Fail to Find tricks only work when the search requires you to find cards with a specific characteristic. Gifts finding less than 4 works because you can't prove to your opponent that there are fewer than 4 names among cards in your library. You can't fail to find with Demonic Tutor unless your library is empty.
But unless you have 4 times the number of searched for cards or fewer cards, one of the searched cards has to be a basic land. Otherwise you are saying you have more than 4 copies of a non-basic-land card and have therefore presented an illegal deck, right? Edit: For example, say I have 9 cards in my deck and play Gifts Ungiven. I search for a creature and an artifact and “fail to find” the other two cards. What I am essentially saying is that my deck contains 4 copies of either the creature or artifact and 5 copies of the other.
@@ShakesZX For clarity, the text on Gifts was changed, it now reads as: "Search your library for up to four cards with different names and reveal them. Target opponent chooses two of those cards. Put the chosen cards into your graveyard and the rest into your hand. Then shuffle." Edit: but even if it did not, you could still do it, as seen in the video.
@ Sure, I get the errata change makes it legal now, but I’m specifically asking about when it was printed. The card was released in 2004, the ruling was made, per gatherer, in 2017.
I vaguely remember something similar in Legacy to deal with Past in Flames, where the opponent cracked a fetch land and got rid of the card with the fetch on the stack
On Arena, the "pen trick" is giving a single GG while your opponent is hovering over which creatures they want to attack with... ah, just Attack with All. Into your Settle.
I've found that a lot of times if I'm holding a combat trick on Arena (mostly in limited), I can bait the opponent into a bad block by dropping an "oops" after declaring attackers.
I remember in the covid days, using "oops" after declaring attackers would make them think you made a mistake while declaring. Only to blow them up with combat tricks to kill blockers for for lethal
I love that you made this video. I remember a yall made video a few months ago with a similar premise, but many of examples weren’t actually “plays”, and I was sad bc the original premise seemed cooler. I’m glad you rectified that with this video.
That LSV play is the reason I make other people play out their combos. A lot of the time, people assume they have the game because they run these cards, but they never run through the lines. I've helped plenty of players improve the way they finish games.
I've won 2 games where the opponent had the combo, but didn't actually know how to do it - their friend just told them if you get these 2 cards out at the same time it means you win
When KCI was legal in Modern I'd make them play it out the first time because sometimes they didn't actually know how to. The specific nonsense you did with Scrap Trawler wasn't intuitive or easily understood and people would mess it up. I knew how it worked, but I sure wasn't going to help them if they didn't know.
A friend of mine used to sometimes just say "Can I see your hand?" and sometimes his opponent would just hand it over. Then once he'd hand it back they'd ask why. "I just wanted to see it."
@thelunchlady8276 that just sounds like you were taking advantage of a vulnerable person cause you weren't good enough at the game to beat them fairly.
Small correction on “failing to find”: that only works if the tutor specifies some quality of the card(s) it finds. Cultivate specifies basic lands, Gifts Ungiven specifies unique names. A card like Demonic Tutor can’t “fail to find” because you can always demonstrate whether or not your deck contains cards.
@@karatehh6966 This is a great way to remember most of the time, but it could lead you to illegally failing to find with cards like intuition that make you reveal the cards even though they're not of a certain quality.
@@karatehh6966 better way to remember it is that if the card you're searching for has to have a certain qualifier (like basic land, creature, or in gifts case "different names") you can fail to find
@@menderbug1 The "fail to find" thing is very confusing. What happens if a person casts a spell to search for a basic land, and this spell is the last card in their hand. They claim not to find any (for whatever reason), but then a few turns later plays a basic forest. Did they just lie to me?
One specific additional caveat with Gifts is that you can’t find nothing - no matter what your deck is, you must have at least 1 card with a name in your deck, so you have to find 1.
That cling to dust play so that his opponent doesn’t get priority was a HUGE play. And that fail to find was genius. Wow I love when players use the rules to their favour to win the game.
I call this "cheating within the rules." Is it technically cheating? No, but it's definitely a way to game the system and it's always a fun and cool thing to try to do
Startest Move i‘ve ever Seen was Liliana the last hope -2/-0 on own Geist of saint traft to get under a ensnaring Bridge for Zero to get the attaking 4/4 Angel Token
Okay that golgari charm was dope. Also my respects to LSV, getting to top4 of a tournament by making your opponent concede through sheer aura because you forgot to add your wincon to the deck is the most awesome thing I've heard in a while xD
I wish there was footage of this. In the interview he specifically states that he didn't say burning wish for tendrils "because that would be illegal". This seems suspicious. I wouldn't be surprised if he did say that the first two rounds and then after realizing he had made the mistake also knew he needed to not say it in future rounds because it would be illegal. It's a great fakeout either way, but if he thought he had the spell in his sideboard for the first two rounds I would bet money he said he was using burning wish for it. If he didn't then he is brilliant, if he did he's still brilliant but also a liar and a cheat.
It seems likely that one of his 2 opponents would have called him out for it in the aftermath of this had he said it. Either on the day, or sometime after since that fact became an important part of the story and his integrity in the situation. At the very least, because neither opponent seems to have come out of the woodwork and accused him, I'm pretty happy to give him the benefit of the doubt here But besides that conjecture, it's just the correct play to just say I am casting Wish and not announce what you're searching for until it resolves and it's LSV so completely plausible
I remember a game of commander I was in and a player had cast Approach of the Second Sun, and already had it back in hand, just needed the mana. We had just had the board wiped of most creatures, couldn't just take him out, and only I was playing Blue (I'm pretty notorious for not running interaction lol...) so we were scrambling to find a way to stop him. The monored player had Chaos Warp and joked that he could just warp one of his lands. The Second Sun player had exactly 9 mana, so he'd still be able to cast it, but I looked the Red player dead in the eyes and said "It could matter, do it." So he did, I go to my turn, draw, pass the turn cause the game was seemingly over. The Second Sun is cast, and I throw down a Spell Pierce... If he had drawn an untapped land, he would have won, but he didn't... and was 1 mana short of paying the 2. Maybe nothing on these plays but was still one of the coolest moments for me XD They always respect the Spell Pierce now!
I can highly recommend the game of CardsMarket, that Frank Karsten wins by splitting TWO Fact or Fictions 5 vs 0 cards of Toralf Severin. That plays was incredible. It's rare to see a 5:0 FoF being the play, but winning because doing it twice is just unbelievable. And it takes a player like Frank Karsten to pull this one off.
@@shwars576 bc Blood Oath. Toffel took 0 the first time. Then Duressed on his turn and cast FOF eot. Frank drew Blood Oath that draw step and split 5-0 again.
I've had an opponent split 5-0 for me and I took the 0. There was an It That Betrays among them and we both knew I wanted it in the graveyard to reanimate. Next turn I cast living death. A dream of that deck would be to have ITB on the field when resolving living death which makes for my favorite combo in magic. They sacrifice all of their creatures who then join your ranks 😊
@@pw709 That wouldn't have stopped the Selesnya Charm from exiling the Scavenging Ooze. As far as I can tell, he made the only play available to save his creature.
@brennanmack563 Ichikawa made a good play, but the bluff was transparent since he could have exiled another creature before damage. If that option wasn't available it would have been a more interesting, albeit less exciting play. He would have had to decide whether to use golgari charm to regenerate the ooze and walk into selesnya charm. As it stands, Cunningham misplayed given the information he had. I tend to prefer plays where both players play optimally but one is simply more creative in their thinking.
@@pw709 As I read the situation, if Ichikawa had exiled another creature to make scooze a 6/6, the Selesnya Charm still would have exiled the scooze, and all 5 trample damage from the wurm token would have gone through. Exiling additional creatures wouldn't have stopped the issue of the exile effect from Selesnya Charm.
@@MaesterSaturn Okay, we're talking about different things. I am adopting Cunningham's perspective. Ichikawa obviously had the read on Selesnya Charm, so pumping to a 6/6 makes no sense. But Cunningham doesn't get blown out if he just let's the trade happen.
