Mistake Cards of 2024 | Commander Clash Podcast 180
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- Опубликовано: 8 фев 2025
- Cards that never should have been printed!
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#MTG #MagicTheGathering #Commander #commanderclash
Utility Lands 04:22:11
Trouble in Pairs 12:14:12
Nadu Winged Wisdom 30:12:14
Bloodthirsty Conqueror 37:52:07
Grievous Wound 42:56:24
Voja Jaws of the Conclave 53:06:21
All of MH3 or MDFC's 59:48:20
Fomori Vault 1:10:25:08
hard agree with tomer, when non synergy pieces have more value than a full synergy piece then its broken
I have a rule for all my decks, the most powerful cards must be synergy cards. For example, I run waste not in my tiny bones deck, but I won't run sol ring or the one ring or demonic tutor.
I personally LOVE Tomers suggestion of printing A LOT more basic land count payoffs for EVERY color. They should maybe even make a keyword thats like the blanchwood armor effect, something like devotion for basic lands - call it Resonance or something. Then you do cards like "At the beginning of your upkeep, draw cards equal to half your resonance with plains, rounded down." We need an entire set with this!
I play since the Invasion block, and basic lands have a special place in my heart but how do you justify running them in a nonbudget environment...youre just gonna miss out on so much value.
I like Resonance!
It would make mono color decks more popular which is needed.
4-5 color commanders are just boring because they can literally do everything. And the mana bases for 4-5 colors literally cost 200+ euros.
As a newer player i’d love more basic land pay-offs.
Playing a mono color is an upside. You don't color screw ever and you can play back to basics and blood moon and friends and you dodge nonbasic land hate as well. Plus you can play higher devotion cards for no cost while getting value from devotion payoffs. Plus the "mono color" mechanic already exists from eldraine it's called Adamant.
@@irou95 mono color is an upside, but it is also a drawback. It can be both. Budget decks benefit from being fewer colors bc of the mana color issue you mention, but the color pie limits that each color can do. Mono color is thus not universally a benefit. It is just beneficial in a way that is easy to see and leverage
well since that sounds totally and completly busted. you could also just print more things like blood moon, price of progress, ect.
Richard and the commenters have a Batman and joker esque relationship
He's called the codfather for a reason lol
But who is truly who? 🤔
@@JonReid01 I always thought he was the CODfather, cos fish 😂
@@brendans1983 oh it is Codfather duh my bad
Hilarious
Richard: You can't play that card because it's a half combo piece and everyone will get scared and kill you
Also Richard: I like jamming Bloodthirsty Conqueror for value!
They can't kill you through the lifegain 🤯
Ban's make commander better IMO. I'm with Tomer. Have your "no ban list CEDH" But having bans in regular pick up and play commander (dockside, jeweled lotus, mana crypt) has made my LGS experience sooooo much better.
The majority of cEDH players want the same banlist as casual commander players - we play the same game, just with a rule 0 that we're all trying to win
35:14 … the thing is…. Nadu was likely the strongest thing in cedh. So yeah nadu caught strays from modern, but it was also quickly becoming better than everything else in the game. Nadu’s conversion rate was insane
It was already top 3 when it got banned in such a short amount of time, even overtaking Kinnan as best Simic deck.
I kinda wish this was the top comment just to illustrate how insane Nadu was. It wasn’t “just another cEDH commander”. It came on the scene and immediately was one of the strongest.
How cards Crim has played live rent free in the minds of his fellow podmates always amazes me.
Tomer is definitely right when he says that just because a card can be replaced if it's banned doesn't mean that it shouldn't be banned. When he says trouble in pairs is a mistake and everyone just jumps on "what about the one ring, what about x what about y" It's like they don't understand that more than one thing can be bad at a time.
He’s wrong because when the best things are banned and replaced they become the new meta of broken and people will want the replacements banned. This is the issues with banning in general, and this is why ban lists only belong in competitive sanctioned formats.
@@gabecastillo1634 People said much the same about Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt, but outliers like Trouble in Pairs, The One Ring and Rhystic Study can't be easily replaced in decks. You get less card draw, more mana cost (up front or ongoing), narrower application, or bigger downsides once you stray outside of those particular cards.
@ i understand what ur saying but I don’t think u get my point, crypt was banned then vault replaced it, in a couple years people will be begging for vault to be banned because its too good. I’m not saying that will happen but im using that as an example. Welcoming vampire puts trouble in pairs to shame in the right deck, but then again trouble in pairs can go in any white deck and work, and maybe it won’t work as good as a welcoming vampire, maybe it will but who cares lol. Remove it, house ban it, or find another play group. We don’t need a standardized ban list in a casual format.
Maybe we should just self regulate through rule 0 and stop banning power cards
@@gabecastillo1634 I do not think Mana Vault and Mana Crypt are comparable cards, I also don't think Vault is anywhere near as powerful - Mana Vault is a Dark Ritual, Mana Crypt was a permanent rock that accelerated you just as much.
Banning the worst offenders can reduce the power to the point people no longer find the play problematic anymore
I usually don't agree with Tomer, but he has a point here. Generic staples are mistakes, period. Individual cards that outperform dedicated synergy pieces that decks are built around are unhealthy for the game.
