The only reason banding is a bad mechanic is that's its really two different ones on attacks and blocks. Other than that, the fact it's confusing is really more a meme than truth
@@gryfyn71 - banding wasn't confusing at all. Banding was an agreement with all grouped creatuires on the attack that if one got stopped by a blocker, they all got stopped by a blocker, but the controller of the banded group could assign combat damage to their creatures however they wanted. Banding on the defense meant the same for damage assignment. It's the rules changes to damage assignment (requiring lethal damage be assigned before moving on to the next creature) that made banding confusing for some, but in the old days we understood it perfectly and used it to great effect.
I'll defend Devoid, just because I think its blandness means it's totally inoffensive. Sure it doesn't actually do much of anything, but the way I see it, that's a failure to make enough things that interact with devoid cards. I guess I just have a soft spot for it, because "colored mana cost but not actually colored" communicated well that these are bizarre, otherworldly creatures.
Exactly, I also loved that they introduced Colourless mana but really dislike they have not explored Wastes/Colourless mana further. Colourless mana symbols could be used to balance artifacts and add more to deck creation as you would now need some colourless mana sources for certain powerful artifacts.
@@mr.mammuthusafricanavus8299 I hadn't thought about using colouless mana for artifacts, that would be pretty cool. I personally feel like they limited themselves a fair bit by designing colourless mana as an eldrazi mechanic. I guess since Emrakul is still around there is always a chance for its return
@@dragonbreath4638 Yeah, I couldn't help but compare Wastes to what happened in the Brothers War and they literally scoured the land for resources to make their artifacts. WOTC also had this article about the the 6th colour all along being Colourless when they released that set years ago. I really thought they would use the colourless mana symbol in the future on really powerful artifacts, like artifacts that take a lot of resources to create hence the Wastes, ie: Mining/Industrial. I think they could bring back Wastes as an Actual Basic Landtype, not a psuedo Basic Landtype on planes like Kaladesh, Esper, any plane that has lots of artifacts because they need Industry to make those artifacts :P
There's something contextual about Devoid that nobody seems to notice. At the beginning of Magic, color was an important attribute of a card in play. Cards like Red Elemental Blast or the Circles of Protection or the protection ability punished cards for their color, color "hosers". Over the years, the emphasis decreased. When Battle of Zendikar was printed, there were no color hosers in the set. For most of Battle's time in standard, the only hosers were a few from Dragons of Tarkir, and I think by the time the set left standard there were no cards whose effects cared about any specific color. Ghostfire was interesting because it could get around things that cared about red. In a world where nothing cares about color, just about colorless, removing the color isn't as interesting.
It played like Eldrazi tribal, so it just should have been Eldrazi tribal. Of course making Eldrazi small and medium creatures was a mistake on its own anyway. 🤷🏿
I feel like companion should at least have been an honorable mention since it was so broken that they had to change how it worked and the most broken companions are still pretty broken even after the change
Yeah. Seems like a glaring omission. How many mechanics from this list were so broken that WotC felt it necessary to errata the meaning of the keyword? Companion may have been intended to encourage unconventional deckbuilding, but it had the exact opposite effect. It was basically “Fit your deck into this pigeonhole so you can start the game with this 8th card in hand, or play a subpar deck.”
I really wish devoid was more of a thing. I'm red/green colorblind. I wanted to make a red/green Devoid deck. A testament to my inability to see those colors. The premise is cathartic to me. Unfortunately, there just isn't enough to make a commander deck. And that breaks my heart.
@@ximbabwe0228 I mean technically every red/green deck is devoid without the word in the text lol Idk I just loved the idea others see it as the color and then they are in my world. A world devoid of the thing they appreciate most hahahaha
On the subject of the color indicator, I would like to make a suggestion Several friends of mine are visually impaired, and have difficulty differentiating the colors on the indicator. Is there any possibility that it could also include a shape into it, like how hybrid mana symbols do?
@@elesh.n Gavin said the others in the cycle are bad designs because an opponent will just pay the mana to counter the spell, so they are worthless cards. Rhystic is good, but annoying since you always have to ask, but he said he wouldnt mind it if it was white instead of blue
When I started playing commander with my friends I had rhystic cave in my deck, my thought process was "I'm sure they won't pay for it most of the time, since we're playing for fun", but they paid for it every single time.
I think another mechanic that should get a dishonorable mention is Ante, because there is *no* mechanic in the game that would make me upset faster than "I own your card now", but the developers know this and every Ante card is banned. One mechanic that I do think should have been on this list is Eminence. While there were only four cards ever made with the mechanic (five if you count Oloro), it has the Forecast problem of doing a thing every turn for no mana cost, but can't even be beaten with Discard. There is no possible way you can interact with it.
@@karlsmink - it's a combination of both. Ante didn't get noticed and compared to gambling laws until kids started coming home from sealed deck events crying that they opened a $10 card but lost it in the ante. I was a judge at the time and saw it happen and had to deal with angry parents more than once.
Ante was a great idea, the game just went in a wildly different direction than expected. It was designed for a world where everyone bought the equivalent of like 6 boosters packs per set and was like "that's a sufficient number of cards to own." and cards didn't vary in value between 25 cents and 10k dollars.
I think Annihilator is one of the worst. It basically says 'If I swing, I win', but in the least fun way possible. Maybe a player comes back from annihilator 1, but sacc-ing 4 permanents is generally a couple miserable turns from game over.
I agree. I use it in commander because my play group uses "noob combos" you know the ones, play 2 cards and so some kind of infinite combo that doesnt interact with the rest of the game... I like making them swing the sword that does their own tricks in
While I agree, I think the reason it didn't make the list is that it 1) Drastically impacts the board state, progressing the game, and 2) Is AT LEAST fun for the controlling player. I don't think the fun for the controller outweighs the feelsbad for the opponent, but the majority of the other mechanics on the list either make the game deterministic or stall the game out.
Iono, with how rampant token decks are in edh (or any sac themed decks really) I cut most of my annihilator cards. If anything I feel infect is more of the "if I swing, I win" kind of mechanic. With Hella less counterplay
@@channeling764 Spiritcraft! That's sadly horrible: it's bounded to very weak creatures and requires you to discard / mill yourself in order to have the appropriate material to do some weird combo
@@marcoottina654 Spiritcraft was actually pretty cool mechanic but it was attached to very weak creatures. I wish they would’ve pushed it more. Cast triggers make very interesting play patterns.
Yeah drafting Kamigawa was a blast because you actually got to use some of these weird, kinda bad mechanics. OG Kamigawa was such a weird block. Mostly underpowered but with some real nuclear bomb cards in it (just off the top of the dome, Gifts Ungiven, Sensei's Divining Top, Jitte, Asuza, Kiki-Jiki, Pithing Needle, Forbidden Orchard).
Most magic sets are just awful. I guess they needed the reserve list to make them valuable. It’s pathetic. In modern times the reserve is just the icing on an enormous problem.
I'm really surprised that Companion wasn't number 1. The fact that it still warps the meta of Pioneer, Modern, and every other format they are legal in even after the nerf.
100%. The mechanic is fundamentally broken. It leads to repetitive gameplay patterns, breaks the rule of only 8 starting 'hand' cards, and divides the community in players who are allowed to play a companion and others that are not allowed to play one (imagine if half of the commander players were allowed to play commander while the other half is not allowed - this is the absurd situation we are in). I hope for the love of the game that they will ban the whole mechanic as fast as possible among all competitive formats. (edit: grammar)
To be fair, 90% of the problem is specifically Lurrus. When your design has to be banned in Vintage for power reasons (at least until the nerf), that's not just a red flag, that's a 5-alarm fire. Honorable mention to Lutri, the Spellchaser for having a nonfactor deckbuilding restriction in Commander, leading to its banning before it was even released.
While yes Lurrus is still a major problem in Modern and Pioneer. Don't forget Yorion is still a force in those formats plus Legacy and Zirda also got banned from Legacy along with Lurrus and was considered to be on the chopping block for Vintage before the nerf. Jegantha also sees quite a bit of play in multiple formats. Although, I do think Jegantha and Kaheera are less egregious than Lurrus and Yorion and certainly aren't ban worthy material. Unlike the other two. However, as a whole the mechanic imo is probably the worst designed, not because it was bad, which seemed to be Gavin's criteria, but because how broken it was and even with the nerf. There's still for the most part two problematic cards in Lurrus and Yorion. The mechanic has also created the dynamic of those decks that can run Companion vs the decks that don't run Companion
I like the cumulative upkeep mechanic and would enjoy seeing it as a part of a new set. That said, I think the cost that require you to pay mana are mostly unfun und simply not interesting, but there is allot of fun and interesting design space for non-mana cumulative upkeep costs.
There's less of these than you would think. The cost on Jotun Grunt is cards from your graveyard, maybe you could do one that affects the opponent and now it's a positive instead of a negative but that's still just one card. You could do one that makes the opponent draw cards and maybe punishes them for doing so but this would probably be a bad card unless it was really abused. Grand total there are maybe 10-20 interesting ways to phrase use of a non mana resource and most of them are super feels bad like discarding cards or sacrificing permanents, the cards would need to be stupidly powerful to see any play.
Some of them are really good, mystic remora is a better stronger rystic study for 1 blue and cumulative upkeep 1, but opponent have to pay 4 by card he draw so no one is rly able to pay (and they don't want too) . This is so unbalanced in commander multi, with 3 opponent : 6 cards draw for 2 mana in 2 turn... And that if they don't draw additional cards btw
Braiding Fire is an enchantment whose effect is literally just a cumulative upkeep. Namely, you put a red in your mana pool. It sounds OP but remember that your pool empties as phases end so once you get to untap, all that red goes away. It’s better than it used to be though as it came out when mana burn was a rule. Essentially your pool emptied at the end of each turn instead but you also took damage equal to the amount of mana lost this way so the design idea is literally playing with fire lol. I’m very surprised that it didn’t get a mention in this video as it’s also an iconic cumulative upkeep card
@@MrZer093 Braiding fire is probably the coolest cumulative upkeep card, especially when mana burn was a thing. I don't care if it is good, but it is jsut really cool. You get all of this power, and more and more of it. But eventually you just burn up because you aren't able to spend all that power. It's great.
Then it would be A: consistently underpowered / useless / unplayable and B: also super boring. As it was said in the video, the way to save the mechanic would be to make the card go to your hand instead of casting it for free. That way you could still ripple through the deck but it would cost you.
I'm surprised we didn't include Phyrexian Mana, just because it actually just breaks how mana works in general. But I think you took the list a better way. Also, I literally didn't know Sweep existed, so I'm gonna get my friend with one of those cards later.
Before watching: Eminence. You are rewarded for doing nothing and it is almost impossible to interact with it. Other than 10 and 9, I agree with the things on this list. 10. Disagree with Cumulative Upkeep being on the list. 💯 Agree that non-mana payment are interesting. Those are creative and have several fantastic cards. 9. I see most buyback as the payoff of control/combo. Sure, in limited they are brutal, but their eternal impact is quite different.
There are tons of cool cumulative upkeep cards. Of course, just creatures with a cumulative upkeep aren't fun. But cards like elephant grass, illusions of grandeur and glacial chasm are interesting defensive tools. Or Cold snap is a cool anti snow tech card. Braid of fire was immensely cool with mana burn (I do not comment on power, only coolness), but is still an ok design without it. Decompose is exactly the kind of removal you'd expect from green. Ancestral knowledge asks you to win the game in short order - or lose to the cumulative upkeep. When it becomes an actual tradeoff worth considering or a temporary stasis-like effect, it can be a very cool mechanic. I mean, Herald of Leshrac is a very cool demon. It is powerful, and your own power grows with his age. But his greed is also his downfall, resetting a lot of the pwoer you got from him.
@@Taeerom - Since this conversation went nowhere, I can reply: Even with mana burn, Braid of fire was still really good because there were many mana sinks, not the least of which was literally creatures with Fire Breathing. Similarly, Harold of Leshrac is an especially brutal Stax finisher. It just happens to be outclassed for efficiency more than anything.
I actually agree with gotcha on this list. I remember one time my playgroup did an un-draft, and played 3 players free for all. I was close to winning until my opponents decided to intentionally trigger eachothers gotcha cards so they could keep stomping me with those cards. Felt a bit bad to lose to what felt like a well earned victory to just the opponents deciding to say some words
I totally agree with that. The first time I saw it I thought "This is not something fun, this just makes a normal casual game into a no speak game... this is horrible"
@@erik19borgnia "this just makes a normal casual game into a no speak game" If gotcha is turning your games into no speak games, you're not playing casual.