One of my favorite plays of all time comes from the starcity games invitational Kennen Haas brings in helm of obedience to counter a player who brought in R.I.P. winning the game instantly using his opponents card to help him combo.
i remember going to an old PTQ where someone was playing the Dragonstorm deck but had no dragons in the deck at all. They won by people forfeiting when dragonstorm resolved lol
No, it wasn’t dragon storm, it was ANT. It was LSV, he forgot to put tendrils of agony in his sideboard to wish for, he made it to the top 8 by saying “burning wish, storm count 9” or something along those lines and his opponents scooped.
I saw one guy win without the dragons, either. You were supposed to get up to 4 storm and search for Bogardan Hellkites. His opponents would ask to see his hand, because Dragonstorm couldn't put dragons from hand into play, so you could theoretically survive the turn if they couldn't put a hellkite directly from library into play. Not having the dragons in your deck was a good way to never have them stuck in your hand.
Greatest play I ever made was in a game of commander. The biggest threat at the table had all kinds of nonsense on board including an It That Betrays. I had a Phage the Untouchable and a face down Chromeshell Crab. He attacked one of my opponents that only had one creature and I knew I couldn't win if that player lost the game. So I morphed my Crab and exchanged that one creature with Phage. The annihilator trigger resolved with my opponent sacrificing Phage, then the big threat guy had to put it on the battlefield under his control from his own It That Betrays and lost the game.
A little play I was really proud of in Commander once was this: I was playing otters prowess/storm with Ral Crackling Wit on the battlefield. I was anticipating removal once he reached 10 loyalty, so once he got to 9 I cast Siege Smash to prevent anyone else from getting priority, got the last counter I needed as a ral trigger, and with priority passed back to me I could get the storm emblem! It wasn't an especially clever play compared to the pros here but I was very proud to have seen it.
Off the top of my head, Antoine Ruel vs Kenji Tsumura in PT Los Angeles, when Ruel baits Tsumura in playing a Psychatog into his Force Spike. He builds the bait from turn 1 by playing a tapped land and then turn 2 by not protecting his Duress. Another one that comes to mind is Makihito Mihara winning Worlds with Dragonstorm combo by very smartly not going full storm vs control matches. He'd build up mana, make a first dragonstorm for 2 or 3, give 10-12 damage to opp. Opp taps out to wrath the board, and Mihara just storms again ftw.
I was playing a standard tournament in Kaladesh times, I was on mardu veichles and my opponent was on temur Marvel. I got him down to 6 life before he wiped my board and a turn later could spin and he found an ulamog who would make quick work of my life total. I did win however because I hade two copies of Unlicensed Disintegration and with ulamog being indestructable was able to burn him out with them!
One 300 IQ play I saw in Worlds was using Turn Inside Out on a opponent's creature that is blocking Heartfire Hero, with the objective of making Heartfire Hero die in combat, and then hitting the opponent for lethal.
@@Aaackermann True, most were pretty cheesy (not to say it wouldn't have worked on me). The Karsten one was nice too, but it was essentially solved in deckbuilding. Huschenbeth really did some clever thinking on the spot.
The best play I ever made was during Kamigawa-Ravnica standard. I was playing Ghazi Glare and my opponent was playing a Greater Gift style deck, based on recurring Kamigawa dragons for the death triggers over and over. For this story it's important to note that the legend rule was a bit different then: If two or more legendary permanents with the same name were on the battlefield at the same time, they all went to graveyard. Also I ran a bit of a different Glare list: I used Chord of Calling instead of Congregate at Dawn, and a bunch of utility guys, like one spirit that can kill an enchantment, that kind of stuff. Anyways, the game got to the point where I had Glare and a couple of saprolings, and my opponent has a Yosei, which was being locked down by the Glare. So I was chipping for a couple points every turn. He didn't have Greater Good. Then this happened: "I cast another Yosei." This would have caused both Yoseis to die, tapping 10 of my permanents and skipping 2 untap steps. Basically a time stretch, and he would have won the game easily. "In response I cast Chord of Calling for 2." He let it resolve, as a random bear wasn't going to do anything. So I search out the 1-of Samurai of the Pale Curtain in my deck and put it into play. Yosei and his twin get exiled with no death triggers.
Similar to the Golgari/Selesnya charm play, there was a Pro Tour (Dragons of Tarkir I think?) where, in the feature match for one of the Swiss rounds, one player flipped up Den Protector, returning Bile Blight to their hand, and then cast it on their own Dragonlord Dromoka to protect it from an opposing Elspeth, Sun's Champion minus. I can't remember who the players were but it was a pretty big brain play.
My biggest brain play was in a Jund mirror, very similar to the "create a stack for himself" one. I had Tarmogoyf in play and a bolt in had. Opponent had nothing in play. They cast Bloodbraid Elf. Cascade resolves and they reveal a Lilliana of the Veil. I let LOTV resolve but with BBE still on the stack I bolt the LOTV so they can't answer my Tarmogoyf and I ride the goyf to victory.
Karstens play is why I love that card. Gifts ungiven is my 3rd favorite card, number 2 is fevered visions (won my first gameday, and had the most interesting run - game before the finals, i beat a lili last hope and jace emblem in back to back games - sphinx of the final word was the only creature) number 1 is thoughtseize - theros print foil (its the set where i started - love mono black devotion more than I should).
Wed be magic buddies fs my fave card is also theros thoughtseize due to me starting in that era and i used to fuck ppl up with that fevered visions mill deck
I watched the Ichikawa match live, it was the best match of the tournament. Sphinx's Rev was fun but ugh what a deck to watch the mirror for... I counter your elixir of immortality, I counter your counter, resolves. We will fight this fight again when u have 4 counters...
Adding to Estratti's play the circumstance that he had won game 1 with "break the day" (1w instant +1/+1 to all team), so Martell knew about it and that's the information Sam exploits with his masterful play, which I think is beyond other (also great) plays in this vid: they played masterfully the cards they had in hand, Sam played with a card he didn't have. Great vid! Keep it up!
I actually did the fail to find in a tournament before Frank. I cast Bribery in a standard tournament and his only creature was Nether Spirit that he could bounce so I left it in his deck.
I actually did something similar to LSV with no win in the deck. I was at a GP playing ad nauseum in modern in the mirror. For round 3 i had taken out my lightning storm, giving me only a lab man win. My opponent started going off for his win, and I'm the heat of the moment i had forgotten i had taken my instant win out and went for it as well. There was a counter war over my play which i won and my opponent then scooped as he assumed i would then go on to win, when actually i couldn't
A little bit of correction at the 3:50-3:53 mark. You don't always have the option to "fail to find" you can only fail to find if there is a defined characteristic in the card(s) you're looking for. If gifts allowed you to search for any 4 cards, and the deck has at least 4 cards in it, you can't fail to find. Since gifts outlines you have to search for 4 cards with different names, there exists the possibility that all that is left in the library is say "Islands" the player is allowed to search for a fewer number of cards in this instance rather than concede information from the hidden zone to their opponent.
craziest play i ever made was in a game of edh. my commander is squee the immortal and i have underworld breach in play, and phyrexian altar in play, and jeska's will and two other cards in my graveyard. i escaped jeska's will, chose both modes, then sacrificed squee to help pay the mana cost, then exiled squee from my graveyard to help the escape cost. and still got both modes.
My other half, playing a deck made from "junk" cards (didn't want to spend money on new ones) vs a vintage Caw Blade deck. She got a god hand. Her turn one and on the play: swamp, dark rit, dark rit, hymn to tourach, hymn to tourach. Lol
Mine was more luck based than 300iq, but i was playing vintage cube at my lgs. I had an agathas soul cauldron with an urza lord high artificer exiled with it and 2 creatures with +1/+1 counters on them. I also had a one ring with enough counters on it to kill me on my upkeep. Opponent finishes his turn, passes to me. On my upkeep with the ring trigger i remember that i have a tishanas tidebinder in my deck that could counter the trigger. I then tap ring to draw a few cards, didnt find it. I then have enough mana to spin urza twice in an attempt to find it. First time, miss. Second time, hit it! I then had just enough power on the board to attack my opponent, exile the walking ballista in his graveyard with soul cauldron and ping him for the win.