Yep, entirely this. Staples should _never_ outperform synergy.
It’s at the point where $$ is the only thing preventing people from playing these optimal engine cards, and having your wallet be the most powerful thing to impact the game is bad for the game and makes people worse deckbuilders
Yes, Richard. The comments will be farming your cooked takes as long as the podcasts exists 😂
55 likes for someone who doesn’t understand the difference between “mana rocks” and “artifact that flips into land”.
@@light-chemistry We understand the difference and its not in favor of the cards that have you have to jump through a bunch of hoops just to flip into a permanent that produces mana for the same cmc as mana rock lol
@@light-chemistryAlmost all of the artifacts that flip into lands require significant hoops to jump through, and with most of them, by the time you’re able to jump through more than one of them, the chance for a Farewell has already arisen.
In the meantime, people who just play normal mana rocks on turn 2 and 3 get that step of the game out of the way early and spend the next few turns impacting the board and, more importantly, *drawing cards,* while Richard is still spending those same turns trying to jump through his hoops just to get an extra land or two instead of doing anything to advance his game at all. So when the Farewell comes down, all the people that drew those extra cards are way more prepared to recover from it and get right back into the swing of things, while all Richard has to show for it is 1-2 extra lands.
And that’s assuming he was able to jump through said hoops before the Farewell came down. If he wasn’t, which is a scenario that will come up way more often than he thinks, he’s still getting blown out by it all the same, but now he’s at a significant disadvantage because he didn’t do anything else with his turns except jump through hoops, while everyone else did.
Running one or two of the cards he mentioned in that package is fine. Primal Amulet is a pretty good card in the right decks. But having your whole ramp package be those types of cards is not going to work out for you nearly as often as you think.
They need to normalize a devotion style mechanic that instead of counting pips on the battlefield, counts number of basic lands you control. The really powerful ones could just count “total basic lands”, the more specific ones could could “basic island” or “basic mountain”, etc etc. Devotion was a really good mechanic that they haven’t really used enough in an of itself, but it’s also a great parent mechanic for pushing for more basics being played.
I really like this as someone who plays mostly basics as it helps budgets but also makes people make a choice
The problem is that no amount of cards that reward you for playing basics are going to rival people wanting access to multiple colours to play particular commanders. You basically end up with slant decks that have basics as the theme, with maybe one or two stand-out cards that make it into mono or dual colour decks (they’ll be roughly as popular as the MDFC spell lands). Everyone else will just continue as normal, which is correct, IMO. The downside of running a multicolour commander shouldn’t be that your deck doesn’t get to work.
“Simplicity” or something
I did not have Tomer using the "Too good it's bad because you look scary argument" for Grievous Wound on my 2024 Bingo card.
What about your 2025 bingo card?
@@Gretchaninov Richard continuing to get away with it.
The reason nobody calls out others for playing around trouble in pairs is the cost/benefit is simply not there versus rhystic. Paying 1 for an opponent to not draw is relatively easy, so theoretically we should do it. Playing around TIP is so prohibitive nobody will ever do it.
This is also a game theory issue. If I'm player 1, player 2 has TIP, and players 3 and 4 are not playing around it, i should not either. It's literally just prisoners dilemma
You are mistaken, Prisoner's Dilemma is a different card from the same commander deck that is nowhere near as powerful as Trouble in Pairs.
@@delailama736 He means prisoner’s dilemma as a concept, unless you’re making a joke in which case ignore me
I think the part about trouble in pairs that makes it feel too prohibitive is the cast a second spell part. Obviously drawing is another big one, but only if you feel the need to draw a bunch of cards. I’ve seen the card do nothing and not punish the table because they just kept playing their cards in hand, still attacked the trouble player but just with big beaters, and once it was destroyed started slinging card draw.
@@Bubblenuts13 You play it with Howling Mine and people care less because you are giving them an extra card each turn.
Seth, “higher power tables” is not “cedh”. Commander Clash is actually higher power than most “casual Commander” tables I have seen. You play the most powerful cards that aren’t Sol Ring. That’s called higher power.
Commander Clash is child’s play 😂. They have so many house bans that it doesn’t resemble anything that people play in their play groups. It’s like bowling with the bumpers.
Commander cClash play patterns with all their house rules and bans is not higher power. Sure they can play powerful cards, but they play them in suboptimal way so many times or without the synergies to back them up
The LGSs I go to, most pods are stronger than any of them even on low budgets .
They also tend to dislike targeted removal a lot which is something that you see a lot at higher table (lot of targeted removal)
@@matthewollar9842 The house bans do affect general power level, but I am referring more to the mindset they use. Sure, they play jank themes occasionally, but they have to because they are constantly spiking those janky themes. Most "casual" players just play cards that they own, even if they aren't powerful. Many people build themes that they enjoy, even if they aren't good.
Trouble in Pairs is better at higher power tables because it benefits from efficient opponents. All of Clash builds efficiently and optimizes their sub-optimal settings.
@ I wouldn’t even say it’s ’higher tables’; we have 6 players in our group that rotates based on availability. We just play according to the banned list 🤷♂️. Why do you need a sub list for the banned list? Just shuffle and draw.