@@KillinTime2792 we were playing casual. But there are 2 problems: 1- nobody wants to just lose because of a word they say. So it's easier to speak less, but that ends escalating until you almost don't speak. It's not that we aren't playing casually, it's just simple logic. 2- the gotcha mechanic doesn't translate very well out of English. We speak spanish, so we're not really saying those words (because we are... speaking spanish while playing), and some words have multiple translations and some others doesn't even have a real translation (like 'Gotcha'). Making the whole rule again to play in another language is just annoying. And that wasn't even thought in the wizards playtesting, yea because english is the only language. Because of those, we just didn't played with Gotcha, making those cards kinda bad... but we had fun at least and could speak freely :)
@@KillinTime2792 Mark Rosewater himself has gone on record saying that that was the exact reason that he thinks "Gotcha" turned out to be a terrible mechanic. It does turn everyone's games into a no speak game.
I'm glad Mutate didn't end up here. It's really unpopular because of all its corner cases, but I think that flavorfully and mechanically its super cool and has tons of interesting design space.
Honrstly I wouldnt have nearly as much of a problem with it if a lot of those corner cases were so stupid strong. Its a shame, I also am a fan of it flavor wise
@@psy_p mutate is a Timmy's wet dream and was super fun to play with. The problem many people had was that the mechanic got overshadowed by everything else in the standard format. Mutate triggers and combining text boxes was a really interesting and fun idea. It certainly didn't do anything competitively but it tried it's best to be something unique and I think it succeeded.
The problem with Mutate is that it is exponentially parasitic. Either it does almost nothing or you can "go off." Any decent Mutate deck requires you to go all in on the mechanic. Mutate is not a splash mechanic.
I loved cumulative upkeep, especially when you go into the design space of 'positive' cumulative upkeep (Herald of Leshrac, Braid of Fire, etc...) So much interesting choices can come from it.
One of the best "cumulative upkeep" cards is probably Assemble the Legion, from one of the ravnica sets, which doesn't actually have the keyword, but does do the same thing - effectively giving you "cumulative upkeep - create a 1/1 soldier token".
I could see an interesting space for “rebels” where a similar effect acts like level cards in Yugioh or Evolution in Pokémon, where doing certain tasks permits you to tap for the next “evolution” in the card’s line
cumulative upkeep is such an interesting concept to me because it ranges so much in quality based on how far they stray from the mechanic itself i love braid of fire so much because of how it uses a negative as a really creative way to write a cards function
I also like cards like Herlad of Leshrac or Jotun Grunt. Cards that have positive upkeep, but is eventually impossible to pay. Very cool cards. There are many ways of making cumulative upkeep cards cool. There are many moats that are designed with cumulative upkeep as a way of not just stopping the game completely - just temporarily, like glacial chasm (you can't attack, and prevent all damage dealt to you). Stasis effects can be cool, but they should be a pause in the game, not a complete stop. Cumulative upkeep make sure it is only a pause. I also like the cards that give you some form of power, either on the end of the upkeep, or as long as you pay it, like Hearth of Bogardan or Ancestral Knowledge (or Illusions of Grandeur for that matter, even if I don't think many people played that card as intended).
Counter-rebels was my first competitive deck back in the day. Saving counterspell mana with the option of searching a creature if the opponent played nothing important was so powerful.
2:07 My friends and I in college made a cube where we inserted a few homebrewed cards. We challenged ourselves to take old card mechanics and try to make them more thematic to the cube we were making. I took Cumulative Upkeep and gave it a Vampire twist. For the black/red theme “Offering”. If you paid the “offering” cost to the creature you got an effect (it was usually a +1/0 counter or something akin to that). The idea was you as a Planeswalker made an offering to these vampires you called to battle, and as a result they got stronger at your detriment (not having mana or losing a resource to try and get ahead). There were about 5-6 creatures like this, and a lord that benefited from offerings… coincidentally it sounded like the story of Crimson Vow as house Volderen collected tithes from the humans for the wedding. But I digress 😂 It was a fun twist when it came to brewing. Not to be bias it was my favorite mechanic in the cube 😏🤣
Cumulative upkeep could be really good on permanents that are incredibly advantageous, like rhystic study, instead of using the sorcery speed or triggers once during your turn. I definitely agree on all the rest of them.
I’d actually love more hand-size matters finishers that are instants or sorceries, like Master The Way, Firestorm, Turbulent Dreams (that entire cycle) and Conflagrate. It would add another sub archetype to spell slinger strategies that just builds a huge hand rather than wheeling and storming off with Past in Flames.
Personally would like to see some more devoid stuff, I'd love q 5 colour devoid commander. If core to a set it would need a much different execution, but just a few more pieces for commander could have a fun little niche thing
Also, one of the mechanics I dislike the most is "Eminence". It's really baffling to me how one could design a mechanic specifically for a format that contradicts exactly what the format is supposed to be. It's like a free walker emblem that constantly benefits you and your opponents have no way to interact with it. In competitive commander formats (such as Duel Commander and Archon) almost all of them needed to be banned.
For me, the problem with Eminence is only when the ability is too strong. It's kind of an fix to the problem when your commander gets killed off a few times early in the game, and you never get to play it again.
@@Hakaze - problem is, it's in effect immediately when the game starts. I think your use case would be valid if it had requirements, like if, say, something had "Eminence 3", which didn't come into effect until the Commander had been cast 3 or more times from the command zone (to ramp up with command tax).
I think the number one worast mechanic in magic is "graveyard order matters.' It's not a nemd mechanic sure, but people know what you mean. Thing is, there is some cool design space there butt most magic players rearange their graveyards (and opponents graveyards) to make things easier. So if there are order maters cards legal at all in tghe format, they technically shouldn't do that. It's a mechanic so bad, the echo of it has negative impacts on all games in any format where the mechanic has a presence* *most people ignore it, and rearange their yard as much as they want - as they should!
@James Black That reminds me of Yugioh where at one point they made a “field placement matters” series of cards and no one liked them as most people rearranged their field on the fly to “what looked nice” mostly without even thinking about it despite it being illegal (just like reordering the grave is) but it only mattered to this series of cards no one really played anyways. That is until they came out with a new type of card itself that REALLY made field placement matter a LOT so suddenly everyone got to the mindset of no longer rearranging their field as it suddenly mattered a LOT and their opponents would call them out on it. They even made new cards that didn’t even call for this new card type that made field placement matter for their effects and worked out well.
I don't think epic should have been named, given it's five total cards, but I think those five cards are goofy enough and good enough at getting gears turning that they deserve to exist.
I have not watched the video yet, but I want to give some predictions in no particular order: - epic - sweep - wisdom (aka "don't play your cards so your cards get better") - banding - ante, if we count that - shroud - annihilator - fateseal - ripple /Edit: not the best hit rate
Nice guesses. :) Fateseal didn't make my lost because I was excluding Future Sight-only mechanics... for pure sanity. 😉 They aren't really mechanics in the sense I'm grading them on.
The omission of Companion seems surprising. The mechanic forces repetitive games where players consistently have access to this one card every game. They were originally super mega broken and even after being nerfed to cost 3 whole mana more still dominate every constructed format theyre legal in. The only thing that is supposed to be fun about them, the deckbuilding restriction, mostly doesn’t matter as the ones that see play have virtually no restriction at all in the decks that play them (jegantha, lurrus, kaheera, zirda, yorion). And to make matters even worse some of them even push out tons of cool cards from seeing any play. Were you considering playing Seasoned Pyromancer, Grist the Hunger Tide or Bloodbraid Elf in your Jund midrange deck in Modern? Oh well, you’re giving them all up for Lurrus because having an 8th card in your starting hand is too good to pass up! YUCK!
The fact that they didn't just ban all companions, and not a single one of the people at WoTC will admit how shitty and unfun companion is leads me to believe they think it's fun. Reminds me of Blizzard's legendary arrogance and complete disconnect from the playerbase and reality.
1. Protection - People constantly got it wrong in half the games it showed up in for 30 years, and it continued to show up a ton. It's not the worst impact overall but it is the worst design choice to have not replaced it 30 years ago with something that does what players think it does. Shroud and Hexproof are probably worse impacts but Protection is the one on this list because it was so obviously not designed right and it took so long for anybody to even try to fix it. 2. Companion - Inherently breaks Magic's most important reward mechanism - the variance that means the better deck or better player isn't always going to draw the same cards, so the other player has a chance to win. Only mechanic so fundamentally broken that it wasn't enough to ban the most troublesome cards, they had to hotfix the whole mechanic in paper. Which is crazy. 3. Islandhome - This mechanic was never fun on any card ever, but there was a common slot reserved for a Sea Serpent in most sets for a long time - perhaps Magic's longest commitment to something nobody ever enjoyed. The only mechanic where they printed it, keyworded it, printed it, then unkeyworded it, then printed it again, for no flavor-related reasons and nobody cared the whole time. If somebody Boils you or Armageddons you you are being punished enough - having your 5/5 defender for 6 also die is stupid. Oh also there are a bunch of creatures that sort of have it but don't have it exactly so you always have to check how it works on this particular mediocre old card that didn't used to be old but has always been mediocre. 4. Banding - Super complicated, breaks combat in limited and is rarely useful in constructed, just a codification of everything in early Magic rules that sucked. Also, similar to the next entry on the list it's rare that giving a mechanic a bunch of random variations that limit when you can use it made it better. 5. Landwalk - There are already plenty of kinds of evasion, and this one is insanely complex, was around forever, punishes players for decisions they can't change, and strangely seemed to target something you were more likely to have than your opponent. Especially bad because it punishes players for playing basic lands, which is something that never needs to happen. Think of this as "there are too many kinds of dumb conditional evasion that add nothing" spot - but this is the worst designed one and the mistake was repeated as it kept being put in sets. 6. Rhystic - Yeah I'll buy this one - or, rather, pay one for it. There are a few "if your opponent wants this card to do nothing they can just make it so" mechanics and they tend to be bad, but the way Rhystic came out as a mechanic was terrible. This is an idea that can occasionally be printed as a recurring effect on wacky build-around permanents, but putting it on a sorcery or instant is terrible and then printing that sorcery or instant at common is where the design is really off the rails. 7. Cascade - Cascade is the classic "this tests as fun the first few times you play it but if we actually print it, it is a disaster for the game" mechanic. It is a mechanic that relies on your deck being bad or silly on purpose or else the whole game and ultimately the whole format stops being fun for everybody - and the main way people have fun playing it is by breaking it, which shows that the way it was designed was bad. Like if people _only_ huff your whipped cream, it is probably not good whipped cream. In general it becomes tolerable if there's only 1 or 2 applications of it in a format at any given time, and if the format is powerful enough that people don't play it a lot, but that's also a bad mark for a mechanic that it is more fun the less opportunity people have to play it. 8. Bushido - A mechanic that discourages combat put on a bunch of cards in order to make them look "good at combat" that actually made them worse at attacking than if they didn't have the mechanic in the first place. There are a bunch of combat-themed mechanics that mostly came out before the Titans were printed in M11 that hadn't yet figured out that attacking is fun to do with creature decks - Banding is the one that misses the point of creatures the most, Bushido is second.. 9. Eminence - Only this far down on the list because it doesn't happen outside of its one format, but like with companion the enjoyment of playing Magic relies on the lucky chance that your opponent's cards won't always be there to help them and yours might show up - so anything that gives you a guarantee of an unconditional expected effect at the beginning of the game threatens to ruin the psychological reward system at the heart of the game, and this is a pretty bad offender. It just reflects that the reason people play TCGs instead of other games isn't well understood by whoever designed it - or that they made an error where they forgot. 10. Sweep - This might as well just do nothing. It is not higher on the list because you're never compelled to play it if you don't want to. The baffling thing is that it even has a keyword associated with it in the first place when it is just on a small amount of unfun junk only in one set. It makes sense that a bunch of the worst mechanics are in Alpha - design has improved over time. And you can hardly blame people way back in the day for what they tried before anybody tried anything. But they are still pretty lousy.
How about energy counters, a mechanic that is weak everywhere but the standard it was in, had no response to it in the sets it was in, ruined standard, and made WOTC make hour of devastation and amonkhet to hate it out of the format, which honestly just sucked. A weak mechanic that broke the standard
Really good point! In the vacuum of the block energy was fine but in the long run and overall design, this mechanic is just not useful whatsoever. A bit like a lot of weird block mechanics of old that was built on one another, Bushido comes to mind or other mechanics that we never saw again for obvious reasons (annihilate *cough*).
@@Morte_n It wasn’t even that it was “fine” it would’ve been fine if there was some way to deal with it. Like even new phyrexia had cards that interacted with poison counters, both adding and removing. Kaladesh totally decided to ignore that except for like one black sorcery. The standard was a disaster and completely warped the direction magic was going because wizards had to fix standard
While Rhystic is bad in an kitchen-table-hodgepodge situation, I do think it was a fine inclusion in Prophesy (though I haven't actually played any limited of it). At least on paper, having the choices of "Do I go for the bonuses of having no untapped lands, or do I leave mana open for Rhystic? Do I sacrifice my lands instead to get the bonuses without taking mana burn? Do I play a card that lets me sink the mana but also lets my opponent use it?" sounds like an interesting and unique time. Obviously that was probably a *bad* time as well, appealing to only a niche kind of player interest, but I'm glad it exists if only for an attempt. Lord knows it wouldn't have been made today.