This is awesome and all, but it feels wrong for the oldest card you listed to be less than 5 years old in a vintage game(outside of your opponent's WB). Lol
That’s a good one! Reminds me of a luck play I made in VC to win with Echo/Hullbreacher. I was super dead the next turn if I didn’t do something. I had HB on board, Echo of Eons in hand, and 5 mana in play, hoping to draw a land to cast it. Instead I draw a blank. But I also have Mind Twist in hand. So I Mind Twist myself for 1 - with a 1/4 chance of hitting Echo - and I discard Echo, cast it for 2U with flashback, and go on to win. 🎉
Addendum to the fail to find rule: You can only fail to find, when the card has a certain qualifier. So Demonic Tutor always has to find a card, as long you have cards in your library. With Gifts old wording you would at least have to find one card, since a single card always satisfies it's qualifier.
I once got an opponent so used to getting his spells countered that he threw the card into his graveyard before he asked "Wait...how much was that Broken Ambitions for?" "It was for 0. You declined to pay the 0. Leave it in the graveyard."
I still think LSVs 300 iq play is when he caused MoDo to crash when he had 3 O-rings target themselves as they were the only legal targets. Seeing MoDo try to rebuild the game multiple times was amazing.
My favorite recent big brain play was using an unable to scream on an opponents Patched Plaything that was cast from hand so it had two -1/-1 counters. The Patched Plaything became a 0/0 thanks to the -1/-1 counters and died to state based action.
I'd love to claim the same thing as a big brain play - problem is, I did it by accident, lol - I completely forgot about the counters and just needed to get the double strike out of the way - I think I was more surprised than my opponent...
@@danpearman270 I was a little less kind, I noticed the line, said "I am going to do a magic trick", and then got the players next to us to watch too. There was stunned silent laughter at the ridiculousness of it.
"The most confident spell pierce"; where (I forget who) counters with a spell pierce so confidently, that his opponent doesn't just pay the 2 mana, which he has available.
@@MTGGoldfish Yeah I guess. I thought it was a bit like the pen trick, just convince the opponent that the play is good, here using fast movement to look confident hehe
Lsv is my favorite big brain player. I liked his "Seasons Past" top 8 pro tour Deck he ran years ago and been watching him cube ever since. Great content Seth
My best magic play? I was playing Gitrog in EDH and I had a crucible of worlds in my hand as well as Thespian Stage + Dark Depths on the field. I knew my opponent had a path to exile in hand so I had been holding off on using the stage to copy depths. I noticed that I had 8 mana available and because I had top decked a crucible of worlds, I activated the combo to bait out the path to exile. I then played the crucible and using the second land play from gitrog, I replayed the stage and depths to do the combo again.
Important note on fail to find: the rule requires the card search to be qualified. It works because the cards must have different names in the case of gifts ungiven.
During SCG Open Nashville, I waited for first strike damage to resolve before casting Faith's Shield on my own basic land. The first strike damage took me below the Fateful Hour threshold, giving me CoP. I won next turn on the swing back.
The LSV story about Tendrils is the sole reason so many Magic players waste their time playing unwinnable games. People would be better off if they forgot that one
I like how LSV later stated that all the token/Adanto stuff was just show for the camera because he knew Dezani would attack as it is the right play and Dezani is too good a player to not attack there knowing his decklist only had a single copy of Settle. So he knew it would happen and had enough foresight to add a little show for the viewers and commentators to make it more exiting. Which probably is even more brain power than just baiting successfully
2:42 : for the gifts ungiven thing . just to mess up with the guy, I think I would have said something like " well, I choose the other pile, so your dragons are in your hand"
Can't do that. You don't make piles with Gifts, you put 4 cards (or however many you find) on the table and your opponent has to choose 2 of them to put in your graveyard.
I am so glad the Ichikawa v Cunningham match made it in here, it's a rather inconspicuous play in the history of pro magic but it's one of my absolute favorites
I have a fun play I did in YGO that I still like. I used Mystic Box on Scapeghost, destroying a monster on the opponents field and sending Scapeghost to one of the opponent's main monster zones in attack position. I have Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon also on field, which does double battle damage over monsters. Scapechost is 0 ATK and OEPD is 2500 ATK. I have Rain Bozu as the high scale, so with enough cards in the extra deck and through other effects I got to buff OEPD to 3200, delivering a 6400 ATK which results in a one-shot lethal swing. I originally did this play using Steel Calvary of Dinon leveraging its STAT-HALVING TO SELF, making it a 400 ATK body to EASILY swing over. I buffed OEPD over 4000 and even over 6000 with some other combos, making for a lethal play in the TCG/OCG format easily too.
Got someone with a Cephalid Coliseum while they had no cards in library and an Emurakyl reshuffle trigger on the stack. Not that big brain but pretty sweet I thought..
there's a great video from JudgingFTW about information and cheating, and how the rules are set in a certain way on purpose to allow bluffing to be part of the game. this video is a great set of examples of why Magic is a richer game for it.
When Splinter Twin was the deck to beat in Modern, I would routinely make the Twin player fight over their Twin resolving just to get them with Rakdos Charm on the swing.
I remember the guy playing prosperity bloom that exiled his last remaining drain life to keep the combo going and asked his opponent if he really wanted him to go through the motions of comboing off or not.
Well I played mono blue devotion with master of waves . There was a hydra that had pro blue. Thasa was in the deck . Also was a card called rapid hybridization which destroyed a creature and gave its controller a 3/3 green frog lizard. My opponent made the hydra a 3/3. I couldn’t target the hydra but I could target my indestructible thasa and then block the hydra with the 3/3 and boy did I feel so cool when I did.
I run a Captain Sisay deck in commander (Selesnya, not WUBRG) and I realized that after a while, once I would Tutor for an Ashaya my friends would just concede since I would usually have the win 2 seconds after. Fast forward to me playing at our LGS with one of my friends in the pod and I don't have enough mana on board to actually use my combo, but I decide to tutor for Ashaya anyway just to have it in my hand. Immediately, my friend concedes and starts convincing the other players that I obviously have the win and they need to just scoop so we can play another one. One by one they start to scoop, and I started to ask them if they were sure they wanted to, to which they all responded by asking me how the combo works and then agreeing without checking my mana. I felt pretty bad after the game was over so as we were tallying our points, I explained to them that I didn't actually have the mana for any of it and it was purely a safety tutor and if they would've looked at the board they would've seen I didn't have the mana for the win. Luckily we were all able to laugh about it
One of the greatest plays I pulled off was my opponent playing a Surgical Extraction, I responded with my own Surgical Extraction. Then, FtF in my hand or deck, after it resolved, I slammed the same card to complete my combo. 😮
The Ad Nauseum one reminds me of a modern match I won against old Ad Naus that used Lightning Storm as its main win con. I was up 1-0, and game 2, I played a Pithing Needle naming lightning storm on the first turn and won the match. It was pretty funny.
Javi was on the wrong side of that drown in loch stack but I think he’s okay with his career especially after this weekend wins player of the year in the worlds semis after being down 0-2 and comes back off a crazy game 4 with a desperation doomsday excoriator to not die to his 3 annex’s
My biggest brain play was in an Emperor game, where I was playing Boros and realized that while I couldn't kill my opponent, my Emperor could. But my OP could kill my Emperor if they had a chance to attack into them first. So I had to concoct a plan during my opponents turn to get them to full swing into me, and then use my own burn to finishing killing ***myself*** during their turn so targeting would reset in time for my Emperor to get the first attack back.
