I think it's worth mentioning that Keruga and Obosh were massively helped out in standard by Eldraine's adventure cards. Namely Bonecrusher and Borrower because they were 3 mana creatures but their adventure sides only cost 2. Fulfilling the companion requirements while allowing your deck to have a strong 2 mana play, something you otherwise wouldn't have.
Creatures with learn mechanic can bypass Keruga's restrictions due to lesson cards relegated to sideboards. I run adventure and learn creatures on the same Keruga companion deck, and it's a ton of fun.
Before the errata on the mechanic, companions basically broke the game, as if one was choosing not to play them it would have significantly lowered the chances of winning.
Ahhh the good old days of Jeskai Fires in Standard. Turn 4 Fires of Invention into a free Omen, say Omen of the Sun for 2 life and 2 tokens. Turn 5 Lucca, exile a token to grab Agent of Treachery to steal something. Cast Yorion companion, flickering the Agent, Fires itself and all your Omens. Then, with Fires gone, use your mana to cast Elspeth Conquers Death to exile something else. Then everything comes back, and you steal another card and get to re-trigger all of your Omens. At that point, your opponent has lost 3 permanents, 2 of which you now control. GG.
Man the companions errata is so wild, imagine if a week after New Phyrexia they made a mass errata where it cost like 4 life to pay for phyrexian mana instead of 2 life
Slight bit of misinformation, Lurrus is still banned in Legacy as of the time of this video is out. I'd imagine it, alongside Zirda, are still problems in the format due to ease of deck inclusion and the raw power level of them once they're on the field. Still a good video, would be interesting to see how other mechanics of similar play rate would shake out in a top 10 (phyrexian mana, storm).
As two interns allegedly once wrote on a mirror DECK VARIANCE IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE GAME AND UNDERCUTTING IT WITH THIS MECHANIC HAS LED TO THE MOST UNFUN PLAYTEST GAMES WE HAVE EVER PLAYED. IF THIS IS THE FUTURE OF MAGIC DESIGN, WE WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.
Umori was great alongside eldrain’s adventures. You could build a creature based umori deck and still have access to ramp spells, kill spells, board wipes, etc. through adventures.
In commander, jegantha works well with Jodah. You can make any spell cost WUBRG and then have that exact mana on tap. Pair with an untapper, and you can cheat out ulamog and kozilek on the same turn lmao
Yorion is by far my favorite of this bunch. I feel his restriction is actually a cost and wouldn’t see play without him. Its really the only one i feel is actually worth making the mechanic.
I mean…Lurrus, it is gonna be Lurrus, who would have thought a card that lets you get your black lotus back for free wouldn’t be broken Edit: Easiest one yet
@@Argetbrisingr101 I don't know if you played at this time, but before the nerf the most played deck of standard (and by far) was Lukka-Yorion (a deck where the only creature was Agent of Treachery and with a ton of ways to make tokens to sacrifice to Lukka's -2 and make sure you hit the Agent). After the nerf, Yorion kept being played (eg in Sultai Ultimatum) until the rotation. Lurrus is very powerful in Legacy and Vintage but Yorion was even more busted in the Standard environment. My guess is that as Ikoria isn't Standard-legal anymore Lurrus is going to take more and more advance.
Kaheera is my favorite companion and it makes me a bit sad she's used in decks that don't really utilize her ability. She was amazing in my standard abzan reanimator deck!
Kaheera also sees play in modern control decks as the deck uses Solitude which also happens to be elemental and can use Kaheera to pitch its evoke cost.
Before Companion rules changes. T1 Play land, play Black Lotus, crack Black Lotus to play Lurrus, use Lurrus to play Black Lotus again, play something else. On T1!
I guessed the order of all of them correctly outside of Kaheera, Zirda, and Obosh (I had them at 4, 6, and 5 respectively). My guess for Kareeha being that high is probably a little skewed by the monster that is Jeskai control in Historic. I should have known better considering Kaheera has fallen off since Jeskai control is so strapped for sideboard slots now. Outside of that I'm not surprised by any of the placements of the list.