Charge Across the Araba is in my Omnath Locus of Creation deck. It has done surprisingly much considering the presence of Sakura Tribe Scout and Wrenn and Seven in the deck.
I noticed a distinct lack of banding in your list, and now I'm excited for the basically all but confirmed future release of a banding-focused commander deck, complete with minor rules changes to make attacking work the same as blocking and errataing "bands with other" to just "banding" on the 5 cards and token that have them. It's a great mechanic that deserves a comeback, come on, let's go!
Sometime in the early 2000's Rosewater wrote a blog post saying that banding went away because even pros couldn't understand the nuances of the rule. I don't think it was really that complicated, and could be reengineered to require 2 or 3 sentences max to understand it. It's such a flavorful mechanic: little small creatures fighting in formation! I wish WOTC would fix it and bring it back.
@@craigtheng - I honestly think my change would fix that - like, all it does is make it so the owner of the band chooses how combat damage is assigned to their band, and if one creature in the band is blocked, they all become blocked. All the little caveats people come up with are answered by that explanation - "what if some creatures have evasion?" if a member of the band is blocked, all creatures are blocked. "What if a band blocks a band?" The owner of each band chooses how damage is assigned to their band. Ezpz. The only weird things are bands with other, which is irrelevant, and that the band construction is different on attacks and blocks. Instead of N+1 for attacking and 1+ for defense, making it 1+ for both would get rid of all that complexity.
@@KingBobXVI Yeah, originally White was the color of human armies, which is why they got most of the banding. It was supposed to reflect them using traditional military tactics. The only thing I'd do different from what you suggest, is that instead of it being N+1 or 1+, I'd make it 2N. So each Bander can bring a non-banding friend.
Honestly i like the concept with sweep now that with have alot of cards and mechanics that care about lands entering the battlefield + leting you play more than one land per turn. Also, if you have the mana for it, tap out all of your lands, play a sweep spell to return all of them and then play armagedon... with red moon out. Also Ashaya and creatures with etb effects would be a nice way of playing with sweep, if we had a sweep effect for green of course. I would like for some new sweep cards in this age of magic
I LOVE Cumulative Upkeep! I run 4x Ritual of Subdual in my main deck, but much more helpful when I drop an Eon Hub with it too, although it's never needed. Annihilate was worst! Or at least should have been errata-ed to how we use it in our LGS for EDH: Annihilate does't trigger unless the creature with Annihilate deals combat damage to the player it is attacking, and THEN it will trigger. If the creature with Annihilate gets blocked, no permanents get sacked.
So if hellbent is having no cards in hand should “heaven sent” be the ability a card gains for having seven or more cards in hand? Not that it would come up very often.
Devoid actually always seemed like a cool design to me, it may not have played well in the environment it was stuck in, but the concept of giving eldrazi coloured costs was an interesting and needed in the design space, and I like that they sort of mirror the colourless symbol eldrazi in the next set. The way they would play in environments with protection (rare as those may be) is a useful way for a deck not to just get destroyed. Case in point, in the Goblins VS Merfolk duel deck, master of waves had pro red, and one of the only solutions the goblins had to not just fold to it was Ghostflame. It’s not a very generally useful mechanic, but I’m glad the design was enacted in case it ever needs to come up again. Plus the frame looks really cool, so
*Gavin Verhey*: "Epic is the worst designed Magic mechanic." *Companion*: Didn't even wait to ask him to hold its beer. It's already drank the beer, five whiskey shots, snorted cocaine, got in it's car, and crashed it backwards into a K-mart.
I liked Banding, too. It isn't difficult to understand either. It can just get a little confusing when interacting with other mechanics. 'Bands with other' was pretty silly but I can't remember ever having played a card with that ability.
Enchant World, I remember once trying to play Nether Void with The Abyss already in play. It never occurred to me at the time that two cards with different names couldn't exist in play. It wasn't mentioned in the video but it would be one of my picks for this list based on my experience.
Legends was a set with very top down, flavorful design. It's also one of the worst balanced sets ever, with big, splashy cards, existing alongside Tobias Andrion. Enchant Worlds were intended to emulate being on another plane, and changing the rules in a symmetric manner. On this world, everything has haste, on that world, flying is reversed. I have no answer for Kroskan Falls, it's just weird. But you think that's bad, look up "global enchantments" and imagine trying to explain how a card that destroys a global enchantment is not limited to "Enchant World" cards, lol.
Day and night cycle for sure. Even if you find a card that is good that you want to use outside of a werewolf deck everyone at the table must suffer keeping track of a day and night cycle for that particular card and that’s just annoying
I even find Day/Night annoying on Arena, which keeps track of it. I originally saw this mechanic in an expansion of the deck-building game Ascension, and I decided to never play that expansion.
As a Commander/Pauper player, I cant really get behind the thought of the Rebels being a bad mechanic. First I think it is important to see some of the other cards aside from the tutor Rebels that have been developed and reprinted over the years (including Rebels in Time Spiral Remastered). I think the Rebels are a fascinating trip into the past and to see how some of their abilities can mesh with certain cards we play with today, especially in commander, it really makes for a unique gameplay experience. Second I feel with the amount of options that are out there in the world for deck building, if you build a deck to the meta standard instead of brewing, then any deck will be stale after a few games. I currently run a mono white Rebel commander and a Black/White Pauper Rebel tribal deck and honestly my commander deck is built in a way that utilizes tutoring, minor stack pieces and board wipes while buffing the Rebels for attacks. The fun part is Rebels are one of the few budget Tribes that can bounce back fairly easily even if its at a slower pace. Not looking for cEDH here but its fun to play.
I actually kind of like upkeep costs on enchantments. It makes thematic sense - upholding and maintaining the enchantment is taking a toll on you over time.
Yes, that was the lore behind it back in the day. But players don't like cards with negative effects. There is very little upkeep happening during the Upkeep phase in present day M:tG.
Was expecting to see Haunt or maybe Cipher but I get what he was going for. There have been tons of mechanics out there that are on the weaker side and just need a small tweak or support to get them to a better place. Forecast would be interesting if it was tied to the Suspend or Foretell mechanic. You would get an upkeep effect and then removed from your hand to be cast later. Sweep would be interesting if it was on a permanent. Also I do not see why Arcane hasn't been done again. It is a sub-type that literally can be put anywhere. It doesn't have to be tied to just spirits.
Glad to see someone finally mention Cipher. I've always liked it in theory and it is fun when it goes off(when an opponent neither has interaction or is agro) but it is so baffling underwhelming and convoluted most of the time. That said, it might just be a case where it didn't get enough support. IE more cards like invisible stalker(preferably in the same set) and more cards that mattered when you cast things or used the mechanic(IE Surveil). Funny enough I had more success running cipher in Azorius with double strikers, but that might just be me.
@@MCC17011 A friend actually added a few Cipher cards to her Vega the Watcher deck. Stuff is like that because it doesn't have a lot of support or didn't have the proper tools to success. Cipher is great if you can either double strike like what you did to attempt to proc it twice or unblockable to guaranty an activation both which there weren't a lot of in and around that block. I feel Haunt was just a bad mechanic because it relied heavy on boardstate and had middle effects at best.
Cumulative Upkeep can be a really wonderful design... when it's a positive one like Braid of Fire or the mentionned Herald of Leshrac. In my headcannon beneficial upkeep is intrinsically white. Other interesting possibilities are : - gaining exponentially more life each turn ; c.upkeep : gain x life where x is nbr of time counters - a time planeswalker(not Teferi flavorwise, more likely a student of him) with only strong minus abilities but c.upkeep : +1 loyalty - as a removal, put a time counter on target/s nonland permanent they gain c.upkeep : {1} - a cheap small creature with c.upkeep : put a +1/+1 on creature unless an opponent pay {1}
I like the flavor of epic spells. I would like to see something similar to them come back, just a big massive effect that is essentially your trump card. There are a lot of spells similar but ones that have a unifying theme between colors.
I think Devoid is pretty cool. It allows more dynamic space in colorless, and really hoses color hate cards. For a personal example, someone tried to hit me with an equipped Sword of Feast and Famine and I blocked with one of my devoid creatures.
Protection, Intimidate/Fear, & Landwalk will always be my holy trinity of bad mechanics cos they were all evergreen at some point. They all (generally) hate on specific colors which means they either do nothing or everything. Protection is a rules nightmare. I recall a particularly bad moment where my opponent conceded and packed up his cards because he thought he was dead on board but he actually could have blocked with an artifact creature. And landwalk makes you play in a paranoid way from turn one when you know its in the opponents deck.
Color hosers in general were bad. The designers saw the advantage of a one-color deck and wanted to give you strong incentive to play with multiple colors. I remember an early issue of the The Duelist (yes, I'm old) where there was an "advice column" where a guy who played all red was constantly being annoyed by his friend who played all blue. After some hilarious "advice" that would have made the game miserable for everyone, he was told that he and his friend were committing the "sin" of playing with only one color! Now remember, this was in a time when the format was very slow because color fixing was rare and hard to come by. If you played two colors, sometimes that meant you couldn't play at all. Dual lands and moxes were out of the question for most players, and cards that converted one mana to another were very inefficient. So consistency was really really strong. Today you can build a 5 color "good stuff" deck that is consistent in your sleep, so it's hard to imagine this scenario for some. A "white weenie" deck willed with strong one and two drops backed by Crusade was a damn nightmare, far too fast for most other decks. Even the rudeness of Flashfires wasn't going to save you because, by the time you had 4 mana, you were probably staring down 5/5 Savannah Lions. Not defending the mechanics mind you, just explaining that they weren't that great in execution, and had to become quite odious to do their job- Karma was nothing compared to Justice or Drought. Though what I feel they should have done is leaned into reasons to play two colors- the humble Sedge Troll was a great card that said "hey wouldn't it be fun to play black/red so you have a cheap 3/3?". But yeah, people complain about banding, I have no words for protection and landwalk. Throw those bums out.
@@Grimlock1979 Well when you consider the main complaint against Banding is that it functions differently on attack or defense (ie, it has two modes), let's see, Protection says, "can't be targeted by X, can't be blocked by X, can't take damage from X". So that's three modes, but wait, there's more, then I can't count the number of times I had to explain why Wrath of God kills a Black Knight, lol.
People might fight me over this, but i think hexproof was a mistake. I get that WotC wanted to get rid of shroud because people did not like that they could not target their own creatures. But that also prevented the problems hexproof now provides. Take Slipery Bogle decks for instance. Just slam your bogle on board and see your opponents internally scream in agony as you suit up your bogle with all the most broken auras and your opponents can't even interact with it. Also companions for obvious reasons.
Actually, it was more the fact that people consistently forgot/didn't know that shroud also affected you. So they changed the mechanic to one that worked like people expected it to.
I think Rhystic Study is the one good "Rhystic" card because, as you said, it doesn't feel like a Rhystic card. It fits fine as it plays like a tax but play patterns really hamper it. The fact that it's a "may" ability really sets it back as you're constantly forced to asked the question or miss out on drawing the card. Smothering Tithe helped fixed that problem as it removed the "may", you have to make the treasure unless your opponent pays the 2 so instead of your opponent getting sneaky and catches you slipping on asking the "do you pay" it halts the game until the trigger resolves where you either get the card or you don't.
Storm, Cascade, Companion, Dredge, and Infect all should have been on this list. They all lead to stupid and unfun gameplay in their own creative ways. Storm: Because watching you draw cards and generate mana for 10 mins only to either win instantly or concede is so fun. Cascade: Because casting anything for free is so fair and how the game was designed, especially when you cast huge suspend cards because they technically have no mana cost Companion: Because having an automatic extra card in hand from the start of the game that your opponent cant do anything about is so fair that even after it was nerfed its still warping formats Dredge: Because who needs a hand when you have 30 cards in your graveyard. Did you bring GY hate? No? Have fun losing Infect: Because now I only only have to to do half the damage I normally would to win. Oh? You play EDH? Good news! Now I only need to do a quarter of the usual damage to win!
I like Sweep and I think it could be fixed (and the design space opened by a lot) if it had a limit to the number of lands you can return, say 2 or 3. At the same time, make the cards have actual floor effects for when 0 lands are returned.
Honestly, in low-power formats, Sweep is pretty interesting. It's extremely skill-intensive to use well and you can easily screw yourself out of playing a game, but I've had a lot of good experiences with it as well. That said, I do think it belongs on this list.
How to fix Join Forces: Have it so only people who contribute can benefit from it. If you pay 0 into it, you don't get anything. But if you add to it, then you benefit from it. Would create some interesting play decisions where you might try and time the casting of your spell until a certain opponent is tapped out. And it "forces" them to contribute to it and make it a bigger effect if they want in on the action.
devoid is a fine mechanic, it works well with temple of eldrazi and stuff that cares about colorless stuff. it kept the "color" flavor of eldrazi without having them actually be a color
Hexproof. Only in that ward is so much better for gameplay that it really lays bare that interaction and choices should be prioritised (at least within individual standalone cards).