One of my favourite bluff plays is in legacy I play death and taxes. And after resolving stone forge mystic on turn 2, I tank for a short moment and then say "sorry, just not sure if i want kaldra or jitte here" when i already have the kaldra in hand. I get the jitte and the opp usually doesnt kill the sfm and I get to put my mean 5/5 into play
The closest I've gotten to a "300 IQ play" was when I was playing Esper Stoneblade in Modern against my friend who was playing Abzan Midrange. I Fatal Pushed my Snapcaster Mage so I could have enough cards in my gy to Drown In the Loch his Liliana of the Veil. Idk if this was all that big brain of a play, but it was definitely the best I had in that moment
Back in kaladesh standard i played against someone playing the infinite thopter combo i let him hit infinite then asked how many he was making the next spell cast was fumigate followed by some artifact destruction spell
One thing Seth doesn't really talk about is true tutors like Demonic you can't fail to find, Gifts says 4 cards with different names, what if your library only has 3 cards with different names later.
My own personal 300 IQ play comes from a match in the fan-made Penny Dreadful format, played on MTGO. My own deck was a horribly jank brew -- as *most* PD decks tend to be, given that if a card is actually good it doesn't stay in the format long -- I think this was one of my Izzet or Grixis prowess/control builds. My opponent, meanwhile, had an actual game plan involving using Narcomoeba and self-mill. Once they got a couple of specific creatures in the graveyard they had a loop of Narcomoeba abilities to mill their entire deck into the graveyard then use a combination of other creature abilities from the milled cards to power up Narcomoeba to 20/20 (or higher) and swing for lethal. I forget which game of the set it was, but my opponent's plan seemed to be working. I had completely tapped out for casting my own spells on the previous turn, and they played their Narcomoeba not worried about any counters, because Force of Will wasn't legal in Penny Dreadful (and almost certainly never will be). They went through the loop to mill their entire library, then started doing the loop to power up Narcomoeba to 20, without any concern whatsoever because what could I possibly do to ruin their day, I was tapped out! They were probably annoyed, in fact, that I hadn't conceded yet. Then they moved to combat. And swung. And I paid the alternate cost to cast Snapback, targetting Narcomoeba. Since it's a pretty obscure card -- even to PD enthusiasts, given that it's no longer legal there -- I'll explain it here: Snapback is an instant for 1U, except with "You may exile a blue card from your hand rather than pay this spell's mana cost", just like Force of Will. Unlike Force of Will, the effect is not "counter target spell" but "return target creature to it's owner's hand". I forget exactly how long the pause was before it hit them what I'd just done, and they typed in chat: "Wait, I'm just f*cked aren't I?" To which I replied, "Yep". The key, of course, is that I waited until attackers were declared before I cast it. If I cast it main phase, they had enough mana up to re-cast Narcomoeba. But since it's in combat, they can't re-cast Narcomoeba until their second main phase -- meaning they can't attack with it this turn. And since they couildn't attack that turn, they had to pass the turn to me, at which point I passed the turn back to them, and they lost on their draw step since -- *as part of their deck's plan* -- they had milled their *entire* library.
One of my favorite good plays I made in standard is against the Squirming emergence deck who uses a saga that has you exile an instant or sorcery from grave and cast it as the final chapter, I just used to proliferate that card while playing toxic because my opponent is unlikely to have mana up to pay it and exiling the card is mandatory so instead of getting to flashback their spell they're forced to exile it instead.
Hey I made almost the exact same play as LSV in my LGS! Pretend I was going to note my new life so my opponent also attacked with galta into my settle the wreckage
How an opponent attacks always changes how you respond to the attack. If it looks like it's just a small attack you take it, the more worth it they make it then you wreck it.
A suggestion that's maybe more Genius or Grifter: Profane Command "all my legal targets gain fear" implying Chameleon Colossus gets fear but it has protection from black.
18:48 Arne should’ve played the Fable Passage on the previous turn to making this play, because then he could’ve done the same trick but without forcing himself to spew the Drown in the Loch on the Innkeeper (rather by cracking the Fable Passage). I remember watching it live and thinking about how this was a punt a turn in advance, but I guess 99.9% of magic players had never seen this trick before at the time so everyone was dumbfounded that this was even possible at all. (It’s possible that Arne did want to commit himself to killing the Innkeeper with Drown anyways if Javier drew Ox that turn, but based on how long he paused, I can only assume that this was a mistake and he was trying to make sure that his line was the best way to recover.)
Not biggest brain per say, but I just so happened to be running a Guardian of the Gateless in a bad angel deck, and I was able to drop it in against a budget Krenko, and somehow managed to keep that thing alive for 6 turns, even reanimating it at one point with a Defy Death after she bit more than she could chew, and slowly whittled him down with his lack of flyers as he focused everything on the Guardian. He was not happy
What about the time when Seth made that seige rhino deck without any seige rhinos??
Best deck ever 😂
Oops, no rhinos!
I vaguely remember this. It was one of his 30+ rhino decks. He spent so long on scryfall finding clone effects that he forgot the actual rhinos.
It was 100 rhinos@@derekcline950
@@Cruzer50143 Seth will never live this down lol
"Somehow, the announcers say the wrong card twice"
Well, you wouldn't know anything about THAT now, would you, Seth?
Also Seth: pronouncing "escape" as "exscape" twice in one breath
Seth always says the right card, he just uses the wrong sounds.
Shadowsphere
egg-scape egg-scape egg-scape
eggs-cape eggs-cape eggs-cape
Fail to Find tricks only work when the search requires you to find cards with a specific characteristic. Gifts finding less than 4 works because you can't prove to your opponent that there are fewer than 4 names among cards in your library. You can't fail to find with Demonic Tutor unless your library is empty.
Yeah. That also means you can't do the double Entomb trick with Intuition since it doesn't have the "different names" restriction.
But unless you have 4 times the number of searched for cards or fewer cards, one of the searched cards has to be a basic land. Otherwise you are saying you have more than 4 copies of a non-basic-land card and have therefore presented an illegal deck, right?
Edit: For example, say I have 9 cards in my deck and play Gifts Ungiven. I search for a creature and an artifact and “fail to find” the other two cards. What I am essentially saying is that my deck contains 4 copies of either the creature or artifact and 5 copies of the other.
@@ShakesZX For clarity, the text on Gifts was changed, it now reads as:
"Search your library for up to four cards with different names and reveal them. Target opponent chooses two of those cards. Put the chosen cards into your graveyard and the rest into your hand. Then shuffle."
Edit: but even if it did not, you could still do it, as seen in the video.
@ Sure, I get the errata change makes it legal now, but I’m specifically asking about when it was printed. The card was released in 2004, the ruling was made, per gatherer, in 2017.
@@ShakesZX The gatherer note is there for clarification to players, the rule was already that a long time before 2017.
The arne play was so sick, never seen it before
@@lesternomo6578 Probably the most impressive on the list, since it didn't rely on a misplay from the opp.
@@pw709 Yep, that one and Frank Karsten's play were genius understanding of the rules of magic, not tricks in psychology.
I vaguely remember something similar in Legacy to deal with Past in Flames, where the opponent cracked a fetch land and got rid of the card with the fetch on the stack
@@Sugarman96 Yeah it was a puzzle that made sounds rounds at one point
Karsten had a great article on CFB some years ago about different timing tricks you could use to your advantage. I can’t find it anymore though.
The Tendrils story has real "forgot to add the Siege Rhinos" energy
On Arena, the "pen trick" is giving a single GG while your opponent is hovering over which creatures they want to attack with... ah, just Attack with All. Into your Settle.
I've found that a lot of times if I'm holding a combat trick on Arena (mostly in limited), I can bait the opponent into a bad block by dropping an "oops" after declaring attackers.
@xx99Username99xx Oh yeah. The old "I misplayed - please have mercy on me! Psych!" Love it.
I remember in the covid days, using "oops" after declaring attackers would make them think you made a mistake while declaring. Only to blow them up with combat tricks to kill blockers for for lethal
Seth actually infamously did this a few years ago! It's here on RUclips, video called "against the odds top moments of 2021" at 11:30
I personally find this not smart but just scummy. It's the main reason why I disabled emotes on arena.
I love that you made this video. I remember a yall made video a few months ago with a similar premise, but many of examples weren’t actually “plays”, and I was sad bc the original premise seemed cooler. I’m glad you rectified that with this video.
Yeah, the comments from the first one made it clear people wanted a video that was more than just great top decks.