I had fun playing umori pre-errata when the theros cards came in and you could run enchantments as your type, playing both regular enchantments as well as creatures
Before the nerf it was also great in draft where you could easily afford to only play creatures. Unfortunately the nerf made Ikoria's limited way less fun
I’ll never not be mad about the Lutri ban in commander. Prior to Companions there simply was no “outside the game” in Commander. Unless you houseruled it Wish effects and the like simply didn’t work. WotC intentionally changed this so people could run Companions as a sort of second Commander (even though the deck building requirements made this very unattractive or outright impossible in the format so almost nobody ever did it) and the result is a card like Lutri which I would love to play in the 99 is banned forever. Companion should have simply not functioned in a format that had prior to Ikoria’s release never had an official sideboard. Simple as.
Lurrus w/ black lotus {0}: Add three mana of any one color to your mana pool. Activate this only once per turn and only when you could activate a sorcery. And if you flicker Lurrus or have some ability that revolves around spells being casted or artifacts entering or leaving the battlefield, it's even better
Confession time: before we saw these things in action, before the set was released...my initial impression was that you could actually have _multiple_ companions, so long as the starting deck requirements were still met (so obviously, the likes of Lurrus and Keruga were incompatible). I feel so, so silly looking back.
In case you've not filmed (or at least planned) all your October lists yet, can we get a subjective list of "Creepy creatures whose tribes aren't usually scary"? (I'm sure you can think of a better title!) i.e. What are some non-Zombie, non-Vampire, non-Spirit, non-Werewolf, non-Phyrexian, non-Horror cards that have legit creepy flavour. I can definitely think of some eerie/scary Elves and Merfolk to start with! Plus you'd get to use your Halloween intro again too!
It should be noted that Umori works with cards that have multiple card types. So, like, if you choose Enchantment, you can still use Enchantment Creatures and Enchantment Artifacts
Small pointer about Jegantha. I have a mono green tron deck with Jegantha as a companion and 2 Golos, one in main and one in sideboard. It gets pretty dumb to be able to once per turn trigger Golos' ability by tapping one urza land, hitting 3 big things and basically winning on the spot on turn 4-5
You can see how little competitive Magic has been played recently, usually a card that dominated Standard as much as Yorion did would have like 50 points just from Standard
Well, Yorion only had 15 days between official paper release on most continents and the companion nerf. Sure, it had a month of running rampant on Arena before that, but two weeks of legality wouldn't be enough to get many points even if it weren't for the pandemic.
Do you have a breakdown of the pre/post-nerf points for each companion? I think it would be interesting to see which ones are "dead in the water" so to speak and which ones (awww, the cute little cat) are still seeing play.
Honestly, maybe an unpopular opinion here, but I like companions. I think it’s a really cool idea. I just think the design of them needs to be EXTREMELY careful because it is essentially always in your opener. Printing companions with downsides for aggressive stats would be cool imo.
Out of all the busted results of F.I.R.E design companions really took the prize. Unless I'm mistaken no new mechanic has ever seen all card using it make a top 8. Truly a broken mechanic.
Kaheera is probably the most flexibility and for mono white one drop cat deck its a beast have four sit in side zone same with any of the types listed as mono color low cast style deck with playset of small stuff she can wreck stuff in cat comander deck with roar of the world two are a wrecking machine plus 4 vigilance on cats lil lifeline 1/1 cat now 5/5 vigilance lifelink by turn three or four nice quick way to gain five life. Wish got more likes for decks great card
It is fascinating to see that with the (not shocking at all) exception of Lurrus, these are all pretty cheap, with most even being under a dollar. I suspect that will change within a few years as people just decide to throw these into decks that already conveniently work with the requirements when it comes to the eternal formats. Also, while broken mechanics are typically seen as bad by most of the community, they tend to be memorable and thus still show up at times. Even the infamous mechanic that the very scale is named after (Storm) still sees new cards, albeit in non-standard sets. I predict the D&D Commander set will have some companions. But hey, I can be wrong. Don’t really care.
I haven’t seem the vid yet. I’m gonna guess in order of most to least success: Lurrus, Yorion, Jegantha, Obosh, Kaheera, Keruga, Gyruda, Umori, Zirda, Lutri
Wow, I had no Idea how successful Zirda was! I also would’ve thought that keruga’s play in fires decks would’ve put him a little higher. It’s also really cool that Lutri has been somewhat successful. That planeswalker control deck sounds spicy
Lurrus is notable to me for one game I played, where I killed their Lurrus on 3 consectuive turns. Unfortunately, they played a Lurrus on 4 consecutive turns.
When I saw the video name I thought it was a joke video and just not posted on April 1st. Because yeah. They're only 10. But I didn't realize they all had points according to your system!