I agree. If that can’t be changed, maybe green creatures only get ward while blue and white get hexproof to be a “thick skin” vs “magical protection” flavour
@@bryceduyvewaardt8136 I prefer ward for all. It's been around for ages, just not called ward. EDIT: Maybe Gavin could do a video about non keyword abilities that were upgraded to keyword status.
I would point out that during Masques block, LD was more prevalent than it is nowadays (Stone Rain was legal), as were cards like Counterspell. Also, Rhystic appeared in Prophecy, which also had a suite of cards that were better if you had no untapped lands (eg Chimeric Idol), or cards that allowed your opponents to spend mana to make them less powerful (eg Glittering Lynx). Suddenly, if they countered a spell, they wouldn't have the mana to stop your Rhystic Tutor, for example. Or if they tapped out to enable Chimeric Idol, you could burn it away - or the opponent - with Rhystic Lightning. I think the mechanic was better than we gave it credit for, but I also think we didn't analyze cards and mechanics as thoroughly as we do nowadays.
Phyrexian Soulgorge is one of my favorite cards every design-wise. Getting a 8/8 so easily on the field gives you a huge powerspike for the turns it is out. And especially in a deck that is build around this card, it's a very fun risk and reward mechanic.
I think Energy deserves a spot on the list. It was a cool idea but poorly executed. There needed to be ways to interact with your opponent's energy counters. It was a resource that your opponent couldn't touch.
I mean... you can always proliferate MORE energy for them. The problem is that an inverted proliferate would be a terrible mechanic. You can build a deck around your stuff creating counters, you SHOULDN'T be building deck based around your opponent creating counters. Design like that is how you get Champions of Kamigawa.
I would like to hear a solution to Eminence, I see that once solution has been to never reprint cards with that mechanic, but It appears that Edgar and Ur-Dragon decks are so criminal in the commander format for getting value out of a card you never even need to play or that your opponents can never interact with.
Of course, but thats like saying how you can always get cards back from exile, you just gotta have Pull From Eternity, and no player is going to always have those cards in their deck just to stop 1 mistake by Wizards of the Coast.
Honestly, Cumulative Upkeep is one of my favorite mechanics. I like the Idea of a heavy downside like this to balance a otherwise extremly strong card. Of course there are many boring cards with it, but there is a lot of cool and interesting design space. There are some interesting cards right now (Glacial Chasm is one of my favorite Cards in the game, Wall of Shards was really interesting and powerful in Mystery Booster Draft when I played it, and I just want to play Jötun Giant in limited or constructed). I like the choise it brings to the table at the upkeep. Is this card woth keeping on the Table? What will I do if I keep it? What if I don't? How long can I keep it on the battlefield? What does that mean for my Play? How high of a cost is too high? What can i do to keep it on the Battlefield? Do I wan't to do that? And If you are Playing against a card with Cumulative Upkeep, you have to evaluate correctly how dangerous it is to let it be on the battlefield, until it dies naturally. Do I play this Removal? Or do I use it on a per se weaker card, that will stick around longer? Do I trade my creature against theirs, or do I just take the Damage, knowing, that I will take that damage only one or two times more? Can I do something to make the cost more difficult or unconvenient to pay? And yes, it is true, that it is a hard mechanic to use correctly, a new or unexperienced Player will struggle, some experienced Players struggle, but that is the element of Skill, that I like in magic. You missplayed because of Cummulative Upkeep? Why? And what can you learn from it? I like choices in general in Magic, and few other Mechanics bring as much choices to a game as Cumulative Upkeep.
Rhystic Cave was used for one purpose only, to have 8 Ports in your deck. A very frustrating scenario for an opponent was having 3 mana open with two of those lands being Rhystic Cave and Rishadan Port, you'd tap the Rhystic Cave for mana, let them decide to stop that mana and either cast a draw spell or other spell or just port you anyway, leaving often an island up for Brainstorm. You'd never ever use Rhystic Cave as a way to fix mana, it was always used as a trick card to get your opponent to waste mana during their upkeep and leave your opponent with less mana later.
I am very much going to disagree with devoid: Devoid is singlehandedly the reason why bfz block and the eldrazi tribe are my favorite block and tribe in magic.
So an effect that did literally nothing, was the reason you like bfz? Devoid could have not existed and the cards would have been the same. It was basically flavor text.
I have a Borborygmos Enraged commander deck that legitimately uses Barrel Down Sokenzan. Always fun to see people's reaction to that card. Also, Devoid should have been a supertype. That solves pretty much all its problems, and since no Devoid creature were legendary there was plenty of room on the type line.
See some of this is kinda dishonest when you look at things not listed like the obv ones like Companion. Cumultive upkeep isnt a bad design idea (as he literally shows good execution example) but the fact most dont give u a significant tempo gain in form of reallly increased stats etv. This is a mechanic that could be done properly for red/black cards today without much issue. Just use a proper powerbudget. Not naming Companion is a joke tho. There has never been a mechanic so laughable dogshit designed they had to errate it a few weeks in because it was literally ruining the game everywhere.
Same. I've been putting off trying MTGO for almost a year now, especially after Historic Brawl became legal. But this was the final push. Play penny dreadful. It's super dope!
Not even mentioning Companion, the mechanic that was so poorly thought out and so horrifically broken that it literally warped every format around it overnight after release? Man, talk about trying to sweep that one under the rug. Companion is genuinely the worst thing to happen to Magic since the Reserved List.
I think we don't talk about the mechanical time that was between Champions of Kamigawa and Shards of Alara enough. You have hits like Bloodthirst, Ninjutsu, Suspend, Persist and Convoke. You have the busted stuff like Dredge and Transmute and Delve. And you have the experimental stuff like Evoke, Conspire, Splice and Champion. And then you have the what were they thinking stuff like most of this list, Soulshift, Recover, Haunt, and Radiance. Definitely a time when abilities were really starting to go from 1-5 a block to 3-5 a set and it shows.
To everyone that is going to yell about companion not being on this list, I ask of you to differentiate the mechanic from the cards they are on. Companion is kinda cool, it’s just the design of some of them were too strong. At least that’s my opinion anyway, but to each their own.
It's a free card in your hand at the start of the game. An unearned advantage. I actually don't think that is interesting design space, especially for decks that luckily already have only one of each mana symbol per card (for example).
@@apjapki some of the companions are unearned card advantage yes, but in theory companions are not always that. Keruga for example is a card where there is no chance for a deck to accidentally accommodate, as such the card advantage is earned by making concessions in deck-building, ideally all companions would be this way but what happened, happened.
@@apjapki yeah I think the draw backs (in some cases) weren’t bad enough, but again that’s not the mechanic that’s bad, its the questionable implementation. I think earning that extra card by meeting certain restrictions is a very cool idea because the right restrictions encourage more creative deck building. Sure you get an extra card, but it’s up to you as a deck builder to utilize that extra card well enough to make up for the extra drawbacks you’ve given yourself.
Ignoring Bands With Other, I'm going to bring up Bushido. The "fixed" Rampage (well ok, some would say Elvish Berserker was the fixed Rampage), Bushido was designed to make your opponent cautious about attacking and blocking- a fundamental part of the game. That's bad enough, but most Bushido cards were costed as if Bushido was always on. And that really felt like you were paying in more than you got. A 4/4 for 6 that's sometimes a 6/6? Be still my heart!
I just thought of another one. Anything that exchanges control of cards. I don't know how many times we'd scoop after a game and someone's creature would end up in the blue player's deck thanks to Control Magic. Though I do have a funny story where I won a round at a tournament because of it. I was playing a deck that used Revelation for top deck shenanigans, and during my blue opponent's draw step, he flipped the top card of his deck, revealing....Serra Angel. "Is that supposed to be there?" Obnoxious Blue Player: "Uh...no..." "JUDGE!"
You missed annihilator. I swing you got no board, no way to protect yourself from it, I don't even have to touch you and that's not even mentioning how EASY it is to cast eldrazis with the truly incredible toolkit they have to ramp efficiently. Let me ask you if any colored permanents did the same an Eldrazi does, how broken it would be.
Well Eldrazi were supposed to be these giant Timmy cards that made you go "oh wow, imagine if I got this thing out, you'd be dead!" that you'd never see in a real game. And then Wizards foolishly gave us ways to get them out faster, or even cheat them into play with ease. Turn 2 Eldrazi is a way different beast than turn 7 Eldrazi!
I like the Cumulative Upkeep cards that have positive effects rather than costs to pay, effects like Braiding Fire for instance, but at that point it's not really sitting in the same design intention anymore and the term Cumulative Upkeep doesn't seem to accurately describe it anymore.
In regards to sweep, I see a world where Sweep can be used in combination with red impulse draw effects. Let's say; impulse decision 1R - Sweep: return mountains, exile cards equal to the mountains returned. something like that could be interesting to play with.
I'm glad someone in R&D agrees that Rhystic Study should have been a white card. It's a shame it can NEVER be colorshifted, since UW/x control decks having access to two copies would just be the worst.
I want to hear WOTC designers talk about Banding more, it’s hilarious.
There is design space there though. Mutate is sort of banding. Other cards let you assign blockers or damage.
The only reason banding is a bad mechanic is that's its really two different ones on attacks and blocks. Other than that, the fact it's confusing is really more a meme than truth
@@gryfyn71 and increases as the cards aren't seen
@@gryfyn71 banding is a joke until you're able to block everything with impunity
@@gryfyn71 - banding wasn't confusing at all. Banding was an agreement with all grouped creatuires on the attack that if one got stopped by a blocker, they all got stopped by a blocker, but the controller of the banded group could assign combat damage to their creatures however they wanted. Banding on the defense meant the same for damage assignment. It's the rules changes to damage assignment (requiring lethal damage be assigned before moving on to the next creature) that made banding confusing for some, but in the old days we understood it perfectly and used it to great effect.
I'll defend Devoid, just because I think its blandness means it's totally inoffensive. Sure it doesn't actually do much of anything, but the way I see it, that's a failure to make enough things that interact with devoid cards. I guess I just have a soft spot for it, because "colored mana cost but not actually colored" communicated well that these are bizarre, otherworldly creatures.
I have to agree with you here, I personally see devoid as more of a cool flavor mechanic than anything
Exactly, I also loved that they introduced Colourless mana but really dislike they have not explored Wastes/Colourless mana further. Colourless mana symbols could be used to balance artifacts and add more to deck creation as you would now need some colourless mana sources for certain powerful artifacts.
@@mr.mammuthusafricanavus8299 I hadn't thought about using colouless mana for artifacts, that would be pretty cool. I personally feel like they limited themselves a fair bit by designing colourless mana as an eldrazi mechanic. I guess since Emrakul is still around there is always a chance for its return
@@dragonbreath4638 Yeah, I couldn't help but compare Wastes to what happened in the Brothers War and they literally scoured the land for resources to make their artifacts. WOTC also had this article about the the 6th colour all along being Colourless when they released that set years ago. I really thought they would use the colourless mana symbol in the future on really powerful artifacts, like artifacts that take a lot of resources to create hence the Wastes, ie: Mining/Industrial. I think they could bring back Wastes as an Actual Basic Landtype, not a psuedo Basic Landtype on planes like Kaladesh, Esper, any plane that has lots of artifacts because they need Industry to make those artifacts :P
Devoid was also in the same standard format as Ultimate Price, which was a staple that Devoid nullified.
There's something contextual about Devoid that nobody seems to notice.
At the beginning of Magic, color was an important attribute of a card in play. Cards like Red Elemental Blast or the Circles of Protection or the protection ability punished cards for their color, color "hosers". Over the years, the emphasis decreased.
When Battle of Zendikar was printed, there were no color hosers in the set. For most of Battle's time in standard, the only hosers were a few from Dragons of Tarkir, and I think by the time the set left standard there were no cards whose effects cared about any specific color.
Ghostfire was interesting because it could get around things that cared about red. In a world where nothing cares about color, just about colorless, removing the color isn't as interesting.
It played like Eldrazi tribal, so it just should have been Eldrazi tribal.
Of course making Eldrazi small and medium creatures was a mistake on its own anyway. 🤷🏿
I feel like companion should at least have been an honorable mention since it was so broken that they had to change how it worked and the most broken companions are still pretty broken even after the change
Any mechanic that caused one of its cards to get banned in a format the moment the card was announced should definitely have been on the list.
Lurrus is the only card to ever be banned in vintage for being too good, and I think that’s hilarious.
Absolutely agree. Companion, as it was originally released before being retconned, fundamentally broke the game of Magic.
Yeah. Seems like a glaring omission. How many mechanics from this list were so broken that WotC felt it necessary to errata the meaning of the keyword?