@@MTGGoldfish eyyyy I made a comment about wanting to see 300 IQ plays... thanks Seth!
That LSV play is the reason I make other people play out their combos. A lot of the time, people assume they have the game because they run these cards, but they never run through the lines. I've helped plenty of players improve the way they finish games.
And too many players play Storm decks sloppy and f up if you make them play it through...
While that is usually a good idea, sometimes you have to take the clock into account.
I've won 2 games where the opponent had the combo, but didn't actually know how to do it - their friend just told them if you get these 2 cards out at the same time it means you win
When KCI was legal in Modern I'd make them play it out the first time because sometimes they didn't actually know how to. The specific nonsense you did with Scrap Trawler wasn't intuitive or easily understood and people would mess it up. I knew how it worked, but I sure wasn't going to help them if they didn't know.
A friend of mine used to sometimes just say "Can I see your hand?" and sometimes his opponent would just hand it over. Then once he'd hand it back they'd ask why. "I just wanted to see it."
@thelunchlady8276 that just sounds like you were taking advantage of a vulnerable person cause you weren't good enough at the game to beat them fairly.
@@thelunchlady8276 wow that's impressive. I didn't know you could bully a disabled person and still think you're the good guy afterwards
@@thelunchlady8276it did sound pretty terrible, ngl
@@thelunchlady8276it still sounds pretty terrible, so that's cheating on top of abusing the trust of someone you know is mentally less off then you.
Small correction on “failing to find”: that only works if the tutor specifies some quality of the card(s) it finds. Cultivate specifies basic lands, Gifts Ungiven specifies unique names. A card like Demonic Tutor can’t “fail to find” because you can always demonstrate whether or not your deck contains cards.
Easiest way i remember it, is if i have to reveal the card, i dont need to find it. Funky little rules.
@@karatehh6966 This is a great way to remember most of the time, but it could lead you to illegally failing to find with cards like intuition that make you reveal the cards even though they're not of a certain quality.
@@karatehh6966 better way to remember it is that if the card you're searching for has to have a certain qualifier (like basic land, creature, or in gifts case "different names") you can fail to find
@@menderbug1 The "fail to find" thing is very confusing. What happens if a person casts a spell to search for a basic land, and this spell is the last card in their hand. They claim not to find any (for whatever reason), but then a few turns later plays a basic forest. Did they just lie to me?
One specific additional caveat with Gifts is that you can’t find nothing - no matter what your deck is, you must have at least 1 card with a name in your deck, so you have to find 1.
The unsleeved cards at worlds 05 are mind blowing. Everyone used sleeves back than idk what's going on
Apparently at the time they sleeves caused huge glare when recording so they were told to take off the sleeves during feature matches and top 8s.
Back in the day cameras were kind of buns. Sleeves would cause too much glare and make the game unwatchable unfortunately
That makes a ton of sense. @@simonberest9302
@@ZacharyDePue the fact in 2005 we were complaining about old cameras saying the exact same thing you just said, is so funny to me.
For a long time in the early years of the game it was actually illegal to play with sleeves.
That cling to dust play so that his opponent doesn’t get priority was a HUGE play. And that fail to find was genius.
Wow I love when players use the rules to their favour to win the game.
Technically they do get priority normally, but creatures can only be cast when there's no spells on the stack so arne gets to exile the ox!
I call this "cheating within the rules." Is it technically cheating? No, but it's definitely a way to game the system and it's always a fun and cool thing to try to do
Startest Move i‘ve ever Seen was Liliana the last hope -2/-0 on own Geist of saint traft to get under a ensnaring Bridge for Zero to get the attaking 4/4 Angel Token
Okay that golgari charm was dope. Also my respects to LSV, getting to top4 of a tournament by making your opponent concede through sheer aura because you forgot to add your wincon to the deck is the most awesome thing I've heard in a while xD
I wish there was footage of this. In the interview he specifically states that he didn't say burning wish for tendrils "because that would be illegal". This seems suspicious. I wouldn't be surprised if he did say that the first two rounds and then after realizing he had made the mistake also knew he needed to not say it in future rounds because it would be illegal. It's a great fakeout either way, but if he thought he had the spell in his sideboard for the first two rounds I would bet money he said he was using burning wish for it. If he didn't then he is brilliant, if he did he's still brilliant but also a liar and a cheat.
It seems likely that one of his 2 opponents would have called him out for it in the aftermath of this had he said it. Either on the day, or sometime after since that fact became an important part of the story and his integrity in the situation. At the very least, because neither opponent seems to have come out of the woodwork and accused him, I'm pretty happy to give him the benefit of the doubt here
But besides that conjecture, it's just the correct play to just say I am casting Wish and not announce what you're searching for until it resolves and it's LSV so completely plausible
I remember a game of commander I was in and a player had cast Approach of the Second Sun, and already had it back in hand, just needed the mana. We had just had the board wiped of most creatures, couldn't just take him out, and only I was playing Blue (I'm pretty notorious for not running interaction lol...) so we were scrambling to find a way to stop him. The monored player had Chaos Warp and joked that he could just warp one of his lands. The Second Sun player had exactly 9 mana, so he'd still be able to cast it, but I looked the Red player dead in the eyes and said "It could matter, do it." So he did, I go to my turn, draw, pass the turn cause the game was seemingly over. The Second Sun is cast, and I throw down a Spell Pierce... If he had drawn an untapped land, he would have won, but he didn't... and was 1 mana short of paying the 2. Maybe nothing on these plays but was still one of the coolest moments for me XD They always respect the Spell Pierce now!
I can highly recommend the game of CardsMarket, that Frank Karsten wins by splitting TWO Fact or Fictions 5 vs 0 cards of Toralf Severin. That plays was incredible. It's rare to see a 5:0 FoF being the play, but winning because doing it twice is just unbelievable. And it takes a player like Frank Karsten to pull this one off.
That was the most big brained play I could ever think of lol. Just goes to show that playing to your outs is almost always the correct play.
and all only for a perfectly timed topdeck.
How did that make him win?
@@shwars576 bc Blood Oath. Toffel took 0 the first time. Then Duressed on his turn and cast FOF eot. Frank drew Blood Oath that draw step and split 5-0 again.
I've had an opponent split 5-0 for me and I took the 0. There was an It That Betrays among them and we both knew I wanted it in the graveyard to reanimate. Next turn I cast living death.
A dream of that deck would be to have ITB on the field when resolving living death which makes for my favorite combo in magic. They sacrifice all of their creatures who then join your ranks 😊
Ichikawa's golgari charm play was pretty awesome.
Seth should have mentioned that he could exile another creature to eat the wurm, but chose not to. Cunningham should have seen that huge red flag.
@@pw709 That wouldn't have stopped the Selesnya Charm from exiling the Scavenging Ooze. As far as I can tell, he made the only play available to save his creature.
@brennanmack563 Ichikawa made a good play, but the bluff was transparent since he could have exiled another creature before damage.
If that option wasn't available it would have been a more interesting, albeit less exciting play. He would have had to decide whether to use golgari charm to regenerate the ooze and walk into selesnya charm.
As it stands, Cunningham misplayed given the information he had.
I tend to prefer plays where both players play optimally but one is simply more creative in their thinking.
@@pw709 As I read the situation, if Ichikawa had exiled another creature to make scooze a 6/6, the Selesnya Charm still would have exiled the scooze, and all 5 trample damage from the wurm token would have gone through. Exiling additional creatures wouldn't have stopped the issue of the exile effect from Selesnya Charm.
@@MaesterSaturn Okay, we're talking about different things. I am adopting Cunningham's perspective.
Ichikawa obviously had the read on Selesnya Charm, so pumping to a 6/6 makes no sense. But Cunningham doesn't get blown out if he just let's the trade happen.
One of my favorite plays of all time comes from the starcity games invitational Kennen Haas brings in helm of obedience to counter a player who brought in R.I.P. winning the game instantly using his opponents card to help him combo.
This is beautiful. My kinda sideboard jank, exactly!
i remember going to an old PTQ where someone was playing the Dragonstorm deck but had no dragons in the deck at all.