I'm upset that companions were so busted at their first iteration. I really like the idea of having access to a card so powerful that you have to limit your deck building in some way
I have a yorion deck but I have Gyruda in the actual deck because gyrudaing into a felidar guardian is insane, also if I can use the ability enough my deck becomes mill because I have 20 more cards in my deck.
I'm fucking surprised that Lurrus doesn't have any points in Vintage. Not *one* despite getting banned there. I'm guessing it's because of the fact there probably hasn't *been* a single Vintage tournament in the past year due to COVID. But still, *not one.* I'm surprised, just like I'm surprised we *still* haven't got "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)"!
@@Wintersmith12 Wait really? I don't keep too much track of the time frame, but I didn't realise it was release to ban instantly like Lutri. Well, release, 1 day, ban.
@@TheGloriousLobsterEmperor Time around the Ikoria release is confusing because the cards had a full release online about a month before the physical release... unless you were in Asia where the physical cards came on time. So yeah, Lurrus was banned "instantly" on release, but he was also played on Arena and MTGO for a month before he was released.
Overall, the companion mechanic itself wasn't too ridiculous. Magic just knew better than go print cards like Lurrus at as remotely as low a cost as they did, knowing full well it could be abused in basically every format it was in (especially while it limited only permanents rather than all cards like most.) Considering half of them saw rather minimal play, it was a strong keyword with some very over the top cards, moreso given they all had flexible mana costs. Such is rare privilege though.
I think the idea of companions was neat, but poorly executed It was really fun to brew around, buuuut it needed some major changes immediately after fixing, and i hate how lutri and yorion can’t be played in commander, jegantha can’t be played in gruul decks, and that the companion requirement including the commander makes it super exclusive for commander
I think companions were actually a success from a design perspective but... it isn't necessarily a "good" success Let me explain: When you design something you sometimes have to push things to try to figure out whether something is good or not, and whilst companions were absolutely insanely powerful, they were a success in testing out how far one can push the design of these cards - whilst the standard metal got stale at times, it wasn't really due to the companions (at least after they changed the companions to have to be put into your hands first, and even before you saw most companions in the standard meta game so even then there was _some_ options possible and some variety) By and large there simply were too many different mega powerful cards either through their synergies or by just being stupidly over powered, and when companions were the posterboys for these powerful cards they received most of the blame for it I honest to god think companions were a fine mechanic to try, even if I am happy that the decks that played them have rotated out of standard because by and large, the decks wouldn't have looked massively different without the companions (only things like Geruda wouldn't have existed since it's effect was by and large just a combo enabler and nothing else)
10 out of 10 cards had points and the entire mechanic had to be eratad... Despite them not having 100s of points each I think Companion has a good case for being the strongest mechanic ever.
Probably #1 being fetches, #2 Shocks and #3 being original duals (not sure about that one since they are much older but only playable in vintage afaik) But other than that it's probably pretty interesting
Companion is the most obvious, toxic design failure WotC has made in a long, long time. The only thing that I think even comes close is Phyrexian mana.
As two interns once painted on a mirror in lipstick DECK VARIANCE IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE GAME AND UNDERCUTTING IT WITH THIS MECHANIC HAS LED TO THE MOST UNFUN PLAYTEST GAMES WE HAVE EVER PLAYED. IF THIS IS THE FUTURE OF MAGIC DESIGN, WE WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT
@@acheache8536 it’s a direct quote my dude. If the story is to believed they wrote it in all caps in the evening, and maro woke up to find the message on the 1 way mirror he’d been watching them through.
Despite all the brokenness, I really hope, somehow, one day, Companion can come back as a core set mechanic. I think it's very flavorful and cool of a concept. This game sucks sometimes. When you actually like what it does, it has to go too far in one direction and never come back.
One side note, Lutri’s requirement isn’t entirely a guarantee in commander. Rat colony or shadowborn apostle decks can bypass the singleton rule. Not that any of those decks would want Lutri anyway, but is a neat rules loophole to mention.
Ban all the companions... should never have been made. Put them with the ante mechanic cards. In all seriousness, lurras needs to be banned in modern he makes the format way to linear
While I agree Lurrus should probably be looked at, Mishra's Bauble and to a lesser, somewhat urelated extent Manamorphose need to go first. Mishra's Bauble is a heinously offensive design that should have been banned years ago along with Mox Opal. Ragavan being just about everywhere is becoming a problem too, but the Bauble at the very least needs to be banned before anything else.
