pretty overcosted, it actually has a really good effect. The ability to deal 4 damage at instant speed each turn is no joke, and can absolutely win games. For its time, Aladdin's Ring was actually a pretty solid control finisher. The idea is that you'd use the rest of your deck to remove boards that Aladdin's Ring is too slow to handle, then late in the game, when the coast is clear, you play Aladdin's Ring. From that point onward, if your opponent plays a creature, you kill it with Aladdin's Ring at the end of their turn, or if they don't play a creature, you burn them for 4.
yeah, I won games that way! And by putting an animate artifact on Alladin's lamp of course.
In theory I could have put my animate artifact on Alladin's ring, give it vigilance with Arcum's sleigh, attack for 8 AND then ping for 4 afterwards :D
There is a picture from an article in the local paper published in summer of 1994 of a bunch of us playing Magic at the local shop.
I have TWO Aladdin's Rings in okay on the board.
The ability to deal 4 damage & kill Sera Angel, Sengir Vampire, & Air Elemental plus White/Black Knights. It was actually pretty useful.
Yeah, I think it's weak, but it's not actively bad. 4 damage sorceries/instants always have the hidden effect that all spells have: "discard this card". Is a 4-5 mana premium, plus an up front 8, worth removing that discard issue? Probably not, but it's definitely worth some amount of mana extra/upfront cost.
Throw it into a Megatron commander deck where bigger is better.....even if you don't use the excess mana from sacrifices, you can use it for fuel to sacrifice for his ability. I'd say it's a "potential" but again, other options may be better, 😅
It was never "Good", but in the revised era of casual MTG the ring was played enough because it did something, which is more than the worst cards here.
Seth's list of worsts cards are never very accurate. He can't seem to tell "underpowered" or "not good" from actually "worthless". He also doesn't know the context of what older cards played at the time.
Go ahead take out the apocalypse chime, your gonna get bodied by my serrated arrows
"thats 14 mana and a time restriction to build....an Impulse" LOL
the best part is even after building a 14 mana impulse its still doesn't net you a card like impulse does
@@sidneypowelstock6812 Impulse doesn't net you a card either. Impulse replaces itself.
I feel like the 1 mana do nothing cards should be near the bottom of the list, because at least it only cost you 1 mana and a card. And you might be able to sacrifice it with deadly dispute or something
Aladdin’s ring is a mono artifact, meaning by the oracle text, it is in fact not even repeatable😂
Mono artifact just means that you have to tap it. Aladdin's Ring was reprinted in core sets from Revised until 9th edition.
Oh man that's bad. At least I thought it'd be a funny way to turn infinite colorless into a win, Walking Ballista style, but it can't even do that?
repeatable across turns/untaps.
As mentioned, "mono" just refers to "one per turn" and not once, period
He's referring to repeatable across turns.
Saw? You think it's from SAW???
Olive, mah boi. Razor Pendulum is from the Edgar Allan Poe short story, The Pit and the Pendulum.
True story: I played with both the Aladdin artifacts back in the day. The 'combo' was to put Animate Artifact on them and attack. Early MTG didn't have much expensive artifacts to do this with, so they went in. At least the ring did something if I couldn't animate it; the lamp is just the absolute worst. Honestly I think Delif's Cone should be on the worst artifacts list over the ring.
Yep. It was a gimmicky deck, but a lot of fun if you could stay alive long enough to get your 10/10 onto the battlefield.
Arcum's sleigh is actually *always* a blank piece of cardboard, since it can only give vigilance to creatures that already attacked, due to its oracle text caring about the "defending player"
It only has to be activated in combat. There's a space before attackers are declared where you can activate the Sleigh.
@daredewley9231 but there's no "defending player" unless theres a creature attacking
after a quick check of the CR, it appears that this rule is insane
507.1 says you choose a single defending player at the beginning of combat, and only after attacks there can be more than one
the more you know i guess
@duncancarter9410 hey thanks for looking that up. Interesting rule for sure.