They won by people forfeiting when dragonstorm resolved lol
No, it wasn’t dragon storm, it was ANT. It was LSV, he forgot to put tendrils of agony in his sideboard to wish for, he made it to the top 8 by saying “burning wish, storm count 9” or something along those lines and his opponents scooped.
@@HomeCookinMTG Reading the comment explains the comment
@@electra_ and reading the joke explains the joke
I saw one guy win without the dragons, either. You were supposed to get up to 4 storm and search for Bogardan Hellkites. His opponents would ask to see his hand, because Dragonstorm couldn't put dragons from hand into play, so you could theoretically survive the turn if they couldn't put a hellkite directly from library into play.
Not having the dragons in your deck was a good way to never have them stuck in your hand.
Greatest play I ever made was in a game of commander. The biggest threat at the table had all kinds of nonsense on board including an It That Betrays. I had a Phage the Untouchable and a face down Chromeshell Crab. He attacked one of my opponents that only had one creature and I knew I couldn't win if that player lost the game. So I morphed my Crab and exchanged that one creature with Phage. The annihilator trigger resolved with my opponent sacrificing Phage, then the big threat guy had to put it on the battlefield under his control from his own It That Betrays and lost the game.
That's so cool!
Frank Karsten is an living legend!
A little play I was really proud of in Commander once was this: I was playing otters prowess/storm with Ral Crackling Wit on the battlefield. I was anticipating removal once he reached 10 loyalty, so once he got to 9 I cast Siege Smash to prevent anyone else from getting priority, got the last counter I needed as a ral trigger, and with priority passed back to me I could get the storm emblem!
It wasn't an especially clever play compared to the pros here but I was very proud to have seen it.
I much prefer these ones rather than the previous videos which was mostly just 'best topdecks'
100%
OH MY GOD, IT'S LIGHTNING HELIX~
Off the top of my head, Antoine Ruel vs Kenji Tsumura in PT Los Angeles, when Ruel baits Tsumura in playing a Psychatog into his Force Spike. He builds the bait from turn 1 by playing a tapped land and then turn 2 by not protecting his Duress.
Another one that comes to mind is Makihito Mihara winning Worlds with Dragonstorm combo by very smartly not going full storm vs control matches. He'd build up mana, make a first dragonstorm for 2 or 3, give 10-12 damage to opp. Opp taps out to wrath the board, and Mihara just storms again ftw.
I was playing a standard tournament in Kaladesh times, I was on mardu veichles and my opponent was on temur Marvel. I got him down to 6 life before he wiped my board and a turn later could spin and he found an ulamog who would make quick work of my life total. I did win however because I hade two copies of Unlicensed Disintegration and with ulamog being indestructable was able to burn him out with them!
One 300 IQ play I saw in Worlds was using Turn Inside Out on a opponent's creature that is blocking Heartfire Hero, with the objective of making Heartfire Hero die in combat, and then hitting the opponent for lethal.
The Huschenbeth play was the most impressive, in my opinion.
Absolutely, since most were "just" bluff the opponent to do something.
@@Aaackermann True, most were pretty cheesy (not to say it wouldn't have worked on me). The Karsten one was nice too, but it was essentially solved in deckbuilding. Huschenbeth really did some clever thinking on the spot.
@@mathijs1987j Also the Golgari guy! His play was also great thinking!
@@Aaackermann True, that was a real play! I found it less impressive than Huschenbeth, but it was clever nonetheless.
Love these types of videos seth, theyre really great!
Thanks!
The best play I ever made was during Kamigawa-Ravnica standard. I was playing Ghazi Glare and my opponent was playing a Greater Gift style deck, based on recurring Kamigawa dragons for the death triggers over and over. For this story it's important to note that the legend rule was a bit different then: If two or more legendary permanents with the same name were on the battlefield at the same time, they all went to graveyard. Also I ran a bit of a different Glare list: I used Chord of Calling instead of Congregate at Dawn, and a bunch of utility guys, like one spirit that can kill an enchantment, that kind of stuff.
Anyways, the game got to the point where I had Glare and a couple of saprolings, and my opponent has a Yosei, which was being locked down by the Glare. So I was chipping for a couple points every turn. He didn't have Greater Good. Then this happened:
"I cast another Yosei." This would have caused both Yoseis to die, tapping 10 of my permanents and skipping 2 untap steps. Basically a time stretch, and he would have won the game easily.
"In response I cast Chord of Calling for 2." He let it resolve, as a random bear wasn't going to do anything.
So I search out the 1-of Samurai of the Pale Curtain in my deck and put it into play. Yosei and his twin get exiled with no death triggers.
Similar to the Golgari/Selesnya charm play, there was a Pro Tour (Dragons of Tarkir I think?) where, in the feature match for one of the Swiss rounds, one player flipped up Den Protector, returning Bile Blight to their hand, and then cast it on their own Dragonlord Dromoka to protect it from an opposing Elspeth, Sun's Champion minus. I can't remember who the players were but it was a pretty big brain play.
My biggest brain play was in a Jund mirror, very similar to the "create a stack for himself" one. I had Tarmogoyf in play and a bolt in had. Opponent had nothing in play. They cast Bloodbraid Elf. Cascade resolves and they reveal a Lilliana of the Veil. I let LOTV resolve but with BBE still on the stack I bolt the LOTV so they can't answer my Tarmogoyf and I ride the goyf to victory.
Karstens play is why I love that card. Gifts ungiven is my 3rd favorite card, number 2 is fevered visions (won my first gameday, and had the most interesting run - game before the finals, i beat a lili last hope and jace emblem in back to back games - sphinx of the final word was the only creature) number 1 is thoughtseize - theros print foil (its the set where i started - love mono black devotion more than I should).
Wed be magic buddies fs my fave card is also theros thoughtseize due to me starting in that era and i used to fuck ppl up with that fevered visions mill deck
@Yaggayaggayeet i played the bounce everything spell slinger version of fevered visions... I love the reverse "rack" it's such a fun card.
I watched the Ichikawa match live, it was the best match of the tournament. Sphinx's Rev was fun but ugh what a deck to watch the mirror for...
I counter your elixir of immortality, I counter your counter, resolves.
We will fight this fight again when u have 4 counters...
Adding to Estratti's play the circumstance that he had won game 1 with "break the day" (1w instant +1/+1 to all team), so Martell knew about it and that's the information Sam exploits with his masterful play, which I think is beyond other (also great) plays in this vid: they played masterfully the cards they had in hand, Sam played with a card he didn't have. Great vid! Keep it up!
I actually did the fail to find in a tournament before Frank. I cast Bribery in a standard tournament and his only creature was Nether Spirit that he could bounce so I left it in his deck.
I actually did something similar to LSV with no win in the deck. I was at a GP playing ad nauseum in modern in the mirror. For round 3 i had taken out my lightning storm, giving me only a lab man win. My opponent started going off for his win, and I'm the heat of the moment i had forgotten i had taken my instant win out and went for it as well. There was a counter war over my play which i won and my opponent then scooped as he assumed i would then go on to win, when actually i couldn't
Is LSV forgetting Tendrils the same as, oh, let's say another person forgetting to put Rhinos in their 200 Rhinos deck?
A little bit of correction at the 3:50-3:53 mark. You don't always have the option to "fail to find" you can only fail to find if there is a defined characteristic in the card(s) you're looking for. If gifts allowed you to search for any 4 cards, and the deck has at least 4 cards in it, you can't fail to find.
Since gifts outlines you have to search for 4 cards with different names, there exists the possibility that all that is left in the library is say "Islands" the player is allowed to search for a fewer number of cards in this instance rather than concede information from the hidden zone to their opponent.
I loved the best plays video, but this is kind of what i was expecting from it
craziest play i ever made was in a game of edh. my commander is squee the immortal and i have underworld breach in play, and phyrexian altar in play, and jeska's will and two other cards in my graveyard. i escaped jeska's will, chose both modes, then sacrificed squee to help pay the mana cost, then exiled squee from my graveyard to help the escape cost. and still got both modes.