@@CanadianBaconPwnage the reason they won't ban ragavan is, it's a huge selling point for mh2. They made 3 good 1 drops, and out of those 3, drc is the most likely ban. Not to expensive and fuel unholy heat. I believe manamorphose will eventually be banned, but not this upcoming ban cycle as its not seeing alot of play right now. Bauble just plays to well with delirium and lurras so it will probably be axed. if it's not maybe we can play death's shadow again. The problem then becomes urzas saga, and asmo. Food it's pretty strong, and saga just goes in to many decks right now
Companion, IMO, is the worst, most egregious mechanic ever designed. Worse than Storm or Affinity or Phyrexian Mana or Energy or anything else that’s a 9 or 10 on the Storm Scale. To me, it makes the Storm Scale look like a complete joke, cause why spend so much time chronicling and dissecting power levels of mechanics and what went wrong with some if you’re just going to allow something so blatantly broken to ruin your game until it got errata’d?
Hearthstone had the same mechanic in an expansion in early 2018, called Start of Game that basically worked the same way and it broke the game. If you included Baku the Mooneater in your deck and your deck only had odd-costed cards, you start with an upgraded Hero Power, absolutely free. It was so game-warping and overpowered that they rotated Baku and its sister card Genn Greymane a year early, which they’ve never done before or since. It’s funny to me that Magic, which people hail as the intellectually superior game in terms of design and mechanics, made the exact same mistake. Did no one in Magic R&D play HS in 2018 or even hear about that disaster?
I think it's worth mentioning that Keruga and Obosh were massively helped out in standard by Eldraine's adventure cards.
Namely Bonecrusher and Borrower because they were 3 mana creatures but their adventure sides only cost 2. Fulfilling the companion requirements while allowing your deck to have a strong 2 mana play, something you otherwise wouldn't have.
Also love struck beast was favored in those builds
Creatures with learn mechanic can bypass Keruga's restrictions due to lesson cards relegated to sideboards.
I run adventure and learn creatures on the same Keruga companion deck, and it's a ton of fun.
What wasn't helped by Eldraine brokenness lol
vintage and legacy: "yes, we are the strongest formats in Magic! nothing can stop us!"
3 additional generic mana: "my time has come"
Before the errata on the mechanic, companions basically broke the game, as if one was choosing not to play them it would have significantly lowered the chances of winning.
At one point, it felt like everyone on Arena was playing Lurrus.
Now everyone is playing life gain
Lurrus Rakdos Sacrifice vs Yorion Lukka Fires
The fact that every Companion scored points just goes to show how broken the mechanic was pre-errata. Even the best mechanics don't go 100%.
It helps that there were only 10 cards with the mechanic, and they were all rare
Ahhh the good old days of Jeskai Fires in Standard.
Turn 4 Fires of Invention into a free Omen, say Omen of the Sun for 2 life and 2 tokens.
Turn 5 Lucca, exile a token to grab Agent of Treachery to steal something. Cast Yorion companion, flickering the Agent, Fires itself and all your Omens. Then, with Fires gone, use your mana to cast Elspeth Conquers Death to exile something else. Then everything comes back, and you steal another card and get to re-trigger all of your Omens. At that point, your opponent has lost 3 permanents, 2 of which you now control. GG.
Man the companions errata is so wild, imagine if a week after New Phyrexia they made a mass errata where it cost like 4 life to pay for phyrexian mana instead of 2 life
Slight bit of misinformation, Lurrus is still banned in Legacy as of the time of this video is out. I'd imagine it, alongside Zirda, are still problems in the format due to ease of deck inclusion and the raw power level of them once they're on the field.
Still a good video, would be interesting to see how other mechanics of similar play rate would shake out in a top 10 (phyrexian mana, storm).
A top 10 where the entire pool is the top 10?
Life is wonderful
He made sure to include everyone's favorite companion card and their most hated companion card. Really giving the audience what they want!
As two interns allegedly once wrote on a mirror
DECK VARIANCE IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE GAME AND UNDERCUTTING IT WITH THIS MECHANIC HAS LED TO THE MOST UNFUN PLAYTEST GAMES WE HAVE EVER PLAYED. IF THIS IS THE FUTURE OF MAGIC DESIGN, WE WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.
Playing against companions is FUN INTERACTIVE REPLAYABLE AND EXCITING.