@@munsulight721 I am not attempting to say that Clash is the highest of higher power, but I do not think it is "random LGS casual" level. If I have to assign a numerical value, I would say that Clash is at least in the higher 50% of the format. There are a great many people playing much lower power levels than Clash; I play casually and I have a hard time being casual enough for the format sometimes.
This comment is mostly intended for Richard: I’ve been using your white ramp package and found that adding Urza’s Tower + Planar Nexus is a low opportunity cost that can enhance the suite a lot. Playing the full 3 tron lands is too clunky but with just planar nexus and tower, it’s really easy to assemble the 2 card combination with Expedition Map, Weathered Wayfarer, Urza’s Cave, or Scampering Surveyor. Urza’s Tower basically just becomes a more powerful Temple of the False God and it’s really strong to copy with Vesuva and Thespian’s stage. I know this is probably the last thing you wanted to hear since your land slots are already so tight, but hope you try this out!
I play nexus and three tron lands in monowhite. A lot does depend on your package.
I'm making a mono-white deck for the first time right now. I'd love to see exactly what that whole package looks like.
@
Cartographers Hawk
Claim Jumper
Deep Gnome Terramancer
Knight of the White Orchard
Loyal Warhound
Sand Scout
Scampering Surveyor
Scholar of New Horizons
Solemn Simulacrum
Weathered Wayfarer
Path to Exile
Archaeomancer’s Map
Expedition Map
Surveyor’s Scope
Arid Archway
All 2 color bounce lands in your identity
Guileless Commons
Lotus Vale
Lotus Field
All Depletion lands in your color
Urza’s Cave
Urza’s Saga
That’s the Richard package as far as I know. Feel free to jump in if I forgot anything else
@@totakekeslider3835 My focus is to hit my land drops on curve. The deck can ramp, but it's not the goal of my "ramp" package. A lot of my cards are 2 for 1 at a minimum that are efficiently costed. I use: Land tax, weathered wayfarer, tithe, expedition map, scholar of new horizons, archaeomancer's map, compass gnome, staff of completion.
I also include Nykthos, Urza mine, power plant, tower alongside Planar Nexus (they are low risk but can pay off well/aren't to hard to put together).
Some of these decisions are deck dependent. If you want me to post a list just let me know.
Welcome to monowhite
@@James-mm8pryup I could see playing all 4 in mono color, in dual color though it’s a bit tough
I'm really not a fan of how WotC's "players don't like it!" reasoning has been used recently. "destroy all lands" cards and other stifling mechanics are legitimately just not fun to play against, but printing a bunch of super-powerful lands and then saying they won't print tech for dealing with those lands because of player friction kind of ends up in the same place as if they did just print armageddon into standard (which they absolutely should not). cards that deal with the thing that makes your deck win are never "fun" to play against but they're also absolutely necessary for the overall health of the game.
also super-powerful cards and mechanics need downsides that aren't trivial to avoid or incredibly hard for other players to take advantage of, the game isn't nearly as fun if everyone just has access to powerful stuff with no question of if they can deal with the downside
They've been doing this forever though. They still haven't printed functional anti-landfall tech. They will follow the "casuals hate it" code right into the grave. I'm thinking 2025 is the year that kills Commander.
Exactly, players don't like counter spells, removal, or board wipes either but they're considered just a part of the game just like land destruction used to be. I get why they cut back on it but it feels like an over correction now when there's so many non basics printed every year.
I don't see any reason why I shouldn't blow up your three tree city with a beast within.
If I let you untap with it, you will probably win the game, so I have to interact with. simple logic
Yeah the problem with Trouble In Pairs is not per se that it draws too many cards, it's that it's better at drawing cards than anything else that color can do. Coastal Piracy/Toski will draw more cards than Trouble in a deck built around it, but in white Trouble will always draw more than Welcoming Vampire so why run the thematic piece when it's just objectively worse?
Tbh it's better then anything else really as you can't pay the 1 there is no playing around it besides blowing it up
Richard: Trouble in Pairs is a massive problem in Commander, it draws so many cards!
Also Richard: Yeah, Nadu wasn't that bad, it caught some strays from Modern and Legacy.
???
Richard moment
Is it really commander clash if Richard isn't contradicting himself at one point?
Talking about Nadu then immediately talking about Bloodthirsty Conquerer in the same breath is one of the funniest things I've heard lmao
7:40 i agree with Tomer. More mono colour / basic payoffs would be great. Shame Eldraine didn't get them
Amen for Tomer and Crim literally using the same logic Richard has used in the past to argue against cards to show him how his take on Grievous doesn't make sense.
It's also not like it was designed for commander. Commander as a format has to deal with cards that make sense in 1v1. That's just the way it is.
The difference between rhystic study and trouble in pairs/surveyors scope is that there's a guarantee that you can play the card you wanted to in the future without giving a draw. Like if trouble is on the field, there's never going to be a time that you can cast your card draw spell without it triggering, so you might as well play it now. Rhystic can always be played around, so not doing so is extra pathetic
I think “fixed” Trouble In Pairs looks like Faerie Mastermind, Mangara the Diplomat, etc.
Trouble In Pairs just does all the triggers instead of part of them.