Companion may have been intended to encourage unconventional deckbuilding, but it had the exact opposite effect. It was basically “Fit your deck into this pigeonhole so you can start the game with this 8th card in hand, or play a subpar deck.”
Bruh, fire MTG is designed to be broken. It sells. You can't call something that works as intended bad. It did it's job.
I really wish devoid was more of a thing. I'm red/green colorblind. I wanted to make a red/green Devoid deck. A testament to my inability to see those colors. The premise is cathartic to me. Unfortunately, there just isn't enough to make a commander deck. And that breaks my heart.
You could make a red devoid or green devoid deck by itself and tell people it's red green devoid 😂
@@ximbabwe0228 I mean technically every red/green deck is devoid without the word in the text lol Idk I just loved the idea others see it as the color and then they are in my world. A world devoid of the thing they appreciate most hahahaha
@@ericmorrison278 it's a pretty cool idea. But don't lose hope, not all Eldrazi are dead. Like Phyrexians I feel an eventual dreaded return.
I am also red-green colorblind and I love this idea.
@@daverapp Hey thanks man!!! We gotta get WotC to recognize our plight!! #BringDevoidBack lol
On the subject of the color indicator, I would like to make a suggestion
Several friends of mine are visually impaired, and have difficulty differentiating the colors on the indicator.
Is there any possibility that it could also include a shape into it, like how hybrid mana symbols do?
This! That's such a good point!
That's why they have mana symbols.
That's not a bad idea honestly, but I'm not sure it would work with multicolored cards. The color indicator space is already pretty small.
@@jacobd1984 I definitely think the color indicator could use some enlarging as well!
@@RiotontheRadioMSCR Color indicators are only included on cards that don't have Mana Symbols
"Wouldn't mind it if rhystic study was white" Can we get a color shifted version? 👀
Esper sentinel is kinda close lol
I can see it with the "once per turn" technology, maybe even with cmc 2 instead of 3.
Didn't he literally say it was a bad design?
@@elesh.n Gavin said the others in the cycle are bad designs because an opponent will just pay the mana to counter the spell, so they are worthless cards. Rhystic is good, but annoying since you always have to ask, but he said he wouldnt mind it if it was white instead of blue
Plz no azorios doesnt need 2 of these 😭
When I started playing commander with my friends I had rhystic cave in my deck, my thought process was "I'm sure they won't pay for it most of the time, since we're playing for fun", but they paid for it every single time.
Disappointing
Yeah but in this case ur just applying an insane mana deny to everyone, and the enchant still get a great value.
@@Cezako "Rhystic Cave"
@@FedericoSavoldi oh your right, my bad xD
So if it's even in 1v1, it's not in commender multi.
I think another mechanic that should get a dishonorable mention is Ante, because there is *no* mechanic in the game that would make me upset faster than "I own your card now", but the developers know this and every Ante card is banned. One mechanic that I do think should have been on this list is Eminence. While there were only four cards ever made with the mechanic (five if you count Oloro), it has the Forecast problem of doing a thing every turn for no mana cost, but can't even be beaten with Discard. There is no possible way you can interact with it.
this
@@karlsmink - it's a combination of both. Ante didn't get noticed and compared to gambling laws until kids started coming home from sealed deck events crying that they opened a $10 card but lost it in the ante. I was a judge at the time and saw it happen and had to deal with angry parents more than once.
Ante wasn’t so much a mechanic as a game rule that got explicitly mentioned in cards. When the rule went, the cards went.
@@karlsmink both. I never played with ante, but it sounds absolutely MISERABLE, and miserable players don’t play the game for long.
Ante was a great idea, the game just went in a wildly different direction than expected. It was designed for a world where everyone bought the equivalent of like 6 boosters packs per set and was like "that's a sufficient number of cards to own." and cards didn't vary in value between 25 cents and 10k dollars.
I think Annihilator is one of the worst. It basically says 'If I swing, I win', but in the least fun way possible. Maybe a player comes back from annihilator 1, but sacc-ing 4 permanents is generally a couple miserable turns from game over.
I agree. I use it in commander because my play group uses "noob combos" you know the ones, play 2 cards and so some kind of infinite combo that doesnt interact with the rest of the game... I like making them swing the sword that does their own tricks in
While I agree, I think the reason it didn't make the list is that it 1) Drastically impacts the board state, progressing the game, and 2) Is AT LEAST fun for the controlling player. I don't think the fun for the controller outweighs the feelsbad for the opponent, but the majority of the other mechanics on the list either make the game deterministic or stall the game out.
Iono, with how rampant token decks are in edh (or any sac themed decks really) I cut most of my annihilator cards.
If anything I feel infect is more of the "if I swing, I win" kind of mechanic. With Hella less counterplay
Tbf all mechanics are designed for limited. Also annihilator is good flavor
Turns out Saviors of Kamigawa was just terribly designed in general, who knew?
Epic, Sweep, Hand-Size Matters in colors with no card draw... ugh.
The fact they also added Channel in a block where “casting matters” says a lot.
I just wonder when or if they ever noticed the nonbo with Spiritcraft?
@@channeling764 Spiritcraft! That's sadly horrible: it's bounded to very weak creatures and requires you to discard / mill yourself in order to have the appropriate material to do some weird combo
@@marcoottina654 Spiritcraft was actually pretty cool mechanic but it was attached to very weak creatures. I wish they would’ve pushed it more. Cast triggers make very interesting play patterns.
Yeah drafting Kamigawa was a blast because you actually got to use some of these weird, kinda bad mechanics.
OG Kamigawa was such a weird block. Mostly underpowered but with some real nuclear bomb cards in it (just off the top of the dome, Gifts Ungiven, Sensei's Divining Top, Jitte, Asuza, Kiki-Jiki, Pithing Needle, Forbidden Orchard).
Most magic sets are just awful. I guess they needed the reserve list to make them valuable. It’s pathetic. In modern times the reserve is just the icing on an enormous problem.
I'm really surprised that Companion wasn't number 1. The fact that it still warps the meta of Pioneer, Modern, and every other format they are legal in even after the nerf.
MaRo would never let his baby be disparaged on this show. :P
Definitely not warping historic.
100%. The mechanic is fundamentally broken. It leads to repetitive gameplay patterns, breaks the rule of only 8 starting 'hand' cards, and divides the community in players who are allowed to play a companion and others that are not allowed to play one (imagine if half of the commander players were allowed to play commander while the other half is not allowed - this is the absurd situation we are in).
I hope for the love of the game that they will ban the whole mechanic as fast as possible among all competitive formats. (edit: grammar)
To be fair, 90% of the problem is specifically Lurrus. When your design has to be banned in Vintage for power reasons (at least until the nerf), that's not just a red flag, that's a 5-alarm fire.
Honorable mention to Lutri, the Spellchaser for having a nonfactor deckbuilding restriction in Commander, leading to its banning before it was even released.
While yes Lurrus is still a major problem in Modern and Pioneer. Don't forget Yorion is still a force in those formats plus Legacy and Zirda also got banned from Legacy along with Lurrus and was considered to be on the chopping block for Vintage before the nerf.
Jegantha also sees quite a bit of play in multiple formats. Although, I do think Jegantha and Kaheera are less egregious than Lurrus and Yorion and certainly aren't ban worthy material. Unlike the other two.
However, as a whole the mechanic imo is probably the worst designed, not because it was bad, which seemed to be Gavin's criteria, but because how broken it was and even with the nerf. There's still for the most part two problematic cards in Lurrus and Yorion. The mechanic has also created the dynamic of those decks that can run Companion vs the decks that don't run Companion
I like the cumulative upkeep mechanic and would enjoy seeing it as a part of a new set. That said, I think the cost that require you to pay mana are mostly unfun und simply not interesting, but there is allot of fun and interesting design space for non-mana cumulative upkeep costs.
There's less of these than you would think. The cost on Jotun Grunt is cards from your graveyard, maybe you could do one that affects the opponent and now it's a positive instead of a negative but that's still just one card. You could do one that makes the opponent draw cards and maybe punishes them for doing so but this would probably be a bad card unless it was really abused. Grand total there are maybe 10-20 interesting ways to phrase use of a non mana resource and most of them are super feels bad like discarding cards or sacrificing permanents, the cards would need to be stupidly powerful to see any play.
@@rubentadeogarcia5424 Jotun Grunt already affects other players.
Some of them are really good, mystic remora is a better stronger rystic study for 1 blue and cumulative upkeep 1, but opponent have to pay 4 by card he draw so no one is rly able to pay (and they don't want too) . This is so unbalanced in commander multi, with 3 opponent : 6 cards draw for 2 mana in 2 turn... And that if they don't draw additional cards btw
Braiding Fire is an enchantment whose effect is literally just a cumulative upkeep. Namely, you put a red in your mana pool. It sounds OP but remember that your pool empties as phases end so once you get to untap, all that red goes away. It’s better than it used to be though as it came out when mana burn was a rule. Essentially your pool emptied at the end of each turn instead but you also took damage equal to the amount of mana lost this way so the design idea is literally playing with fire lol. I’m very surprised that it didn’t get a mention in this video as it’s also an iconic cumulative upkeep card
@@MrZer093 Braiding fire is probably the coolest cumulative upkeep card, especially when mana burn was a thing. I don't care if it is good, but it is jsut really cool. You get all of this power, and more and more of it. But eventually you just burn up because you aren't able to spend all that power. It's great.
Ripple could have been interesting if it had the Rebound clause of "if you cast this from your hand."
Then it would be A: consistently underpowered / useless / unplayable and B: also super boring. As it was said in the video, the way to save the mechanic would be to make the card go to your hand instead of casting it for free. That way you could still ripple through the deck but it would cost you.
"Are you gonna pay for that"
Is hilarious when you have more than one rhystic study or smothering tithe around the table .
Definitely agreed on ripple. Aside from thrumming stone, I don't even think I've even heard of the other cards.
Thank you for sharing how wonderful the Weatherlight was, a really touching tribute to Capsize.
I'm surprised we didn't include Phyrexian Mana, just because it actually just breaks how mana works in general. But I think you took the list a better way.
Also, I literally didn't know Sweep existed, so I'm gonna get my friend with one of those cards later.
Before watching: Eminence.
You are rewarded for doing nothing and it is almost impossible to interact with it.
Other than 10 and 9, I agree with the things on this list.
10. Disagree with Cumulative Upkeep being on the list. 💯 Agree that non-mana payment are interesting. Those are creative and have several fantastic cards.
9. I see most buyback as the payoff of control/combo. Sure, in limited they are brutal, but their eternal impact is quite different.
There are tons of cool cumulative upkeep cards. Of course, just creatures with a cumulative upkeep aren't fun. But cards like elephant grass, illusions of grandeur and glacial chasm are interesting defensive tools. Or Cold snap is a cool anti snow tech card. Braid of fire was immensely cool with mana burn (I do not comment on power, only coolness), but is still an ok design without it. Decompose is exactly the kind of removal you'd expect from green. Ancestral knowledge asks you to win the game in short order - or lose to the cumulative upkeep.
When it becomes an actual tradeoff worth considering or a temporary stasis-like effect, it can be a very cool mechanic.
I mean, Herald of Leshrac is a very cool demon. It is powerful, and your own power grows with his age. But his greed is also his downfall, resetting a lot of the pwoer you got from him.
Cumulative upkeep i think it's fine. It's like a saga, a temporal enchantment for a few turns.
@@Taeerom - Since this conversation went nowhere, I can reply: Even with mana burn, Braid of fire was still really good because there were many mana sinks, not the least of which was literally creatures with Fire Breathing.
Similarly, Harold of Leshrac is an especially brutal Stax finisher. It just happens to be outclassed for efficiency more than anything.
I actually agree with gotcha on this list. I remember one time my playgroup did an un-draft, and played 3 players free for all. I was close to winning until my opponents decided to intentionally trigger eachothers gotcha cards so they could keep stomping me with those cards.
Felt a bit bad to lose to what felt like a well earned victory to just the opponents deciding to say some words
I totally agree with that. The first time I saw it I thought "This is not something fun, this just makes a normal casual game into a no speak game... this is horrible"
@@erik19borgnia "this just makes a normal casual game into a no speak game"
If gotcha is turning your games into no speak games, you're not playing casual.
@@KillinTime2792 we were playing casual. But there are 2 problems:
1- nobody wants to just lose because of a word they say. So it's easier to speak less, but that ends escalating until you almost don't speak. It's not that we aren't playing casually, it's just simple logic.
2- the gotcha mechanic doesn't translate very well out of English. We speak spanish, so we're not really saying those words (because we are... speaking spanish while playing), and some words have multiple translations and some others doesn't even have a real translation (like 'Gotcha'). Making the whole rule again to play in another language is just annoying. And that wasn't even thought in the wizards playtesting, yea because english is the only language.
Because of those, we just didn't played with Gotcha, making those cards kinda bad... but we had fun at least and could speak freely :)
@@KillinTime2792 Mark Rosewater himself has gone on record saying that that was the exact reason that he thinks "Gotcha" turned out to be a terrible mechanic. It does turn everyone's games into a no speak game.