Umori was great alongside eldrain’s adventures. You could build a creature based umori deck and still have access to ramp spells, kill spells, board wipes, etc. through adventures.
In commander, jegantha works well with Jodah. You can make any spell cost WUBRG and then have that exact mana on tap. Pair with an untapper, and you can cheat out ulamog and kozilek on the same turn lmao
Yorion is by far my favorite of this bunch. I feel his restriction is actually a cost and wouldn’t see play without him. Its really the only one i feel is actually worth making the mechanic.
Ahh yes, Lurrus. The poster boy of the fire design.
Great vid!
Actually no. Thats Oko. He is the true poster boy.
I mean…Lurrus, it is gonna be Lurrus, who would have thought a card that lets you get your black lotus back for free wouldn’t be broken
Edit:
Easiest one yet
Its an easy call, but I was surprised to see its only 1 point ahead of Yorion
@@Argetbrisingr101 fair point
@@Argetbrisingr101 I don't know if you played at this time, but before the nerf the most played deck of standard (and by far) was Lukka-Yorion (a deck where the only creature was Agent of Treachery and with a ton of ways to make tokens to sacrifice to Lukka's -2 and make sure you hit the Agent).
After the nerf, Yorion kept being played (eg in Sultai Ultimatum) until the rotation.
Lurrus is very powerful in Legacy and Vintage but Yorion was even more busted in the Standard environment. My guess is that as Ikoria isn't Standard-legal anymore Lurrus is going to take more and more advance.
I'm shocked Kaheera has no Modern points. I guess 4C Elementals hasn't top 8 yet
kaheera also shows up in a lot of UW control decks which used to be creatureless, but now can play Solitude as an elemental
Kaheera is my favorite companion and it makes me a bit sad she's used in decks that don't really utilize her ability. She was amazing in my standard abzan reanimator deck!
Kaheera also sees play in modern control decks as the deck uses Solitude which also happens to be elemental and can use Kaheera to pitch its evoke cost.
Before Companion rules changes. T1 Play land, play Black Lotus, crack Black Lotus to play Lurrus, use Lurrus to play Black Lotus again, play something else. On T1!
Land?
I guessed the order of all of them correctly outside of Kaheera, Zirda, and Obosh (I had them at 4, 6, and 5 respectively). My guess for Kareeha being that high is probably a little skewed by the monster that is Jeskai control in Historic. I should have known better considering Kaheera has fallen off since Jeskai control is so strapped for sideboard slots now. Outside of that I'm not surprised by any of the placements of the list.
I'd love to see Umori in an instant counter-spell- and removal-focused deck as its main win con.
I had fun playing umori pre-errata when the theros cards came in and you could run enchantments as your type, playing both regular enchantments as well as creatures
Before the nerf it was also great in draft where you could easily afford to only play creatures. Unfortunately the nerf made Ikoria's limited way less fun
I’ll never not be mad about the Lutri ban in commander.
Prior to Companions there simply was no “outside the game” in Commander. Unless you houseruled it Wish effects and the like simply didn’t work. WotC intentionally changed this so people could run Companions as a sort of second Commander (even though the deck building requirements made this very unattractive or outright impossible in the format so almost nobody ever did it) and the result is a card like Lutri which I would love to play in the 99 is banned forever.
Companion should have simply not functioned in a format that had prior to Ikoria’s release never had an official sideboard. Simple as.
Jegantha is the best, so much fun in EDH, powering up silly stuff like the Legacy Weapon.
Lurrus w/ black lotus
{0}: Add three mana of any one color to your mana pool. Activate this only once per turn and only when you could activate a sorcery.
And if you flicker Lurrus or have some ability that revolves around spells being casted or artifacts entering or leaving the battlefield, it's even better
Confession time: before we saw these things in action, before the set was released...my initial impression was that you could actually have _multiple_ companions, so long as the starting deck requirements were still met (so obviously, the likes of Lurrus and Keruga were incompatible). I feel so, so silly looking back.
Tbh depending on the combination I can see myself having fun building deck with 3-5 companion
One mana only Obosh/Lurrus. That sounds fire, ngl
In case you've not filmed (or at least planned) all your October lists yet, can we get a subjective list of "Creepy creatures whose tribes aren't usually scary"? (I'm sure you can think of a better title!) i.e. What are some non-Zombie, non-Vampire, non-Spirit, non-Werewolf, non-Phyrexian, non-Horror cards that have legit creepy flavour. I can definitely think of some eerie/scary Elves and Merfolk to start with! Plus you'd get to use your Halloween intro again too!