I also think part of the issue with Trouble In Pairs is that it has a deceptive design. Cards need to stop pretending that they can be played around as a downside. It should read “draw a card every turn” and be honest about it.
A fixed but still strong Trouble in Pairs would also only be able to trigger once per turn. The really nuts part of it is that it's very likely to trigger 2+ times per turn.
@@chungusumungus4004 That is one of the great hidden pieces of text on Faerie Mastermind. A player can only trigger it once per turn, it just isn't written that way.
I think players getting triggered by Trouble In Pairs is hilarious.
White has the worst draw of any color, hands down. Full stop. It’s gotten better, but that ranking hasn’t come close to changing.
It’s a 4-drop that will likely net you a card a turn cycle, and sometimes not even that.
A color gets an outlier in the weak areas of its identity every so often.
@Shawn-f3x _A_ card a turn cycle? You must be playing at _very_ low power tables, with people who don't understand deckbuilding very well. As soon as you get to mediocre decks, TIP ahould draw you _at least_ one card _per turn,_ and likely something like 1 and a half card a turn. If it doesn't, then you'd likely also mot need it, because apparently your opponents aren't doing anything, meaning you don't need the card advantage.
@@Shawn-f3x I tend to agree with Tomer. The problem isn't the cards it draws for the mana investment, it is the fact that the card is so generic. Giving players the ability to play generic staples that are better than what the synergies can accomplish leads to format sameness as opposed to format diversity.
the difference is secret rendezvous is actually reads play 3 mana to give an opponent 3 cards
Voja (and more specifically, Ward 3) incentivizes people to run more and more board wipes which makes games at casual tables especially miserable.
I haven't played casual in years, but "back in my day" we definitely had a boardwipe meta and just played lots of draw and recursion to deal with it
There are so many small ways they could have tuned Voja (only Ward 2, no Vigilance so you can actually attack back, only buff until end of turn, etc) to make it not nearly as busted as it is and that’s one of the frustrating things about its design to me. I think early in the implementation of Ward the design team was thinking “oh these creatures are strong so we should give it Ward for protection so it can stick around longer”, but then in doing so it makes an already strong card even stronger (*cough* Roaming Throne *cough*)
Agree on trouble in pairs. My Arabella deck always has a full grip of cards between Tocasia’s Welcome, Enduring Innocence, Welcoming Vampire, Skullclamp, and Mentor of the Meek. And all those cards combined are less than the price of one Trouble in Pairs. Yay.
Also, I realized how much my play style is affected by listening to this podcast at the end there. Yesterday I skullclamped my Spirited Companion so I could bring it back with Sun Titian…
As the comments that week discussed, they turn into lands *eventually* but are liable to sit on the board for some amount of time, opening them up to removal and not producing mana in the meantime.
An easy fix for Ward would be to make it essentially Shroud instead of Hexproof. Ward should trigger off of all targeting, not just your opponents.
price of progress effects that hit based on the number of colourless lands without basic land types could work super well
trouble in pairs is busted, it’s just “draw a card every time any opponent plays commander”, and how did seth genuinely think they’re not a high power play group??
They have all argued that their playgroup is low to medium power before.
@dontmisunderstand6041 I think their in group meta tends to durdle, which makes for longer games while still playing all the best cards. Longer games don't necessarily equal lower power, but that might be the thought process.
@@marshallscot they take that long because they boardwipe every time anyone gains a marginal advantage on board lmao
@@Azeria yea they’re still low power, the house bans make them certainly under cedh and high power, they just run sm wraths instead of single target removal
I think Richard is right on grievous wound. Hitting someone with this is just saying "game is over for you" and in a few hits you now have a 3 person pod.
Along with Ulamog, I agree with both Richard and Seth how miserable and stupid that card is
Its a perfect card for group where one player is always the problem
I run it for life gain decks - it is targeted and they should have a response.
@dariocampanella7992 But then that's just a roundabout way of saying "we don't want to play with you" without actually saying it.
@@dariocampanella7992 Or you could just have a conversation with that person about the power level of their decks instead of playing a passive-aggressive card.
Crim, I wanna shout you out. When the ward conversation came up Tomer said "going forward" and I saw it flash in your eyes that you wanted to say "Speaking of FOR WARD" but you bit your tongue, but I heard it too homey.
I would love to see a back to basics style effect but instead of never untapping it puts stun counters on non basics. Or something that gives all nonbasics a city if brass style of effect.
Vorinclex voice of hunger sorta did the first thing just all lands.
Burning earth.
3R enchantment.
Think that's the only one we have.
Manabarbs for nonbasics, that seems interesting
My main problem with Trouble in Pairs and other white staples is that they make white literally pay to win. Something something, magic has always been paid to win - sure. But I can easily build a powerful deck with green in it for 50USD, and anything extra feels like a gravy. I can't do the same with white when reasons to play the color are 30-50USD each. Trouble in pairs, teferi's pro, smothering tithe, all extremely expensive cards!
yeah the key strong white pieces are wayyyyyy more expensive than other colors for sure. the thing is I also don't really want them to reprint trouble in pairs, teferi's pro, smothering tithe, or farewell because every single one of them was a huge mistake in the first place.
they MASSIVELY overcompensated after people were complaining white was weak and ended up printing the strongest cards in the format for it lol
Why not just buy them then?
people might be surprised by this, but traditionally different colors were supposed to do different things in magic. i wasn't until commander became popular that everyone started complaining about certain colors not being able to do stuff.