I'm glad Mutate didn't end up here. It's really unpopular because of all its corner cases, but I think that flavorfully and mechanically its super cool and has tons of interesting design space.
Honrstly I wouldnt have nearly as much of a problem with it if a lot of those corner cases were so stupid strong. Its a shame, I also am a fan of it flavor wise
Flavorfully it is a fucking failure bro... And mechanically mutate does basically nothing and literally nothing unique.
@@psy_p mutate is a Timmy's wet dream and was super fun to play with. The problem many people had was that the mechanic got overshadowed by everything else in the standard format. Mutate triggers and combining text boxes was a really interesting and fun idea. It certainly didn't do anything competitively but it tried it's best to be something unique and I think it succeeded.
I love Mutate. It's one of my all time favorite mechanics.
The problem with Mutate is that it is exponentially parasitic. Either it does almost nothing or you can "go off." Any decent Mutate deck requires you to go all in on the mechanic. Mutate is not a splash mechanic.
I loved cumulative upkeep, especially when you go into the design space of 'positive' cumulative upkeep (Herald of Leshrac, Braid of Fire, etc...) So much interesting choices can come from it.
One of the best "cumulative upkeep" cards is probably Assemble the Legion, from one of the ravnica sets, which doesn't actually have the keyword, but does do the same thing - effectively giving you "cumulative upkeep - create a 1/1 soldier token".
I still use braid of fire as they got rid of its downside.
I could see an interesting space for “rebels” where a similar effect acts like level cards in Yugioh or Evolution in Pokémon, where doing certain tasks permits you to tap for the next “evolution” in the card’s line
Like levelers from Zendikar or Figure of Destiny from Lorwyn?
@@mikki429 similar vibe- mix that with mutate and yeah you’ve got it!
cumulative upkeep is such an interesting concept to me because it ranges so much in quality based on how far they stray from the mechanic itself
i love braid of fire so much because of how it uses a negative as a really creative way to write a cards function
I also like cards like Herlad of Leshrac or Jotun Grunt. Cards that have positive upkeep, but is eventually impossible to pay. Very cool cards.
There are many ways of making cumulative upkeep cards cool. There are many moats that are designed with cumulative upkeep as a way of not just stopping the game completely - just temporarily, like glacial chasm (you can't attack, and prevent all damage dealt to you). Stasis effects can be cool, but they should be a pause in the game, not a complete stop. Cumulative upkeep make sure it is only a pause.
I also like the cards that give you some form of power, either on the end of the upkeep, or as long as you pay it, like Hearth of Bogardan or Ancestral Knowledge (or Illusions of Grandeur for that matter, even if I don't think many people played that card as intended).
Counter-rebels was my first competitive deck back in the day. Saving counterspell mana with the option of searching a creature if the opponent played nothing important was so powerful.
2:07
My friends and I in college made a cube where we inserted a few homebrewed cards. We challenged ourselves to take old card mechanics and try to make them more thematic to the cube we were making.
I took Cumulative Upkeep and gave it a Vampire twist. For the black/red theme “Offering”. If you paid the “offering” cost to the creature you got an effect (it was usually a +1/0 counter or something akin to that). The idea was you as a Planeswalker made an offering to these vampires you called to battle, and as a result they got stronger at your detriment (not having mana or losing a resource to try and get ahead).
There were about 5-6 creatures like this, and a lord that benefited from offerings… coincidentally it sounded like the story of Crimson Vow as house Volderen collected tithes from the humans for the wedding. But I digress 😂
It was a fun twist when it came to brewing. Not to be bias it was my favorite mechanic in the cube 😏🤣
Cumulative upkeep could be really good on permanents that are incredibly advantageous, like rhystic study, instead of using the sorcery speed or triggers once during your turn.
I definitely agree on all the rest of them.
Cumulative upkeep is on the original rhystic study, it's called Mystic Remora from iceage
You meant Mystic Remora? xD
Actually I meant rhystic study should've had a cumulative upkeep. And then change it to pay the x.
I’d actually love more hand-size matters finishers that are instants or sorceries, like Master The Way, Firestorm, Turbulent Dreams (that entire cycle) and Conflagrate. It would add another sub archetype to spell slinger strategies that just builds a huge hand rather than wheeling and storming off with Past in Flames.
Sweep is a mechanic that has only one problem in its design, the lack of representation in green. It would be a landfall staple by now.
Surprised companion didn’t make it
Personally would like to see some more devoid stuff, I'd love q 5 colour devoid commander. If core to a set it would need a much different execution, but just a few more pieces for commander could have a fun little niche thing
Also, one of the mechanics I dislike the most is "Eminence". It's really baffling to me how one could design a mechanic specifically for a format that contradicts exactly what the format is supposed to be. It's like a free walker emblem that constantly benefits you and your opponents have no way to interact with it.
In competitive commander formats (such as Duel Commander and Archon) almost all of them needed to be banned.
True
For me, the problem with Eminence is only when the ability is too strong. It's kind of an fix to the problem when your commander gets killed off a few times early in the game, and you never get to play it again.
@@Hakaze - problem is, it's in effect immediately when the game starts. I think your use case would be valid if it had requirements, like if, say, something had "Eminence 3", which didn't come into effect until the Commander had been cast 3 or more times from the command zone (to ramp up with command tax).
I think the number one worast mechanic in magic is "graveyard order matters.' It's not a nemd mechanic sure, but people know what you mean. Thing is, there is some cool design space there butt most magic players rearange their graveyards (and opponents graveyards) to make things easier. So if there are order maters cards legal at all in tghe format, they technically shouldn't do that. It's a mechanic so bad, the echo of it has negative impacts on all games in any format where the mechanic has a presence*
*most people ignore it, and rearange their yard as much as they want - as they should!
@James Black That reminds me of Yugioh where at one point they made a “field placement matters” series of cards and no one liked them as most people rearranged their field on the fly to “what looked nice” mostly without even thinking about it despite it being illegal (just like reordering the grave is) but it only mattered to this series of cards no one really played anyways.
That is until they came out with a new type of card itself that REALLY made field placement matter a LOT so suddenly everyone got to the mindset of no longer rearranging their field as it suddenly mattered a LOT and their opponents would call them out on it. They even made new cards that didn’t even call for this new card type that made field placement matter for their effects and worked out well.
I don't think epic should have been named, given it's five total cards, but I think those five cards are goofy enough and good enough at getting gears turning that they deserve to exist.
They should’ve been Arcane. So at least you could’ve spliced onto the them and the copies in future turns.
Just wait until someone finds a way to combine Epic and Donate...
I really like this content, it’s interesting to look back on mechanics! More videos like this would be cool!
I definitely expect to do more!!
I have not watched the video yet, but I want to give some predictions in no particular order:
- epic
- sweep
- wisdom (aka "don't play your cards so your cards get better")
- banding
- ante, if we count that
- shroud
- annihilator
- fateseal
- ripple
/Edit: not the best hit rate
Nice guesses. :) Fateseal didn't make my lost because I was excluding Future Sight-only mechanics... for pure sanity. 😉 They aren't really mechanics in the sense I'm grading them on.
@@GoodMorningMagic very fair, altho the best Fateseal card is Jace the Mind Sculptor
The omission of Companion seems surprising. The mechanic forces repetitive games where players consistently have access to this one card every game. They were originally super mega broken and even after being nerfed to cost 3 whole mana more still dominate every constructed format theyre legal in. The only thing that is supposed to be fun about them, the deckbuilding restriction, mostly doesn’t matter as the ones that see play have virtually no restriction at all in the decks that play them (jegantha, lurrus, kaheera, zirda, yorion). And to make matters even worse some of them even push out tons of cool cards from seeing any play. Were you considering playing Seasoned Pyromancer, Grist the Hunger Tide or Bloodbraid Elf in your Jund midrange deck in Modern? Oh well, you’re giving them all up for Lurrus because having an 8th card in your starting hand is too good to pass up!
YUCK!
Lmao jund plays lurrus now?
The fact that they didn't just ban all companions, and not a single one of the people at WoTC will admit how shitty and unfun companion is leads me to believe they think it's fun. Reminds me of Blizzard's legendary arrogance and complete disconnect from the playerbase and reality.
8:20
I love how the captions show this as "A whopping 4 magikarps" instead of "magic cards" 😅
Hello Nizzahon
He is everywhere now
1. Protection - People constantly got it wrong in half the games it showed up in for 30 years, and it continued to show up a ton. It's not the worst impact overall but it is the worst design choice to have not replaced it 30 years ago with something that does what players think it does. Shroud and Hexproof are probably worse impacts but Protection is the one on this list because it was so obviously not designed right and it took so long for anybody to even try to fix it.
2. Companion - Inherently breaks Magic's most important reward mechanism - the variance that means the better deck or better player isn't always going to draw the same cards, so the other player has a chance to win. Only mechanic so fundamentally broken that it wasn't enough to ban the most troublesome cards, they had to hotfix the whole mechanic in paper. Which is crazy.
3. Islandhome - This mechanic was never fun on any card ever, but there was a common slot reserved for a Sea Serpent in most sets for a long time - perhaps Magic's longest commitment to something nobody ever enjoyed. The only mechanic where they printed it, keyworded it, printed it, then unkeyworded it, then printed it again, for no flavor-related reasons and nobody cared the whole time. If somebody Boils you or Armageddons you you are being punished enough - having your 5/5 defender for 6 also die is stupid. Oh also there are a bunch of creatures that sort of have it but don't have it exactly so you always have to check how it works on this particular mediocre old card that didn't used to be old but has always been mediocre.
4. Banding - Super complicated, breaks combat in limited and is rarely useful in constructed, just a codification of everything in early Magic rules that sucked. Also, similar to the next entry on the list it's rare that giving a mechanic a bunch of random variations that limit when you can use it made it better.
5. Landwalk - There are already plenty of kinds of evasion, and this one is insanely complex, was around forever, punishes players for decisions they can't change, and strangely seemed to target something you were more likely to have than your opponent. Especially bad because it punishes players for playing basic lands, which is something that never needs to happen. Think of this as "there are too many kinds of dumb conditional evasion that add nothing" spot - but this is the worst designed one and the mistake was repeated as it kept being put in sets.
6. Rhystic - Yeah I'll buy this one - or, rather, pay one for it. There are a few "if your opponent wants this card to do nothing they can just make it so" mechanics and they tend to be bad, but the way Rhystic came out as a mechanic was terrible. This is an idea that can occasionally be printed as a recurring effect on wacky build-around permanents, but putting it on a sorcery or instant is terrible and then printing that sorcery or instant at common is where the design is really off the rails.
7. Cascade - Cascade is the classic "this tests as fun the first few times you play it but if we actually print it, it is a disaster for the game" mechanic. It is a mechanic that relies on your deck being bad or silly on purpose or else the whole game and ultimately the whole format stops being fun for everybody - and the main way people have fun playing it is by breaking it, which shows that the way it was designed was bad. Like if people _only_ huff your whipped cream, it is probably not good whipped cream. In general it becomes tolerable if there's only 1 or 2 applications of it in a format at any given time, and if the format is powerful enough that people don't play it a lot, but that's also a bad mark for a mechanic that it is more fun the less opportunity people have to play it.
8. Bushido - A mechanic that discourages combat put on a bunch of cards in order to make them look "good at combat" that actually made them worse at attacking than if they didn't have the mechanic in the first place. There are a bunch of combat-themed mechanics that mostly came out before the Titans were printed in M11 that hadn't yet figured out that attacking is fun to do with creature decks - Banding is the one that misses the point of creatures the most, Bushido is second..
9. Eminence - Only this far down on the list because it doesn't happen outside of its one format, but like with companion the enjoyment of playing Magic relies on the lucky chance that your opponent's cards won't always be there to help them and yours might show up - so anything that gives you a guarantee of an unconditional expected effect at the beginning of the game threatens to ruin the psychological reward system at the heart of the game, and this is a pretty bad offender. It just reflects that the reason people play TCGs instead of other games isn't well understood by whoever designed it - or that they made an error where they forgot.
10. Sweep - This might as well just do nothing. It is not higher on the list because you're never compelled to play it if you don't want to. The baffling thing is that it even has a keyword associated with it in the first place when it is just on a small amount of unfun junk only in one set.
It makes sense that a bunch of the worst mechanics are in Alpha - design has improved over time. And you can hardly blame people way back in the day for what they tried before anybody tried anything. But they are still pretty lousy.
I think epic is worse than sweep imo
How about energy counters, a mechanic that is weak everywhere but the standard it was in, had no response to it in the sets it was in, ruined standard, and made WOTC make hour of devastation and amonkhet to hate it out of the format, which honestly just sucked. A weak mechanic that broke the standard
Energy is such trash
Really good point!
In the vacuum of the block energy was fine but in the long run and overall design, this mechanic is just not useful whatsoever.