@@duncancarter9410
802. Attack Multiple Players Option
802.2. As the combat phase starts, the attacking player doesn’t choose an opponent to become the defending player. Instead, all the attacking player’s opponents are defending players during the combat phase.
508.5a In a multiplayer game, any rule, object, or effect that refers to a “defending player” refers to one specific defending player, not to all of the defending players. If a spell or ability could apply to multiple attacking creatures, the appropriate defending player is individually determined for each of those attacking creatures. If there are multiple defending players that could be chosen, the controller of the spell or ability chooses one.
So assuming attack multiple players option is enabled, which it usually is, all opponents will be defending players and you can choose any of them to determine if you can activate Arcum's Sleigh, it does not even have to be the one that the creature is attacking.
If the attack multiple players option is not enabled then indeed rule 507.1 kicks in and you have to choose one, but then after attacks there still can't be more than one, because you can't attack a player that isn't a defending player.
"One of my favorite memories growing up was playing my favorite NES game: Bobble Bobble" -- Seth
I like these lists, but historical context is missing for some of these. Arcum's Weathervane came out in Ice Age. A set that gave you Snow Covered Basics in Starter Decks. This was playable, if marginally, in its time. Throwing it in there without acknowledging the proper context is just irresponsible. Apocalypse Chime is next. As you showed in the video, it has context as well. It was probably played in the Pro Tour shown. When it was in Standard it was probably played as well. Imagine a card that destroys all Modern Horizons cards or Outlaws of Thunder Junction cards. It would see play. There is no mention of City in a Bottle, which kills all Arabian Nights cards. Why not mentioned? It still has play in Old School and possibly in Vintage.
Context matters.
Stop ignoring it.
also Aladdin's ring is a (better) control finisher like millstone at a time where tron lands and sol rings where around and available
The biggest problem with Arcum's Sleigh is the only way to guarantee it will work is if you also have Arcum's Weathervane in play so you can make an opponent's land snowcovered (strangely, it's the only card in ice age that will do that). Then, all you get is one creature that doesn't tap to attack?
That's really weak for a combo, especially considering the sleigh literally doesn't have any other combos, and the weathervane only has a few, the best ones being in red: it can be used to turn a bunch of enemy lands snowcovered then destroy them with an Avalanche, though it's a slow and expensive process, or it can be used with Barbarian Guides, where you can spend 3 to give target creature a snowcovered landwalk type of your choice...which honestly should be what the Sleigh does, in addition to functioning like a War Barge (which allows you to give an unlimited number of creatures islandwalk for 3 colorless mana each, and also kills any creatures given this ability if the barge is removed from play that turn. This may have been designed as a risk for your attackers, but it turned out that paying to put your opponent's creatures on the barge, then comboing with cards like boomerang, shatter, or disenchant to remove the barge from play and kill a bunch of your opponent's creatures at once probably the most effective way to use it).
Anyway, the sleigh is definitely a miss both in power and in flavor, and while the weathervane makes more sense, there's just weren't enough cards that could turn your opponent's lands into snow lands or take advantage of your opponent's lands being snow lands to build a deck around the premise. Basically, unless you were playing an Ice Age Draft game where your opponent was more or less guaranteed to be using snow lands, it really didn't make any sense to be playing the sleigh.
Aladdin's Ring isn't good, but I'll defend its honor slightly. It's definitely not among the WORST artifacts ever. It will win the game for you, and can help you stabilize the board. It doesn't do those things WELL, but it does do them. There are MUCH worse artifacts than that one. Aladdin's Lamp on the other hand is pure trash
Yes it isn't even close to being one of the worst ever, it could totally win games for you at tge time. It just isn't up to modern standards.
There's a great little artifact from Kaledesh called Consulate Turret. Terrible. Tap it to reload the turret with energy and then shock your opponent. Me and my buddy had a blast dueling Consulate Turret decks. Lol
Yeah, that one’s pretty bad by itself. At least it synergizes with other cards that use or make energy.
Homelands was so bad that the creators made a card focused in destroying it 😅😂
Take into account Feroz's Ban and the costs of the cards make sense.