I'm fairly certain you can build a plenty powerful deck in white on a budget. There's almost certainly examples from Tomer, if I had to guess anyways. I do think the white staples are relatively expensive, but I also think green is pretty uniquely positioned as the best color to build budget. I say this because the ramp and card draw package is quite cheap, which is like half a deck.
@@yScribblezHD Every color has always been good. That's why they're all still in the game. Them doing different things makes some of them better than others in certain ways. It just happens that the things Green is good at are generally the best things you can be doing in a format where you don't have to worry about aggro killing you before you get started. So you can just plop down your midrange or control deck and not worry about getting destroyed by Red or White on turn 3.
@5:00 I disagree with saying lands aren't touchable (or aren't good for lower power/casual tables). Mass Land Destruction and resource denial are the options that should be avoided, but Ghost Quarter effects, Beast Within, and even Price of Progress effects are all good and can help balance out some of these non-basic lands. I agree with the ease of tutoring specific non-basic lands or untyped lands being a growing problem.
Edit: Fully agree with Seth at 9:00 with the Blood Sun effects
Yeah I think the big issue now is just not a good volume of playable single target land destruction. You can only devote so many land slots to strip mines and generous gifts before you feel more like a doomsday prepper than a proactive player
@@Lazydino59 I agree we should have more, especially with these powerful lands coming out more often, and I may be biased because my main deck is an abzan deck, but having Boseiju, Generous Gift, Beast Within, Assassin Trophy as spells, and Ghost Quarter, Demolition Field, and Field of Ruin as lands if your local meta is very heavy on these power lands doesn't feel like too much "wasted" removal, as the spells all deal with more than just lands, and the lands all tap for mana and most replace themselves.
@Lazydino59 Most single-target dedicated land destruciton feels awkward to fit into a deck whereas land-copy effects are nearly as common as those "good" utility ones you list.
It might be a proactive vs reactive bias. In a heads up comparison Field of Ruin/Ghost Quarter vs Vesuva/ThespianStage, it's a lot easier to slot the copyiables as a proactive element into deck than Field of Ruin. There is little down side but big upside since you can opportunistically copy any good land anyone has managed to play but when you get to 3+ color decks those land-destroying colorless lands are not only narrower but become more of a liability despite having that reactive potential.
Targeted and non basic land destruction should be more common and stronger.
I would not be unhappy to see a ghost quarter that taps for each colour.
@@Lazydino59 Yeah, I have seen decks lose to thawing glaciers, I was already knocked out but I showed the guy beside me, Beast Within, Strip Mine, Dust Bowl, .. all in my deck. No one cares about single target removal, just run it.
No one says you cant destroy lands with abillities with something like generous gift. People don't like mass land destruction. It is like Richard just fundamentally misunderstands everything for a living.
My man was extra on this pod, even for himself!
I think it’s calculated for interaction so he just needs to tune it back, just a bit.
youtube comments miss the point again😂
@@jeremyphillips3087 ya you are just so much more insightful than everyone else. You should stop getting high off your own farts my dude.
I love me some Richard bad take-hate, but he's got a point here. Sure, you can run your Gifts and Quarters, but there are just too many good lands these days and not enough removal: Alright, you used Quarter to answer player A's Coffers, but now player B has a Field of the Dead, and C has a Three Tree City.
@totakekeslider3835 i am not seeing multiple abillity lands from each of my opponents every game. In the ones i am, i got my own and am not scared of my opponents. Field of the dead is good but not that scary in commander. I am suppose to be scared of 2/2 zombies? How could any other deck keep up with that value, lol, really? Three tree city can be turned off with a good ole field wipe. All these things have multiple solutions that can be handled with normal deck building strategies. So these lands are not some over whelming problem. My decks always play plenty of answers to problems.
Watching Crim’s smile growing wider and wider in the corner while Richard goes off about grievous wound just made my day.
fixing both Ward and the non-basic problem: "Ward: (4). This ability triggers only if the controller of the spell targeting this permanent controls fewer than 4 basic lands."
24:26 Holding yourself back to not feed surveyors scope is not a good play. At most you'd increase the amount of land the scope gets by 1.
It's the exact same logic for why Strip Mining a bounce land is a bad play. Two people are held back while the others are not.
I would love more incidental single land destruction like decimate
Yeah. I wish Stroke to Midnight style cards said "nonbasic permanent". That one in particular would just be a stronger Generous Gift, but they could just up the pip count to 1WW or something
Strip mine, wasteland, ghost quarter, demolition field, field of ruin, volatile fjord are lands. Sinkhole, rancid earth, icequake, befoul, choking sands are black. Green and red both have a ton that are either mass non-basics or single targets. Blue has a ton of bounce or color poisoning cards for lands
@@supranova7594 the word incidental in my comment means a good card that your already playing to fulfill some other purpose that also can destroy lands. I respect you listing all the cards but you didnt understand what I was asking. Cards like sinkhole just aren’t playable in commander.