My other half, playing a deck made from "junk" cards (didn't want to spend money on new ones) vs a vintage Caw Blade deck. She got a god hand. Her turn one and on the play: swamp, dark rit, dark rit, hymn to tourach, hymn to tourach. Lol
BoshNRoll just had a video today where at one point he threw Broadside Bombardiers at itself to fizzle a lifelink block and push lethal.
Bombadiers says another creature or artifact so can't do that. I looked it up he throws a chrome mox at the bombardiers.
Mine was more luck based than 300iq, but i was playing vintage cube at my lgs. I had an agathas soul cauldron with an urza lord high artificer exiled with it and 2 creatures with +1/+1 counters on them. I also had a one ring with enough counters on it to kill me on my upkeep. Opponent finishes his turn, passes to me. On my upkeep with the ring trigger i remember that i have a tishanas tidebinder in my deck that could counter the trigger. I then tap ring to draw a few cards, didnt find it. I then have enough mana to spin urza twice in an attempt to find it. First time, miss. Second time, hit it! I then had just enough power on the board to attack my opponent, exile the walking ballista in his graveyard with soul cauldron and ping him for the win.
Hella sweet win!
This is awesome and all, but it feels wrong for the oldest card you listed to be less than 5 years old in a vintage game(outside of your opponent's WB). Lol
@casteanpreswyn7528 I don't disagree. Power creep has became a real thing. Also It was just sweet to pull off a save like this
@@ajdugan8142 yeah, it just stood out as weird to me, that's all.
That’s a good one! Reminds me of a luck play I made in VC to win with Echo/Hullbreacher. I was super dead the next turn if I didn’t do something. I had HB on board, Echo of Eons in hand, and 5 mana in play, hoping to draw a land to cast it. Instead I draw a blank. But I also have Mind Twist in hand. So I Mind Twist myself for 1 - with a 1/4 chance of hitting Echo - and I discard Echo, cast it for 2U with flashback, and go on to win. 🎉
Half of these would be Crim tricks "I never said I DIDN'T have a wrath, just that I couldn't cast one." type of stuff though Seth! :p
I once turned Erika's chariot into a token and kept making copies of its self each time creating a chariot and 2 2/2s. For each one attacking
Addendum to the fail to find rule: You can only fail to find, when the card has a certain qualifier.
So Demonic Tutor always has to find a card, as long you have cards in your library.
With Gifts old wording you would at least have to find one card, since a single card always satisfies it's qualifier.
I once got an opponent so used to getting his spells countered that he threw the card into his graveyard before he asked
"Wait...how much was that Broken Ambitions for?"
"It was for 0. You declined to pay the 0. Leave it in the graveyard."
Lol social conditioning. I like it.
Correction for 13:25 : Yuuki Ichikawa won that game but ultimately lost the match to Jackson Cunningham.
how did I have to go this far to find this comment I was losing my mind
I still think LSVs 300 iq play is when he caused MoDo to crash when he had 3 O-rings target themselves as they were the only legal targets. Seeing MoDo try to rebuild the game multiple times was amazing.
My favorite recent big brain play was using an unable to scream on an opponents Patched Plaything that was cast from hand so it had two -1/-1 counters. The Patched Plaything became a 0/0 thanks to the -1/-1 counters and died to state based action.
I'd love to claim the same thing as a big brain play - problem is, I did it by accident, lol - I completely forgot about the counters and just needed to get the double strike out of the way - I think I was more surprised than my opponent...
@@danpearman270 I was a little less kind, I noticed the line, said "I am going to do a magic trick", and then got the players next to us to watch too. There was stunned silent laughter at the ridiculousness of it.
What about having your Patched Plaything die with a Reluctant Role Model om the battlefield so you can move its counters to an opponent's creature?
@@VoidArchon cute, but never had a chance to do that. Reluctant role model gets killed almost instantly;y whenever I play it in draft.
"The most confident spell pierce"; where (I forget who) counters with a spell pierce so confidently, that his opponent doesn't just pay the 2 mana, which he has available.
Ha, yeah. I thought about including that one, but I think it was mostly just the opponent punting.
@@MTGGoldfish Yeah I guess. I thought it was a bit like the pen trick, just convince the opponent that the play is good, here using fast movement to look confident hehe
Lsv is my favorite big brain player. I liked his "Seasons Past" top 8 pro tour Deck he ran years ago and been watching him cube ever since. Great content Seth
My best magic play? I was playing Gitrog in EDH and I had a crucible of worlds in my hand as well as Thespian Stage + Dark Depths on the field. I knew my opponent had a path to exile in hand so I had been holding off on using the stage to copy depths. I noticed that I had 8 mana available and because I had top decked a crucible of worlds, I activated the combo to bait out the path to exile. I then played the crucible and using the second land play from gitrog, I replayed the stage and depths to do the combo again.
Important note on fail to find: the rule requires the card search to be qualified. It works because the cards must have different names in the case of gifts ungiven.
During SCG Open Nashville, I waited for first strike damage to resolve before casting Faith's Shield on my own basic land. The first strike damage took me below the Fateful Hour threshold, giving me CoP. I won next turn on the swing back.
Now this is a video with some good plays, thanks for making it.
The LSV story about Tendrils is the sole reason so many Magic players waste their time playing unwinnable games. People would be better off if they forgot that one
That’s why you always make your opponent show the win.
@@alphonse2234 Which is exactly why everyone hated eggs 🤣
There has to be a reason why you use LSV's State-Trooper-On-A-Bender picture every time you get the opportunity.
I just find it funny.
@@MTGGoldfish I KNEW IT ;D
I like how LSV later stated that all the token/Adanto stuff was just show for the camera because he knew Dezani would attack as it is the right play and Dezani is too good a player to not attack there knowing his decklist only had a single copy of Settle.
So he knew it would happen and had enough foresight to add a little show for the viewers and commentators to make it more exiting. Which probably is even more brain power than just baiting successfully
2:42 : for the gifts ungiven thing . just to mess up with the guy, I think I would have said something like " well, I choose the other pile, so your dragons are in your hand"
Unfortunately it isn't worded like fact or fiction.
Can't do that. You don't make piles with Gifts, you put 4 cards (or however many you find) on the table and your opponent has to choose 2 of them to put in your graveyard.
@@menderbug1 exactly why I said " just to mess up with the guy"
I am so glad the Ichikawa v Cunningham match made it in here, it's a rather inconspicuous play in the history of pro magic but it's one of my absolute favorites
I have a fun play I did in YGO that I still like. I used Mystic Box on Scapeghost, destroying a monster on the opponents field and sending Scapeghost to one of the opponent's main monster zones in attack position. I have Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon also on field, which does double battle damage over monsters. Scapechost is 0 ATK and OEPD is 2500 ATK. I have Rain Bozu as the high scale, so with enough cards in the extra deck and through other effects I got to buff OEPD to 3200, delivering a 6400 ATK which results in a one-shot lethal swing. I originally did this play using Steel Calvary of Dinon leveraging its STAT-HALVING TO SELF, making it a 400 ATK body to EASILY swing over. I buffed OEPD over 4000 and even over 6000 with some other combos, making for a lethal play in the TCG/OCG format easily too.
Got someone with a Cephalid Coliseum while they had no cards in library and an Emurakyl reshuffle trigger on the stack. Not that big brain but pretty sweet I thought..
One of your best vids ever, great job
there's a great video from JudgingFTW about information and cheating, and how the rules are set in a certain way on purpose to allow bluffing to be part of the game. this video is a great set of examples of why Magic is a richer game for it.
One time my buddy tried to Chaos Orb his own Rector and missed. -300
When Splinter Twin was the deck to beat in Modern, I would routinely make the Twin player fight over their Twin resolving just to get them with Rakdos Charm on the swing.
I remember the guy playing prosperity bloom that exiled his last remaining drain life to keep the combo going and asked his opponent if he really wanted him to go through the motions of comboing off or not.