#1 Abomination of Llanowar, hands down
If there is one thing that I am incredibly tired off it is companions. I miss the time where they did not exist
Same thing but with planneswalkers.
Same thing but with mtg itself
@@acheache8536 Same thing but with games in general.
I'm shocked that Keruga wasn't higher; I saw it everywhere during fires's dominance.
They were only allowed to be played together from April 17 to June 1 of 2020. It just wasn't enough time.
It should be noted that Umori works with cards that have multiple card types. So, like, if you choose Enchantment, you can still use Enchantment Creatures and Enchantment Artifacts
the Lurrus meta in vintage was absolutely wild. people were actually playing dead weight because its a permanent that can kill lurrus.
Small pointer about Jegantha.
I have a mono green tron deck with Jegantha as a companion and 2 Golos, one in main and one in sideboard.
It gets pretty dumb to be able to once per turn trigger Golos' ability by tapping one urza land, hitting 3 big things and basically winning on the spot on turn 4-5
Jeganja, my boy. the most important piece in my Door to Nothingness deck aptly "The Moose Is Loose"
You can see how little competitive Magic has been played recently, usually a card that dominated Standard as much as Yorion did would have like 50 points just from Standard
Well, Yorion only had 15 days between official paper release on most continents and the companion nerf. Sure, it had a month of running rampant on Arena before that, but two weeks of legality wouldn't be enough to get many points even if it weren't for the pandemic.
@@imperium3556
The vast majority of decks playing Yorion in Standard were post nerf
@@imperium3556
The one that was popular on Arena for like a month and then disappeared was Gyruda
Oh wow you fit all my favorite companions on this list!
Do you have a breakdown of the pre/post-nerf points for each companion? I think it would be interesting to see which ones are "dead in the water" so to speak and which ones (awww, the cute little cat) are still seeing play.
Honestly, maybe an unpopular opinion here, but I like companions. I think it’s a really cool idea. I just think the design of them needs to be EXTREMELY careful because it is essentially always in your opener. Printing companions with downsides for aggressive stats would be cool imo.
Umori was also played in some Modern Enchantress decks!
Heads up, Lurrus is actually still banned in Legacy, it was only unbanned from Vintage shortly after the change
Out of all the busted results of F.I.R.E design companions really took the prize. Unless I'm mistaken no new mechanic has ever seen all card using it make a top 8. Truly a broken mechanic.
Gravestorm did it, but that's only printed on one card (Bitter Ordeal).
Ahhhh, Gyruda combo in Legacy and Pioneer were monstruous.
I'm sad they'll probably never reprint companions because they were so cool as a mechanic in draft
Kaheera is probably the most flexibility and for mono white one drop cat deck its a beast have four sit in side zone same with any of the types listed as mono color low cast style deck with playset of small stuff she can wreck stuff in cat comander deck with roar of the world two are a wrecking machine plus 4 vigilance on cats lil lifeline 1/1 cat now 5/5 vigilance lifelink by turn three or four nice quick way to gain five life. Wish got more likes for decks great card
It is fascinating to see that with the (not shocking at all) exception of Lurrus, these are all pretty cheap, with most even being under a dollar. I suspect that will change within a few years as people just decide to throw these into decks that already conveniently work with the requirements when it comes to the eternal formats.
Also, while broken mechanics are typically seen as bad by most of the community, they tend to be memorable and thus still show up at times. Even the infamous mechanic that the very scale is named after (Storm) still sees new cards, albeit in non-standard sets. I predict the D&D Commander set will have some companions. But hey, I can be wrong. Don’t really care.
Suddenly... printing Yorion is straight up buff for BoW decks out there xd
Move over Storm Scale, we got the Companion Scale now.
i think, once Jegantha is noticed as an anti/counter to blood moon, it will be seen more in local metas because of that.
I haven’t seem the vid yet. I’m gonna guess in order of most to least success: Lurrus, Yorion, Jegantha, Obosh, Kaheera, Keruga, Gyruda, Umori, Zirda, Lutri
Wow, I had no Idea how successful Zirda was! I also would’ve thought that keruga’s play in fires decks would’ve put him a little higher. It’s also really cool that Lutri has been somewhat successful. That planeswalker control deck sounds spicy
Lurrus is notable to me for one game I played, where I killed their Lurrus on 3 consectuive turns. Unfortunately, they played a Lurrus on 4 consecutive turns.