@d.b.scoville true I do now see your looking for multiple function ones, a couple of the ones I listed also have other effects but there are also others you can find by Googling X (Color) destroy land that also have other beneficial effects but they are also up there in terms of mana value or are usually sorcery speed. Indeed the best ones are all the "beast within" and similar effects at instant speed
I think Ward should max out at 2 mana. I love the alternative Ward costs, like Ulamog, Ygra, or Cemetery Trespasser.
At ward 3+ it might as well say can only be targeted by uncounterable spells
It is also counter intuitive for play patterns. The people who are ahead are usually the people with most ressources and options in mtg, which often translates to mana and cards. Assuming that player isn't the Voja player themselves, they might have some way to deal/live through the onslaught without even removing the Voja, be it a fog, a redirect, a mass-bounce, or a boardwipe in their turn.
The people most likely to _need_ to hit voja with the one removal they saved as panic button are less likely to have the means to through the ward.
I'm not certain that Ward is a good mechanic beyond ward 1. Permanents should be removable, and I think Ward fundamentally misunderstands the point of single-target removal.
Do you consider Valvagoth's "sacrifice 3 nonland permanents" ward fun?
Regarding rewarding basics, Sasaya Orochi ascendant is a really interesting design space for this. Effects that don’t scale infinitely (have some number of lands with the same name, instead of “for each land with same name”) would be playable in multicolor decks. Also this type of design neatly avoids jamming Yavimaya/Urborg to cheat the effect.
I've given up on not using land destruction. So I'm just starting to do it regardless of people's feelings.
If someone plays field of the dead or glacial chasm they deserve every bit of it!
Land destruction just doesn't actually solve the problem. Outside of it being a wincon you put yourself in a position where the ramp player can build back best.
I will use land destruction like Ghost Quarter or those few power crept versions of it. Trade a land for a land. And I don't target mana with it. I target actual problem cards that progress the board state.
The real secret to land destruction is you play a green + red/white commander that gives you extra land drops, slam down a crucible of worlds effect, then you armageddon. MLD doesn't actually beat landfall.
@@alchemy3830this is the truth. My GWB Narci Sagas uses The Mending of Dominaria into Fall of the Thran. I had to take out my Reliquary Towers so I would discard more lands. Mending mills and gets your creatures on T1 and T2, on T2 play Fall to destroy all lands, then T3, each opponent gets 2 lands, but your Mending returns ALL your lands to set you up for the win.
Take the text of Blood Sun and put it on a 4/4 for 3 with first strike and some method of drawing you a card. Do several variations of that on standard cards.
44:54 New idea for a curse:
Enchant Opponent with the Most Life (or some other resource that we determine gives someone the lead)
When this card is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, return it to the battlefield attached to the player with the most life (or other chosen resource)
Takklemaggot style self-returning enchantments are a very underexplored design space :-)
I think in your case I assume also needs templating that it only returns if the enchanted player became illegal, otherwise it is also effectively immune to enchantment destruction.
I get where Richard is coming from with Grievous Wound. That card can kill you so easily, it almost feels like a one card combo. I think the closest thing to it might be Hatred, but that card is actually easier to play around as it needs it's controller to have the life to pay and there needs to be combat damage dealt - so blocking or spot removal is an option. And Hatred needs to do the damage all in one go, unlike Grievous Wounds, that will stick around even if you block or remove the initial source of damage. With Grievous Wounds, any stupid group of 1/1s or an Impact Tremors can immediately spell game over for you.
Oof Richard definetly did not play against Nadu in edh. That bird deserves every ban it caught.
Richard having bad takes is nothing new. It's just nice to finally see people wake up to the fact
1.) commander clash is definitely not a typical casual pod at an lgs; your average length of games is turn 6-8 which makes your meta (even with housebans) high power.
Its because of too many broken generic cards yall play instead.
2.) speaking of generic broken cards; they are bad for mtg and especially casual edh where its more like a board game. If you want to play the best and most broken cards play a 1v1 format.
3.) richard only running 3 basics has backfired every game yet he refuses to change it. Remember when new capenna released and you had good deck profiles and ran fun commanders like ognis? I remember….what happened??
Nadu was the obvious big mistake.
And Voja was absolutely a mistake.
"You are not allowed to mess with lands."
Yeah, sure. I'll let the Azuza player do whatever they want.
The Azuza player laughs at you killing off their opponents with ruination while they continue to ramp.
@MakeVarahHappen at least they are back to ramping instead of killing me. While I'll combo them.
@@rodrigodepaula4198 yeah all it cost was the other two players doing anything to help you.
Richard's choice of Grievous Wound is such a good call! Cards that disproportionately affect one player (especially taking them out of the game completely) generally make for less fun games in EDH. Outside of high power "win at all costs" metas, I steer clear of cards like this to avoid making individuals feel bad.
Happy new years y'all. You guys were my most consumed content by quite a few orders of magnitude. Thanks for making the year palatable. Love you guys
In my experience, Grievous Wound has these extra lines: "Enchanted player can only attack the owner of this card. Enchanted player can only target the owner of this card or spells or permanents they control". To some extent it's also a curse on the caster because they have just made themselves the only opponent worth a damn to the cursed player. You can't rely on your other opponents to finish the job, they're probably going to stay out of it, because in their mind, you and the cursed player are now locked in a fight to the death.