It’s too bad the Apocalypse chime wasn’t rung in time before the set released
Genuinely kind of incredible, I think literally the only spell from the set that still actually sees play is merchant scroll
Each expansion up to Homelands had a card that wiped all cards from its own expansion. It's just a coincidence that Chime happens to be in one of the worst sets ever printed.
The thing to remember, especially with Aladdin's Lamp, is that back in the early days of Magic you could have 4 copies of Sol Ring in your deck--you could play a land, tap it to play Sol Ring, then tap Sol Ring to play a second Sol Ring (then take 1 damage from mana burn), or even Swamp > Dark Ritual > Sol Ring > Demonic Tutor > Sol Ring then have {2}{b} to play something else on turn 1. Anyway, getting to 10 mana wasn't out of the ordinary, especially one Antiquities hit and you could hit Tron with Sol Rings--in the ideal scenario, you could tap your Urza lands, spend 3 mana to unatp them with your Candelabra of Tawnos, then tap them again to have 11 mana available. If you also had a way to get a "draw a card" effect for yourself like Jalum Tome, then you could afford to spend 7 mana during your opponent's end step to look at 5 cards, pick the best one, then move on to your turn and get your regular draw. Yes, there are many similar effects which are much more efficient these days, but way back then you worked with what you had.
These days, we would *never* spend 10 mana for the Lamp, not when Trash for Treasure can put it onto the battlefeild for 3 mana or Dr. Madison Li can get it for a mere 5 energy. After that, the effect is actually pretty good--x mana to look at x cards on the top of your library, put one on top, then draw it.
Razor boomerang is also uncommon somehow. One does wonder what the hell Wizards was smoking while designing this card 😂
maybe they didn't want a lot of the stinky card in the cardpool in draft
@@ScornfulEg0tist How about not making stinky cards then
Not sure if it's still like this, but back in the day, all artifacts were uncommon or rare.
Despite the poor rate, Aladdin’s Ring was a reasonable pickup in some core set limited environments. If things are slow enough, just tapping out for 4 damage every turn is not that crazy.
Could easily be replaced with the likes of Delif’s Cone or Dark Sphere or like a dozen other pointless old artifacts.
Yep, this. Delif's Cone is easily worse. Impements of Sacrifice? 3 colorless to get 2 of the same color and it only works once? Elven Lyre? 3 for +2/+2 on one creature for one turn that only works once? Tower of Coireall: Tap: Target Creature can't be blocked by walls this turn. All of these seem beyond pointless definitely less useful than the Ring, probably the Lamp too.
I built a commander deck with Ursa, high Lord artificer, and the theme was unplayable artifacts to prove that Ursa is broken, and I have most of these cards in the deck
Apocalypse Chime actually saw play in sideboards in Standard to get rid of Autumn Willow since most decks didn't have access to Wrath of God. She replaced Erhnam Djinn in Erhnamgeddon decks after the Djinn rotated out of Standard. With Shroud and a 4/4 body, she was hard to kill and that was the only way to do it.
I'm glad not to see Golgothian Sylex on this list because it does have a home in Old School 93/94. Antiquities has a lot of powerful lands in Workshop and Factory, mainstays of the format, and the Sylex is a strong card against the powerful Workshop Robots deck in the format. It's a card that's better now because of card availability; "back in the day," people wouldn't have had playsets of all those powerful cards but now they do.
9:57 I do love terrible trinkets like this card!
Juju bauble does allow any color deck to gain an arbitrarily large amount of life if you are able to generate infinite mana
If you have infinite mana you should just win the game not gain life lmao
@@Terrabyte13 of course, but the potential alone, in my opinion, gives it more value than it's being given credit.
It's bubble, not bauble.
Arkum’s Sleigh is being driven by an Auroch… probably a Rimehorn Auroch.
Aladdin's Lamp would be better if it costed 55 mana.
Then you can sneak it into play and have Imskir Iron-Eater chuck it at an opponent, killing them instantly in Commander.
Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow...
@@saprone8885 Imskir's kill is funnier.