When I saw the video name I thought it was a joke video and just not posted on April 1st. Because yeah. They're only 10. But I didn't realize they all had points according to your system!
I'm upset that companions were so busted at their first iteration. I really like the idea of having access to a card so powerful that you have to limit your deck building in some way
Yeah, they either had to power down the companions some or make the deck restriction a lot harder.
I am still in love with lurrus dimir rogues
I have a yorion deck but I have Gyruda in the actual deck because gyrudaing into a felidar guardian is insane, also if I can use the ability enough my deck becomes mill because I have 20 more cards in my deck.
Have you ever thought about doing a list on lands that always enter the battlefield tapped?
I really want to build a EDH deck which take advantage of Zirda as a companion.
Companion was a mistake
I'm fucking surprised that Lurrus doesn't have any points in Vintage. Not *one* despite getting banned there. I'm guessing it's because of the fact there probably hasn't *been* a single Vintage tournament in the past year due to COVID. But still, *not one.* I'm surprised, just like I'm surprised we *still* haven't got "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)"!
Well, it was only legal for play for a single day lol
@@Wintersmith12 Wait really? I don't keep too much track of the time frame, but I didn't realise it was release to ban instantly like Lutri. Well, release, 1 day, ban.
@@TheGloriousLobsterEmperor Time around the Ikoria release is confusing because the cards had a full release online about a month before the physical release... unless you were in Asia where the physical cards came on time. So yeah, Lurrus was banned "instantly" on release, but he was also played on Arena and MTGO for a month before he was released.
The list was pretty much as expected other than i though Zirda would be a bit higher on it.
Overall, the companion mechanic itself wasn't too ridiculous. Magic just knew better than go print cards like Lurrus at as remotely as low a cost as they did, knowing full well it could be abused in basically every format it was in (especially while it limited only permanents rather than all cards like most.)
Considering half of them saw rather minimal play, it was a strong keyword with some very over the top cards, moreso given they all had flexible mana costs.
Such is rare privilege though.
zirda is my favorite : )
I think the idea of companions was neat, but poorly executed
It was really fun to brew around, buuuut it needed some major changes immediately after fixing, and i hate how lutri and yorion can’t be played in commander, jegantha can’t be played in gruul decks, and that the companion requirement including the commander makes it super exclusive for commander
On the other hand?
Gyruda, zirda, and umori are sweet
I think it’s just an awful idea
Tbh Lurrud is one of my fav cards on modern and historic
Top 10 basic lands when?
I think companions were actually a success from a design perspective but... it isn't necessarily a "good" success
Let me explain:
When you design something you sometimes have to push things to try to figure out whether something is good or not, and whilst companions were absolutely insanely powerful, they were a success in testing out how far one can push the design of these cards - whilst the standard metal got stale at times, it wasn't really due to the companions (at least after they changed the companions to have to be put into your hands first, and even before you saw most companions in the standard meta game so even then there was _some_ options possible and some variety)
By and large there simply were too many different mega powerful cards either through their synergies or by just being stupidly over powered, and when companions were the posterboys for these powerful cards they received most of the blame for it
I honest to god think companions were a fine mechanic to try, even if I am happy that the decks that played them have rotated out of standard because by and large, the decks wouldn't have looked massively different without the companions (only things like Geruda wouldn't have existed since it's effect was by and large just a combo enabler and nothing else)
Oh boi, Ikoria's most busted cycle of cards in my opinion :)
Wait, did slivers really not get mentioned in Jegantha's section? Or shrines, for that matter?
Hate to burst your bubble but slivers aren't meta
Is this april first?
10 out of 10 cards had points and the entire mechanic had to be eratad... Despite them not having 100s of points each I think Companion has a good case for being the strongest mechanic ever.
Storm probably was more busted
Plz do top 10 land cycles.
Probably #1 being fetches, #2 Shocks and #3 being original duals (not sure about that one since they are much older but only playable in vintage afaik)
But other than that it's probably pretty interesting
Gyruda bypasses leyline of the void interestingly
which funnily enough lead to gyruda decks running rest in peace to get around opposing grafdigger's cages
No points for Kaheera from modern elementals yet?
Is it relevant to do a cEDH ranker?
Interestingly, Lurus is the only companion that can’t be maindeck when he is the companion.
Lutri is funny for commander
So funny they prebanned it.