So to me, Grievous Wound is there for when you want to initiate this fight to the death, and you better hope you come out on top quickly, because if that player thinks they're going out anyway, they're throwing everything at you and you'll have to recover enough to deal with the other opponents.
If I remember, Nadu was one of the stronger cEDH commanders while it was legal. It had a *bunch* of tournament results iirc
It was a top tier commander but it wasn’t nearly as dominant as he was in like modern. Once the meta adapted to him he became a great option but by no means was the #1 choice. a top 5 for sure
@@Lazydino59 The main problem in cedh, beyond power, was largely the same problem as in casual: it's ridiculously good at monopolizing playtime for indeterminate results. Especially in tournaments, it could be frustrating to play an 80 minute round where one player takes up 55 minutes of time. I think a lot of cedh players were just happy to not have to sit around waiting for the Nadu player to figure out if they were actually able to present a win. The power level was certainly quite high, but the way it warped everything around it when it was in play was more annoying than anything.
@@imaginarycreatures9760 yeah he was def annoying and nobody is really complaining he’s gone, but I was just saying he is much more powerful in casual than cedh. Tbh he was a cEDH deck even built casually just with worse interaction/win cons. His ceiling isn’t as high as people made it out to be at cEDH tables relative to the other top decks
10:38 you gotta be kidding me? If someone complains, at ANY power level, about Price Of Progress then it is the rest of the table's job to let that player know to grow the f up.
exactly, my solphim burn says what's up lol
I think the best way to provide a reason to play basic lands should be reward based rather than punishment based. If we started to get a ton of cards that are above rate on mana efficiency but you have to use basic lands for X amount of their cost then I think that would do the trick. Like if there was a 2 mana toxic deluge that required 2 basic lands to be used as mana sources to be cast. It would effectively increase the mana value a basic provides instead of even a card like blood sun which although not ruining mana fixing it can ruin a decks strategy if their game plan was field of the dead or even a urborg/cabal strategy.
Toxic Deluge, but with the added text of: "if you cast this only using mana produced by basic lands, pay half X life rounded down instead."
This way you don't need to go more mana efficient, which has its very own issues, but still incentivizes basic use.
I'm with Crim on the MDFC's. I think one of the biggest problems magic has had since day 1 is mana flood & mana screw. It's literally been a thing since Magic first started. Other similar card games like LoR & Hearthstone directly got around this with Accumulated mana for each round.
I'd honestly be in favor of taking Lands that can be spells even further, but only on the condition that they are consistently reprinted. Which is already a problem with the normal land cycles, so that's really the only thing that turns me off from this.
Nadu was extremely strong in cedh actually
Richard:"This is not net fun."
I'm totally going to use this to get my point across about curses!
I see MDFCs as a major net positive. Lands are the worst part of magic (or at least the most boring) so making lands that can also be spells just makes the game more interesting/fun.
A lot of other card games already use the idea of every card in your hand both being a recourse and having an effect and MDFCs just move magic towards that system.
I honestly hate that people think white in magic isn’t strong enough when it very much was and is currently. Mono-white was strong back then and has been since ‘95 when commander came about the hate archetype transferred over perfectly in 2013. The balance of the color pie was fine now every time they make a new powerful white card it strengthens an already oppressive color too many taxes removal and tokens as is. What does need some love is Red it goes fast but burns out
6:04 It's not a "hold out" it's just a choice to play a lower power level deck. Playing basics is just a choice people make. For budget reasons, for power reasons, or for aesthetic reasons.
You can tell Richard owns the channel by the way he keeps things interesting with the heat of his takes. Always looking out for max conflict and viewer engagement. And that’s a good thing.
skip ahead to 2025 and everyone is complaining about how white card draw is TOO good. (gets back into time machine)
Have to imagine they explore printing land destruction or land hate cards to find what players perceive as acceptable; lands make up over a third of your deck and the majority of permanents are going to be lands for most of the game -- that's a staggering amount of open design space.
Disagree. Considering commander is their Main focus, I would say they simply stay entirely away from land destruction as a whole. Doesn't seem like wotc's Style to try to push boundaries in anything regarding mechanics when it isn't just straight up more powerful.
46:12 This is a ridiculous argument coming from Richard, why do you care that 1 of the 99 cards in a deck are not "Fun" for the entire table. Just take your lump and wait for the next game.
Also, this coming down early? Its a five mana enchantment, if someone is ramping to five mana early and dropping this on you, you probably deserve to get cursed.
I still think the best way to deal with the lands problem in a "acceptable" way is urzas sylex. Setting the table to a set number if lands instead of removing all of them is ideal.
I have yet to see someone truly outraged by the sylex and my only gripe with it is that its white instead of colorless, besides that maybe exile lands from gy in addition to get around that nonsence.
I think that the real mistake cards are the ones that decide the games without winning it!
Trouble in pairs was definitely a super strong draw engine. A mistake? No more than rhystic study, which they did ban. I do think it's a smothering tithe caliber card, where putting it into a deck makes the deck stronger. Very much in wizards tier system type of card.