@DAsrada True, with Yuriko it would not be fun to play with or against. It would be pretty powerful though.
Aladdin's ring is a Mono artifact - meaning it taps when you use it -- so its not even repeatable!
I mean....yes? It costs 8 to use anyway so it doesn't seem like there would be too many instances where you'd have enough mana to use it more than once per turn, but it's not like it gets discarded once you use it; it untaps during your next upkeep....unless you do something like Twiddle it for 1 blue so you can use it again. You could also pay 2 blue to enchant it with Power Artifact to reduce the activation cost by 2, and animate it into an 8/8 creature, but even without all that it was a decent way to remove mid-range creatures from the board, or even big creatures with a little help, which could break a late game stalemate and allow your attackers to get through, or just deal direct damage from the ring to win.
Aladin's Lamp for 1 mana isn't stone cold unplayable! In a Zirda deck, you can now pay 1 mana and tap it to look at your top 3 if you would draw, and instead take one of those! Not exactly great, but not embarrassing!!
Alladins ring is only activated once a turn, as "mono artifacts" just mean you can use its abilities once per turn, as tapping an artifact back then meant "turning it off", which is why winter orb and trinisphere only work untapped, as they mimic how they used to work, this is shown by newer printing of Alladins ring requiring you to tap
Juju bubble makes a great mox ruby proxy at least
Some of these make way more sense when you remember mana burn was a thing. Still plenty terrible cards.
won a ton of games with aladdin's lamp back in the day- erratic explosion (now calibrated blast) for that sweet 10 damage to the face is always a fun time. OG draco for 16 was better but my lamps were 5 pence each :)
How does the Apocalypse Chime affect those cards that are originally printed at Homelands and get reprinted later and the card's holder is not using the Homelands version? Will they still get destroyed?
The errata clarifies it: "Destroy all nontoken permanents with a name originally printed in the Homelands expansion." So they will be destroyed.
@@lseths Thank you. And I guess there is no card in the set that is a reprint of previous card right?
Um, Actually; Aladdin's ring is a mono artifact, this is old school for meaning you have to tap it, so you can only do it once a turn.
Juju Bubble made me laugh ngl.
And he keeps saying bobble.
Commander brainrot made me think that North Star would actually be pretty fun to use with Mana Geyser but I re-read the card and realized it only works for a single spell. At that point if you have that much mana and can't cast a single spell that's just straight up bad deckbuilding.
I have a Haldan Pako deck, where every card needs to play into the idea that Haldan’s just taking his boy out for a walk. Razor Boomerang has a place in the list as one of Pako’s dog toys.
And I refuse to cut it.
The facts/history segments you guys do are my favorites. I love learning all the things about M:tG that I've missed over the years.
Arcum's sleigh of course comes from Ice Age and was useful in that set because it did have snow, just the lack of sets to keep snow lands in high use.
I recall a goldfish podcast where someone was die-hard defending how North Star is an all-star good card, and it was hilarious.
If North Star was just tap to use mana as any color of mana, I could see Tron 5c jank stuff with it.
I think if you can cheat Aladdin’s lamp in and you have a creature or enchantment that activates dealing damage or gaining life when you draw a card, you could make Aladdin lamp, pretty powerful. But I’m not good at magic and never was, my ideas are overly complicated and that’s like a four or five card combo.
Aladdin's Ring and (especially) Lamp weren't used as much for their abilities as they were for being the endgame of the gimmicky but fun Animate Aladdin's Artifact deck.
Urzas Lands, Sol Ring, Basalt Monolith, High Tide and Sindbad to help with mana production, Counterspells and Mana Shorts to slow down your opponent, Burn cards, ornithopters, and dancing scimitars for creatures that make it onto the battlefield. Power artifact to reduce the cost of the ring's ability, Aladdin and Flying Carpet mostly for flavor, things like city of brass, elephant graveyard and Ali from Cairo if can manage to get them, then Animate one of Aladdin's artifacts as your finisher.
i love the energy you bring when you talk about mtg. keep it up my dude