Well I played mono blue devotion with master of waves . There was a hydra that had pro blue. Thasa was in the deck . Also was a card called rapid hybridization which destroyed a creature and gave its controller a 3/3 green frog lizard. My opponent made the hydra a 3/3. I couldn’t target the hydra but I could target my indestructible thasa and then block the hydra with the 3/3 and boy did I feel so cool when I did.
I run a Captain Sisay deck in commander (Selesnya, not WUBRG) and I realized that after a while, once I would Tutor for an Ashaya my friends would just concede since I would usually have the win 2 seconds after. Fast forward to me playing at our LGS with one of my friends in the pod and I don't have enough mana on board to actually use my combo, but I decide to tutor for Ashaya anyway just to have it in my hand. Immediately, my friend concedes and starts convincing the other players that I obviously have the win and they need to just scoop so we can play another one. One by one they start to scoop, and I started to ask them if they were sure they wanted to, to which they all responded by asking me how the combo works and then agreeing without checking my mana. I felt pretty bad after the game was over so as we were tallying our points, I explained to them that I didn't actually have the mana for any of it and it was purely a safety tutor and if they would've looked at the board they would've seen I didn't have the mana for the win. Luckily we were all able to laugh about it
One of the greatest plays I pulled off was my opponent playing a Surgical Extraction, I responded with my own Surgical Extraction. Then, FtF in my hand or deck, after it resolved, I slammed the same card to complete my combo. 😮
The Ad Nauseum one reminds me of a modern match I won against old Ad Naus that used Lightning Storm as its main win con. I was up 1-0, and game 2, I played a Pithing Needle naming lightning storm on the first turn and won the match. It was pretty funny.
Love this even more than the awesome decks you make
I love how ProTour RTR was a standard PT where RTR had been out of print for years before it happened.
Javi was on the wrong side of that drown in loch stack but I think he’s okay with his career especially after this weekend wins player of the year in the worlds semis after being down 0-2 and comes back off a crazy game 4 with a desperation doomsday excoriator to not die to his 3 annex’s
My biggest brain play was in an Emperor game, where I was playing Boros and realized that while I couldn't kill my opponent, my Emperor could. But my OP could kill my Emperor if they had a chance to attack into them first. So I had to concoct a plan during my opponents turn to get them to full swing into me, and then use my own burn to finishing killing ***myself*** during their turn so targeting would reset in time for my Emperor to get the first attack back.
Seth, you know all about getting baited into a settle the wreckage, aftyer i got you 3 times with it in viewer battles a few years back
One of my favourite bluff plays is in legacy I play death and taxes. And after resolving stone forge mystic on turn 2, I tank for a short moment and then say "sorry, just not sure if i want kaldra or jitte here" when i already have the kaldra in hand. I get the jitte and the opp usually doesnt kill the sfm and I get to put my mean 5/5 into play
The closest I've gotten to a "300 IQ play" was when I was playing Esper Stoneblade in Modern against my friend who was playing Abzan Midrange. I Fatal Pushed my Snapcaster Mage so I could have enough cards in my gy to Drown In the Loch his Liliana of the Veil. Idk if this was all that big brain of a play, but it was definitely the best I had in that moment
smashing like great video
thanks!
Back in kaladesh standard i played against someone playing the infinite thopter combo i let him hit infinite then asked how many he was making the next spell cast was fumigate followed by some artifact destruction spell
One thing Seth doesn't really talk about is true tutors like Demonic you can't fail to find, Gifts says 4 cards with different names, what if your library only has 3 cards with different names later.
My own personal 300 IQ play comes from a match in the fan-made Penny Dreadful format, played on MTGO.
My own deck was a horribly jank brew -- as *most* PD decks tend to be, given that if a card is actually good it doesn't stay in the format long -- I think this was one of my Izzet or Grixis prowess/control builds. My opponent, meanwhile, had an actual game plan involving using Narcomoeba and self-mill. Once they got a couple of specific creatures in the graveyard they had a loop of Narcomoeba abilities to mill their entire deck into the graveyard then use a combination of other creature abilities from the milled cards to power up Narcomoeba to 20/20 (or higher) and swing for lethal.
I forget which game of the set it was, but my opponent's plan seemed to be working. I had completely tapped out for casting my own spells on the previous turn, and they played their Narcomoeba not worried about any counters, because Force of Will wasn't legal in Penny Dreadful (and almost certainly never will be). They went through the loop to mill their entire library, then started doing the loop to power up Narcomoeba to 20, without any concern whatsoever because what could I possibly do to ruin their day, I was tapped out! They were probably annoyed, in fact, that I hadn't conceded yet.
Then they moved to combat. And swung. And I paid the alternate cost to cast Snapback, targetting Narcomoeba.
Since it's a pretty obscure card -- even to PD enthusiasts, given that it's no longer legal there -- I'll explain it here:
Snapback is an instant for 1U, except with "You may exile a blue card from your hand rather than pay this spell's mana cost", just like Force of Will.
Unlike Force of Will, the effect is not "counter target spell" but "return target creature to it's owner's hand".
I forget exactly how long the pause was before it hit them what I'd just done, and they typed in chat:
"Wait, I'm just f*cked aren't I?"
To which I replied, "Yep".
The key, of course, is that I waited until attackers were declared before I cast it. If I cast it main phase, they had enough mana up to re-cast Narcomoeba. But since it's in combat, they can't re-cast Narcomoeba until their second main phase -- meaning they can't attack with it this turn. And since they couildn't attack that turn, they had to pass the turn to me, at which point I passed the turn back to them, and they lost on their draw step since -- *as part of their deck's plan* -- they had milled their *entire* library.
That golgari charm play is INSANE!
Love LSV, the king of mind games!
One of my favorite good plays I made in standard is against the Squirming emergence deck who uses a saga that has you exile an instant or sorcery from grave and cast it as the final chapter, I just used to proliferate that card while playing toxic because my opponent is unlikely to have mana up to pay it and exiling the card is mandatory so instead of getting to flashback their spell they're forced to exile it instead.
Using proliferate on opponent's things is always fun. I've used Vraska to proliferate Overlords every turn.
I killed a guy with his own platinum angel during the fifth dawn pre release
Great vid. I’m too dumb to think of great plays like those. 😂😂😂
Much more entertaining than 3 100 IQ magic plays
When LSV grabbed the token to bluff activating his land it looked like his opponent already decided to attack. His creatures were tapped.
Hey I made almost the exact same play as LSV in my LGS! Pretend I was going to note my new life so my opponent also attacked with galta into my settle the wreckage
How an opponent attacks always changes how you respond to the attack. If it looks like it's just a small attack you take it, the more worth it they make it then you wreck it.
Never seen that golgari charm play, that was sweet
The lack of sleeves. I forgot thos part of magic history and its wild to see the money
A suggestion that's maybe more Genius or Grifter: Profane Command "all my legal targets gain fear" implying Chameleon Colossus gets fear but it has protection from black.
More of this please
18:48 Arne should’ve played the Fable Passage on the previous turn to making this play, because then he could’ve done the same trick but without forcing himself to spew the Drown in the Loch on the Innkeeper (rather by cracking the Fable Passage). I remember watching it live and thinking about how this was a punt a turn in advance, but I guess 99.9% of magic players had never seen this trick before at the time so everyone was dumbfounded that this was even possible at all.
(It’s possible that Arne did want to commit himself to killing the Innkeeper with Drown anyways if Javier drew Ox that turn, but based on how long he paused, I can only assume that this was a mistake and he was trying to make sure that his line was the best way to recover.)
Arne's Cling to Dust stack play was INSAAAANEEEE 😱
Yeah, I'm 99% sure I would have missed that line.
Not biggest brain per say, but I just so happened to be running a Guardian of the Gateless in a bad angel deck, and I was able to drop it in against a budget Krenko, and somehow managed to keep that thing alive for 6 turns, even reanimating it at one point with a Defy Death after she bit more than she could chew, and slowly whittled him down with his lack of flyers as he focused everything on the Guardian.
He was not happy
I guessed the GU play but I assumed he was just searching for cards that werent in his deck (or even existed lol).