#FreeTheOtter
It annoys me how Lurrus only require permanents and only affect permanents but Keruga require all cards but only affect permanents
How about a Top 10 Zombie token generator.
do a list of saddest mechanics and put companions on one. Most fun mechanic we will never get back because wotc is stupid
Companion is the most obvious, toxic design failure WotC has made in a long, long time. The only thing that I think even comes close is Phyrexian mana.
Lurrus is still banned in legacy and most likely never going to be unbanned
Lurrus
As two interns once painted on a mirror in lipstick
DECK VARIANCE IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE GAME AND UNDERCUTTING IT WITH THIS MECHANIC HAS LED TO THE MOST UNFUN PLAYTEST GAMES WE HAVE EVER PLAYED. IF THIS IS THE FUTURE OF MAGIC DESIGN, WE WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT
i'm sorry to hear that
@@soren1803 dude, you need some chill
@@acheache8536 it’s a direct quote my dude. If the story is to believed they wrote it in all caps in the evening, and maro woke up to find the message on the 1 way mirror he’d been watching them through.
@@soren1803 idk what are you talking about
Lurrus-rogues ptsd
Sounds like your taking in slow motion. Listen to these videos at 1.5 speed then try to go back to normal speed.
There are no Top 10 Companions. They are a despised mechanic and I have dignity, so I never played any of them.
Woooo
Lurrus is still banned in legacy
Lurrus is still very much banned in legacy. I fucking wish tho
The intro feels slightly desynched
Despite all the brokenness, I really hope, somehow, one day, Companion can come back as a core set mechanic. I think it's very flavorful and cool of a concept. This game sucks sometimes. When you actually like what it does, it has to go too far in one direction and never come back.
One side note, Lutri’s requirement isn’t entirely a guarantee in commander. Rat colony or shadowborn apostle decks can bypass the singleton rule. Not that any of those decks would want Lutri anyway, but is a neat rules loophole to mention.
Ban all the companions... should never have been made. Put them with the ante mechanic cards. In all seriousness, lurras needs to be banned in modern he makes the format way to linear
Cant have those oppressive Keruga decks taking over vintage
While I agree Lurrus should probably be looked at, Mishra's Bauble and to a lesser, somewhat urelated extent Manamorphose need to go first. Mishra's Bauble is a heinously offensive design that should have been banned years ago along with Mox Opal. Ragavan being just about everywhere is becoming a problem too, but the Bauble at the very least needs to be banned before anything else.
@@CanadianBaconPwnage the reason they won't ban ragavan is, it's a huge selling point for mh2. They made 3 good 1 drops, and out of those 3, drc is the most likely ban. Not to expensive and fuel unholy heat. I believe manamorphose will eventually be banned, but not this upcoming ban cycle as its not seeing alot of play right now. Bauble just plays to well with delirium and lurras so it will probably be axed. if it's not maybe we can play death's shadow again. The problem then becomes urzas saga, and asmo. Food it's pretty strong, and saga just goes in to many decks right now
"Mana value" is a woke term which high IQ players should reject.
I fail to see how that is the case.
@@FoxMcCloudV2 You must be simple.
Hilarious click bait title... you troll lol.
I don't think this lines up with my definition of "click bait" or "troll." But maybe I'm out of the loop!
But how is it click bait? It’s literally describing exactly what the video is about. That’s not how those words work.
@@NizzahonMagic there's only ten of them.... I really enjoy your content by the way.
P.s. I like your other channel as well.
Companion, IMO, is the worst, most egregious mechanic ever designed. Worse than Storm or Affinity or Phyrexian Mana or Energy or anything else that’s a 9 or 10 on the Storm Scale. To me, it makes the Storm Scale look like a complete joke, cause why spend so much time chronicling and dissecting power levels of mechanics and what went wrong with some if you’re just going to allow something so blatantly broken to ruin your game until it got errata’d?
Hearthstone had the same mechanic in an expansion in early 2018, called Start of Game that basically worked the same way and it broke the game. If you included Baku the Mooneater in your deck and your deck only had odd-costed cards, you start with an upgraded Hero Power, absolutely free.
It was so game-warping and overpowered that they rotated Baku and its sister card Genn Greymane a year early, which they’ve never done before or since.
It’s funny to me that Magic, which people hail as the intellectually superior game in terms of design and mechanics, made the exact same mistake. Did no one in Magic R&D play HS in 2018 or even hear about that disaster?