A bit like a lot of weird block mechanics of old that was built on one another, Bushido comes to mind or other mechanics that we never saw again for obvious reasons (annihilate *cough*).
@@Morte_n It wasn’t even that it was “fine” it would’ve been fine if there was some way to deal with it. Like even new phyrexia had cards that interacted with poison counters, both adding and removing. Kaladesh totally decided to ignore that except for like one black sorcery. The standard was a disaster and completely warped the direction magic was going because wizards had to fix standard
While Rhystic is bad in an kitchen-table-hodgepodge situation, I do think it was a fine inclusion in Prophesy (though I haven't actually played any limited of it). At least on paper, having the choices of "Do I go for the bonuses of having no untapped lands, or do I leave mana open for Rhystic? Do I sacrifice my lands instead to get the bonuses without taking mana burn? Do I play a card that lets me sink the mana but also lets my opponent use it?" sounds like an interesting and unique time.
Obviously that was probably a *bad* time as well, appealing to only a niche kind of player interest, but I'm glad it exists if only for an attempt. Lord knows it wouldn't have been made today.
Charge Across the Araba is in my Omnath Locus of Creation deck. It has done surprisingly much considering the presence of Sakura Tribe Scout and Wrenn and Seven in the deck.
I noticed a distinct lack of banding in your list, and now I'm excited for the basically all but confirmed future release of a banding-focused commander deck, complete with minor rules changes to make attacking work the same as blocking and errataing "bands with other" to just "banding" on the 5 cards and token that have them.
It's a great mechanic that deserves a comeback, come on, let's go!
Sometime in the early 2000's Rosewater wrote a blog post saying that banding went away because even pros couldn't understand the nuances of the rule. I don't think it was really that complicated, and could be reengineered to require 2 or 3 sentences max to understand it. It's such a flavorful mechanic: little small creatures fighting in formation! I wish WOTC would fix it and bring it back.
@@craigtheng - I honestly think my change would fix that - like, all it does is make it so the owner of the band chooses how combat damage is assigned to their band, and if one creature in the band is blocked, they all become blocked. All the little caveats people come up with are answered by that explanation - "what if some creatures have evasion?" if a member of the band is blocked, all creatures are blocked. "What if a band blocks a band?" The owner of each band chooses how damage is assigned to their band. Ezpz.
The only weird things are bands with other, which is irrelevant, and that the band construction is different on attacks and blocks. Instead of N+1 for attacking and 1+ for defense, making it 1+ for both would get rid of all that complexity.
@@craigtheng - it's also an ability mainly centered around white, so it's a cool thing white could be doing too!
@@KingBobXVI Yeah, originally White was the color of human armies, which is why they got most of the banding. It was supposed to reflect them using traditional military tactics.
The only thing I'd do different from what you suggest, is that instead of it being N+1 or 1+, I'd make it 2N. So each Bander can bring a non-banding friend.
Honestly i like the concept with sweep now that with have alot of cards and mechanics that care about lands entering the battlefield + leting you play more than one land per turn. Also, if you have the mana for it, tap out all of your lands, play a sweep spell to return all of them and then play armagedon... with red moon out. Also Ashaya and creatures with etb effects would be a nice way of playing with sweep, if we had a sweep effect for green of course. I would like for some new sweep cards in this age of magic
I LOVE Cumulative Upkeep! I run 4x Ritual of Subdual in my main deck, but much more helpful when I drop an Eon Hub with it too, although it's never needed. Annihilate was worst! Or at least should have been errata-ed to how we use it in our LGS for EDH: Annihilate does't trigger unless the creature with Annihilate deals combat damage to the player it is attacking, and THEN it will trigger. If the creature with Annihilate gets blocked, no permanents get sacked.
So if hellbent is having no cards in hand should “heaven sent” be the ability a card gains for having seven or more cards in hand? Not that it would come up very often.
It'd probably be more likely a reference to Library of Alexandria.
The unnamed recurrent theme of Saviors of Kamigawa did that (sometimes referred to as Wisdom).
It sucked, since it discouraged you from playing cards.
Devoid actually always seemed like a cool design to me, it may not have played well in the environment it was stuck in, but the concept of giving eldrazi coloured costs was an interesting and needed in the design space, and I like that they sort of mirror the colourless symbol eldrazi in the next set. The way they would play in environments with protection (rare as those may be) is a useful way for a deck not to just get destroyed. Case in point, in the Goblins VS Merfolk duel deck, master of waves had pro red, and one of the only solutions the goblins had to not just fold to it was Ghostflame. It’s not a very generally useful mechanic, but I’m glad the design was enacted in case it ever needs to come up again. Plus the frame looks really cool, so
It was cool in theory but didn't feel meaningful
*Gavin Verhey*: "Epic is the worst designed Magic mechanic."
*Companion*: Didn't even wait to ask him to hold its beer. It's already drank the beer, five whiskey shots, snorted cocaine, got in it's car, and crashed it backwards into a K-mart.
I totally forgot about Ripple lol. Bring back Flanking!
Genuinely surprised Banding wasn't on the list. I loved the mechanic growing up with MTG, but I think I was the only one.
I liked Banding, too. It isn't difficult to understand either. It can just get a little confusing when interacting with other mechanics. 'Bands with other' was pretty silly but I can't remember ever having played a card with that ability.
Enchant World, I remember once trying to play Nether Void with The Abyss already in play. It never occurred to me at the time that two cards with different names couldn't exist in play. It wasn't mentioned in the video but it would be one of my picks for this list based on my experience.
Legends was a set with very top down, flavorful design. It's also one of the worst balanced sets ever, with big, splashy cards, existing alongside Tobias Andrion. Enchant Worlds were intended to emulate being on another plane, and changing the rules in a symmetric manner. On this world, everything has haste, on that world, flying is reversed. I have no answer for Kroskan Falls, it's just weird. But you think that's bad, look up "global enchantments" and imagine trying to explain how a card that destroys a global enchantment is not limited to "Enchant World" cards, lol.
Day and night cycle for sure. Even if you find a card that is good that you want to use outside of a werewolf deck everyone at the table must suffer keeping track of a day and night cycle for that particular card and that’s just annoying
I even find Day/Night annoying on Arena, which keeps track of it. I originally saw this mechanic in an expansion of the deck-building game Ascension, and I decided to never play that expansion.
As a Commander/Pauper player, I cant really get behind the thought of the Rebels being a bad mechanic. First I think it is important to see some of the other cards aside from the tutor Rebels that have been developed and reprinted over the years (including Rebels in Time Spiral Remastered). I think the Rebels are a fascinating trip into the past and to see how some of their abilities can mesh with certain cards we play with today, especially in commander, it really makes for a unique gameplay experience.
Second I feel with the amount of options that are out there in the world for deck building, if you build a deck to the meta standard instead of brewing, then any deck will be stale after a few games. I currently run a mono white Rebel commander and a Black/White Pauper Rebel tribal deck and honestly my commander deck is built in a way that utilizes tutoring, minor stack pieces and board wipes while buffing the Rebels for attacks. The fun part is Rebels are one of the few budget Tribes that can bounce back fairly easily even if its at a slower pace. Not looking for cEDH here but its fun to play.
I actually kind of like upkeep costs on enchantments. It makes thematic sense - upholding and maintaining the enchantment is taking a toll on you over time.
Yes, that was the lore behind it back in the day. But players don't like cards with negative effects. There is very little upkeep happening during the Upkeep phase in present day M:tG.
Was expecting to see Haunt or maybe Cipher but I get what he was going for. There have been tons of mechanics out there that are on the weaker side and just need a small tweak or support to get them to a better place. Forecast would be interesting if it was tied to the Suspend or Foretell mechanic. You would get an upkeep effect and then removed from your hand to be cast later. Sweep would be interesting if it was on a permanent.
Also I do not see why Arcane hasn't been done again. It is a sub-type that literally can be put anywhere. It doesn't have to be tied to just spirits.
Glad to see someone finally mention Cipher. I've always liked it in theory and it is fun when it goes off(when an opponent neither has interaction or is agro) but it is so baffling underwhelming and convoluted most of the time. That said, it might just be a case where it didn't get enough support. IE more cards like invisible stalker(preferably in the same set) and more cards that mattered when you cast things or used the mechanic(IE Surveil). Funny enough I had more success running cipher in Azorius with double strikers, but that might just be me.
@@MCC17011 A friend actually added a few Cipher cards to her Vega the Watcher deck. Stuff is like that because it doesn't have a lot of support or didn't have the proper tools to success. Cipher is great if you can either double strike like what you did to attempt to proc it twice or unblockable to guaranty an activation both which there weren't a lot of in and around that block. I feel Haunt was just a bad mechanic because it relied heavy on boardstate and had middle effects at best.
I actually really like devoid. I just wish there was more payoff in the set.
Cumulative Upkeep can be a really wonderful design... when it's a positive one like Braid of Fire or the mentionned Herald of Leshrac.
In my headcannon beneficial upkeep is intrinsically white. Other interesting possibilities are :
- gaining exponentially more life each turn ; c.upkeep : gain x life where x is nbr of time counters
- a time planeswalker(not Teferi flavorwise, more likely a student of him) with only strong minus abilities but c.upkeep : +1 loyalty
- as a removal, put a time counter on target/s nonland permanent they gain c.upkeep : {1}
- a cheap small creature with c.upkeep : put a +1/+1 on creature unless an opponent pay {1}
I like the flavor of epic spells. I would like to see something similar to them come back, just a big massive effect that is essentially your trump card. There are a lot of spells similar but ones that have a unifying theme between colors.
Idk I don’t like cards that you play and then directly as an effect either win or lose. Pretty miserable to play and play against.
Just wait until someone finds a way to combine Epic and Donate...
Sink into Takenuma sounds like great gameplay! It's like a more fair version of Mind Twist.
How did companion not make the list ? xD
It's too soon to talk about
I think Devoid is pretty cool. It allows more dynamic space in colorless, and really hoses color hate cards. For a personal example, someone tried to hit me with an equipped Sword of Feast and Famine and I blocked with one of my devoid creatures.
I actually really like cumulative upkeep since it's more like a sorvery that lasts as many turns as I want (or can pay for).
Protection, Intimidate/Fear, & Landwalk will always be my holy trinity of bad mechanics cos they were all evergreen at some point.
They all (generally) hate on specific colors which means they either do nothing or everything.
Protection is a rules nightmare.
I recall a particularly bad moment where my opponent conceded and packed up his cards because he thought he was dead on board but he actually could have blocked with an artifact creature.
And landwalk makes you play in a paranoid way from turn one when you know its in the opponents deck.
Color hosers in general were bad. The designers saw the advantage of a one-color deck and wanted to give you strong incentive to play with multiple colors. I remember an early issue of the The Duelist (yes, I'm old) where there was an "advice column" where a guy who played all red was constantly being annoyed by his friend who played all blue. After some hilarious "advice" that would have made the game miserable for everyone, he was told that he and his friend were committing the "sin" of playing with only one color! Now remember, this was in a time when the format was very slow because color fixing was rare and hard to come by. If you played two colors, sometimes that meant you couldn't play at all. Dual lands and moxes were out of the question for most players, and cards that converted one mana to another were very inefficient. So consistency was really really strong. Today you can build a 5 color "good stuff" deck that is consistent in your sleep, so it's hard to imagine this scenario for some. A "white weenie" deck willed with strong one and two drops backed by Crusade was a damn nightmare, far too fast for most other decks. Even the rudeness of Flashfires wasn't going to save you because, by the time you had 4 mana, you were probably staring down 5/5 Savannah Lions. Not defending the mechanics mind you, just explaining that they weren't that great in execution, and had to become quite odious to do their job- Karma was nothing compared to Justice or Drought. Though what I feel they should have done is leaned into reasons to play two colors- the humble Sedge Troll was a great card that said "hey wouldn't it be fun to play black/red so you have a cheap 3/3?". But yeah, people complain about banding, I have no words for protection and landwalk. Throw those bums out.
I don't think Protection is a rules nightmare but the rest I pretty much agree with.
@@Grimlock1979 Well when you consider the main complaint against Banding is that it functions differently on attack or defense (ie, it has two modes), let's see, Protection says, "can't be targeted by X, can't be blocked by X, can't take damage from X". So that's three modes, but wait, there's more, then I can't count the number of times I had to explain why Wrath of God kills a Black Knight, lol.
People might fight me over this, but i think hexproof was a mistake. I get that WotC wanted to get rid of shroud because people did not like that they could not target their own creatures. But that also prevented the problems hexproof now provides. Take Slipery Bogle decks for instance. Just slam your bogle on board and see your opponents internally scream in agony as you suit up your bogle with all the most broken auras and your opponents can't even interact with it.
Also companions for obvious reasons.
Agree.
Actually, it was more the fact that people consistently forgot/didn't know that shroud also affected you. So they changed the mechanic to one that worked like people expected it to.
@@RasmusVJSI am aware but I think the cure was worse than the disease. Ward is better than both.
@@apjapki I agree Ward is better than Hexproof. I was just correcting them about why they originally changed from Shroud to Hexproof.
I think Rhystic Study is the one good "Rhystic" card because, as you said, it doesn't feel like a Rhystic card.
It fits fine as it plays like a tax but play patterns really hamper it.
The fact that it's a "may" ability really sets it back as you're constantly forced to asked the question or miss out on drawing the card. Smothering Tithe helped fixed that problem as it removed the "may", you have to make the treasure unless your opponent pays the 2 so instead of your opponent getting sneaky and catches you slipping on asking the "do you pay" it halts the game until the trigger resolves where you either get the card or you don't.
Surprised that Dredge didn't get a mention with Buyback. In Commander it's so fun to see Life from the Loam a million times.
Storm, Cascade, Companion, Dredge, and Infect all should have been on this list. They all lead to stupid and unfun gameplay in their own creative ways.
Storm: Because watching you draw cards and generate mana for 10 mins only to either win instantly or concede is so fun.
Cascade: Because casting anything for free is so fair and how the game was designed, especially when you cast huge suspend cards because they technically have no mana cost
Companion: Because having an automatic extra card in hand from the start of the game that your opponent cant do anything about is so fair that even after it was nerfed its still warping formats
Dredge: Because who needs a hand when you have 30 cards in your graveyard. Did you bring GY hate? No? Have fun losing
Infect: Because now I only only have to to do half the damage I normally would to win. Oh? You play EDH? Good news! Now I only need to do a quarter of the usual damage to win!
I support the gotcha mechanic for giving us "Stop that"
Which was very confusing to a certain person who basically only played casual and wondered why anybody would hit their cards :P
I like Sweep and I think it could be fixed (and the design space opened by a lot) if it had a limit to the number of lands you can return, say 2 or 3. At the same time, make the cards have actual floor effects for when 0 lands are returned.
The moonfolk ability was a better implementation I think
Honestly, in low-power formats, Sweep is pretty interesting. It's extremely skill-intensive to use well and you can easily screw yourself out of playing a game, but I've had a lot of good experiences with it as well.
That said, I do think it belongs on this list.
How to fix Join Forces: Have it so only people who contribute can benefit from it. If you pay 0 into it, you don't get anything. But if you add to it, then you benefit from it. Would create some interesting play decisions where you might try and time the casting of your spell until a certain opponent is tapped out. And it "forces" them to contribute to it and make it a bigger effect if they want in on the action.
devoid is a fine mechanic, it works well with temple of eldrazi and stuff that cares about colorless stuff. it kept the "color" flavor of eldrazi without having them actually be a color
The card Number Crunch was the care that singlehandedly won me an unhinged draft. And nearly got me a black eye.
Hexproof. Only in that ward is so much better for gameplay that it really lays bare that interaction and choices should be prioritised (at least within individual standalone cards).
I agree. If that can’t be changed, maybe green creatures only get ward while blue and white get hexproof to be a “thick skin” vs “magical protection” flavour
@@bryceduyvewaardt8136 I prefer ward for all. It's been around for ages, just not called ward.
EDIT: Maybe Gavin could do a video about non keyword abilities that were upgraded to keyword status.
@@bryceduyvewaardt8136 And Hexproof is too embedded to change now.
I would point out that during Masques block, LD was more prevalent than it is nowadays (Stone Rain was legal), as were cards like Counterspell. Also, Rhystic appeared in Prophecy, which also had a suite of cards that were better if you had no untapped lands (eg Chimeric Idol), or cards that allowed your opponents to spend mana to make them less powerful (eg Glittering Lynx). Suddenly, if they countered a spell, they wouldn't have the mana to stop your Rhystic Tutor, for example. Or if they tapped out to enable Chimeric Idol, you could burn it away - or the opponent - with Rhystic Lightning. I think the mechanic was better than we gave it credit for, but I also think we didn't analyze cards and mechanics as thoroughly as we do nowadays.
What about snow ?
Good point
Phyrexian Soulgorge is one of my favorite cards every design-wise. Getting a 8/8 so easily on the field gives you a huge powerspike for the turns it is out. And especially in a deck that is build around this card, it's a very fun risk and reward mechanic.
I think Energy deserves a spot on the list. It was a cool idea but poorly executed. There needed to be ways to interact with your opponent's energy counters. It was a resource that your opponent couldn't touch.
I mean... you can always proliferate MORE energy for them. The problem is that an inverted proliferate would be a terrible mechanic. You can build a deck around your stuff creating counters, you SHOULDN'T be building deck based around your opponent creating counters. Design like that is how you get Champions of Kamigawa.
I would like to hear a solution to Eminence, I see that once solution has been to never reprint cards with that mechanic, but It appears that Edgar and Ur-Dragon decks are so criminal in the commander format for getting value out of a card you never even need to play or that your opponents can never interact with.
You can. With Tevesh Szat’s -10 (to pull it from the command zone onto the battlefield under your control) and Oubliette (to phase it out).
Of course, but thats like saying how you can always get cards back from exile, you just gotta have Pull From Eternity, and no player is going to always have those cards in their deck just to stop 1 mistake by Wizards of the Coast.
Companion
Honestly, Cumulative Upkeep is one of my favorite mechanics. I like the Idea of a heavy downside like this to balance a otherwise extremly strong card. Of course there are many boring cards with it, but there is a lot of cool and interesting design space. There are some interesting cards right now (Glacial Chasm is one of my favorite Cards in the game, Wall of Shards was really interesting and powerful in Mystery Booster Draft when I played it, and I just want to play Jötun Giant in limited or constructed). I like the choise it brings to the table at the upkeep. Is this card woth keeping on the Table? What will I do if I keep it? What if I don't? How long can I keep it on the battlefield? What does that mean for my Play? How high of a cost is too high? What can i do to keep it on the Battlefield? Do I wan't to do that?
And If you are Playing against a card with Cumulative Upkeep, you have to evaluate correctly how dangerous it is to let it be on the battlefield, until it dies naturally. Do I play this Removal? Or do I use it on a per se weaker card, that will stick around longer? Do I trade my creature against theirs, or do I just take the Damage, knowing, that I will take that damage only one or two times more? Can I do something to make the cost more difficult or unconvenient to pay?
And yes, it is true, that it is a hard mechanic to use correctly, a new or unexperienced Player will struggle, some experienced Players struggle, but that is the element of Skill, that I like in magic. You missplayed because of Cummulative Upkeep? Why? And what can you learn from it?
I like choices in general in Magic, and few other Mechanics bring as much choices to a game as Cumulative Upkeep.
10- Companion
9- Companion
8- Companion
7- Companion
6- Companion
5- Companion
4- Companion
3- Companion
2- Companion
1- Companion
Rhystic Cave was used for one purpose only, to have 8 Ports in your deck. A very frustrating scenario for an opponent was having 3 mana open with two of those lands being Rhystic Cave and Rishadan Port, you'd tap the Rhystic Cave for mana, let them decide to stop that mana and either cast a draw spell or other spell or just port you anyway, leaving often an island up for Brainstorm. You'd never ever use Rhystic Cave as a way to fix mana, it was always used as a trick card to get your opponent to waste mana during their upkeep and leave your opponent with less mana later.
I am very much going to disagree with devoid: Devoid is singlehandedly the reason why bfz block and the eldrazi tribe are my favorite block and tribe in magic.
So an effect that did literally nothing, was the reason you like bfz?
Devoid could have not existed and the cards would have been the same. It was basically flavor text.
I have a Borborygmos Enraged commander deck that legitimately uses Barrel Down Sokenzan. Always fun to see people's reaction to that card.
Also, Devoid should have been a supertype. That solves pretty much all its problems, and since no Devoid creature were legendary there was plenty of room on the type line.
See some of this is kinda dishonest when you look at things not listed like the obv ones like Companion. Cumultive upkeep isnt a bad design idea (as he literally shows good execution example) but the fact most dont give u a significant tempo gain in form of reallly increased stats etv. This is a mechanic that could be done properly for red/black cards today without much issue. Just use a proper powerbudget.
Not naming Companion is a joke tho. There has never been a mechanic so laughable dogshit designed they had to errate it a few weeks in because it was literally ruining the game everywhere.
Design Challenge: Create a Commander that makes Ripple work in EDH
(w/o cards you can have any number of in your deck)
Alchemy is the worst mechanic in my opinion. It made stop playing in Magic Arena
Same. I've been putting off trying MTGO for almost a year now, especially after Historic Brawl became legal.
But this was the final push. Play penny dreadful. It's super dope!
Mtg boomers, gatekeepers and crybabies are the worst mechanic of Magic. We can even bundle these three with one keyword. I'm thinking "Historic".
That black card with sweep seems insanely good in tergrid god of fright
Not even mentioning Companion, the mechanic that was so poorly thought out and so horrifically broken that it literally warped every format around it overnight after release? Man, talk about trying to sweep that one under the rug. Companion is genuinely the worst thing to happen to Magic since the Reserved List.
I think we don't talk about the mechanical time that was between Champions of Kamigawa and Shards of Alara enough. You have hits like Bloodthirst, Ninjutsu, Suspend, Persist and Convoke. You have the busted stuff like Dredge and Transmute and Delve. And you have the experimental stuff like Evoke, Conspire, Splice and Champion. And then you have the what were they thinking stuff like most of this list, Soulshift, Recover, Haunt, and Radiance.
Definitely a time when abilities were really starting to go from 1-5 a block to 3-5 a set and it shows.
To everyone that is going to yell about companion not being on this list, I ask of you to differentiate the mechanic from the cards they are on. Companion is kinda cool, it’s just the design of some of them were too strong. At least that’s my opinion anyway, but to each their own.
I agree with you. Companion does have cool, workable designs in the right places, with the right conditions. But what we did was very off.
It's a free card in your hand at the start of the game. An unearned advantage. I actually don't think that is interesting design space, especially for decks that luckily already have only one of each mana symbol per card (for example).
Awesome name Jim, btw.
@@apjapki some of the companions are unearned card advantage yes, but in theory companions are not always that. Keruga for example is a card where there is no chance for a deck to accidentally accommodate, as such the card advantage is earned by making concessions in deck-building, ideally all companions would be this way but what happened, happened.
@@apjapki yeah I think the draw backs (in some cases) weren’t bad enough, but again that’s not the mechanic that’s bad, its the questionable implementation. I think earning that extra card by meeting certain restrictions is a very cool idea because the right restrictions encourage more creative deck building. Sure you get an extra card, but it’s up to you as a deck builder to utilize that extra card well enough to make up for the extra drawbacks you’ve given yourself.
Sprout the swarm is a staple in my saproling deck...the convoke makes it helpful with casting other spells
Ignoring Bands With Other, I'm going to bring up Bushido. The "fixed" Rampage (well ok, some would say Elvish Berserker was the fixed Rampage), Bushido was designed to make your opponent cautious about attacking and blocking- a fundamental part of the game. That's bad enough, but most Bushido cards were costed as if Bushido was always on. And that really felt like you were paying in more than you got. A 4/4 for 6 that's sometimes a 6/6? Be still my heart!
I just thought of another one. Anything that exchanges control of cards. I don't know how many times we'd scoop after a game and someone's creature would end up in the blue player's deck thanks to Control Magic. Though I do have a funny story where I won a round at a tournament because of it. I was playing a deck that used Revelation for top deck shenanigans, and during my blue opponent's draw step, he flipped the top card of his deck, revealing....Serra Angel. "Is that supposed to be there?" Obnoxious Blue Player: "Uh...no..." "JUDGE!"
You missed annihilator. I swing you got no board, no way to protect yourself from it, I don't even have to touch you and that's not even mentioning how EASY it is to cast eldrazis with the truly incredible toolkit they have to ramp efficiently. Let me ask you if any colored permanents did the same an Eldrazi does, how broken it would be.
Well Eldrazi were supposed to be these giant Timmy cards that made you go "oh wow, imagine if I got this thing out, you'd be dead!" that you'd never see in a real game. And then Wizards foolishly gave us ways to get them out faster, or even cheat them into play with ease. Turn 2 Eldrazi is a way different beast than turn 7 Eldrazi!
I like the Cumulative Upkeep cards that have positive effects rather than costs to pay, effects like Braiding Fire for instance, but at that point it's not really sitting in the same design intention anymore and the term Cumulative Upkeep doesn't seem to accurately describe it anymore.
In regards to sweep, I see a world where Sweep can be used in combination with red impulse draw effects. Let's say; impulse decision 1R - Sweep: return mountains, exile cards equal to the mountains returned. something like that could be interesting to play with.
I'm glad someone in R&D agrees that Rhystic Study should have been a white card. It's a shame it can NEVER be colorshifted, since UW/x control decks having access to two copies would just be the worst.
So, probably my favorite card with Cumulative Upkeep is Braid of fire, which reads "Cumulative upkeep - Add R to your mana pool."