Nadu was an explicit mistake and described as such by all parties involved. Card needs a companion style errata, cause the idea is cute.
I think things are fine until we get the 4th version, when it comes to the Bloodlord. Once a combo has enough interchangable pieces it becomes un-stoppable and inevitable, unless Sadistic Sacrement'ed. But i think 4 versions on both sides is the danger #. However i will say unlike a lot of combos, both gaining life and having opponents lose life is generically useful. Meaning all the pieces are ideal in most decks.
Funnily enough grievous wounds does end the game, not just decide it. I think doomblading a player is fine. However at home with friends, no other pod or table to play at, it is usually gonna be a feel bad card that's harsh on the vibes.
Voya is busted, but no more so than korvold. The ward making a player skip their turn to use targeted removal incentivizes more use of boardwipes, so in a vaccum the card is fine. But against players only playing 1 boardwipe, Voya is fairly unstoppable. As a player for whom the floor on wipes in decks is 3, and a control deck with 7, i never saw the thing do to much. I have seen it played a fair amount at my LGS.
MH3 was built to rotate modern. And it's a shame but modern is now a slow rotating format. Commander is the only real eternal format now.
Well said.
i've never understood people complaining about Voja and its ward 3, as if ward 3 is some insurmountable number that can never be achieved. it doesnt have haste it doesnt get immediate vaule, if i spend 5 mana and skip my turn to play it, you can spend 4 or 5 mana "skip your turn" to remove it. or make a deal with the Voja player, bluff that you have the removal and buy yourself time to either build your own board state/go for your combo/ find a board wipe. i dont even play voja but its not a deck i've ever felt unbeatable going up against. can it pop off and overtake the game? absolutely. so can 90% of decks today.
@@kyonizuka because people aren’t good or don’t want to put effort into playing or building decks, it sucks that this mob rule largely determines unwritten rules in the format but ig that’s comes with the popularity of commander.
@@gabecastillo1634 many players that have sat through a 4 hour game and decided they would rather lose or try and "race", rather than wipe. I'm not one of those people but i know a couple. The trick is just play 1 sided boardwipes. But as you said a lot of playgroups . . .
@@urbaraskpraetor3316 clever concealment has worked wonders for me in situations like that, some with tpro ig, people just need to be more comfortable with winning or losing then playing another game.
“Flip them before farewell” uses brass tunnel grinder. Flips T6 😂
I love that MDFCs up the amount of interaction in decks where you sometimes have trouble cutting thematic cards to add said interaction...
Normalize Blood sun/Moon, single target land destruction! They are part of the game and should be used :) punish greedy and expensive land packages. Please less salt during the games from people interacting and enjoy the time with friends and fellow players :) love and laughter in your lives!
My favorite saying used to be “if you built a deck that gets shut down by blood moon it’s not my fault for blood moon it’s your fault for building the deck that way”. With that being said I don’t really play blood moon anymore but that’s because I think the card isn’t good enough anymore more than anything else.
@ I agree, I play it in my mono red chonky dragon deck to fuel my themberchaud. Allows a slight edge vs greedy land decks allowing burn to be slightly more viable… but the draw back is being the target on the table… either way the games are quick and fun :)
Most players don't have or use an MTGGoldfish land base. Against most of the people I play, Blood Moon is a 3 mana do nothing card. If I want to run non-basic hate, I would run Price of Progress over Blood Moon.
My ramp package is pretty similar to Richards these days. Though i only play the dagger when it can get though easy
How many board wipes you run is a 0-10 scale of how scared you are of your opponents.
The problem with the approach to white card draw and ramp is and always has been depth. Because so few cards existed before it was considered an addressable problem by development, there were two pressures - make single cards that could solve the problem on their own, and, when those cards predictably skyrocketed in price, make other answers that were equally appealing. (See: Smuggler's Share vs. Trouble in Pairs/Smothering Tithe.) The problem won't be "solved" until enough B- or C-Tier cards exist that are accessible by budget players, meaning that most deck builders will actually have access to these tools. Once I can fill my 15-20 ramp and draw slots in white for less than a hundred bucks, then we're talking.
As soon as they started talking about ward 3 on Voja I knew Crim would mention Void Rend. Thank you Crim for continuing to be a Void Rend believer.
One time i was in a pod, i was 4th to go, turn 2 guy opening hand Leyline of void and turn 1 Swamp Sol ring. Turn 2 Dark Ritual + Helm of Obedience for 1 on me. player after i died had a two mana artifact removal. Worst experience is being out of a game 1 turn in and then would have had to sit for game to end hours later. So packed and left. 1 player kill is a feelsbad
One of the weirdest things in magic to me is that green gets generic Regrowth effects, but black doesn't.
Fomori vault is 4 mana to activate, sure there’s value in being repeatable on a land, but that’s absolute jank rate common ability for 4 mana
I do like trouble in pairs style cards for specific decks, notably control style builds. However, the effects SHOULD be weaker than one ring, Rhystic, and trouble in pairs. I really like ever watching threshold or project purity, because they provide consistent value, but fairly.
I don’t really understand Richard’s take on Nadu. Nadu was arguably the strongest deck in the cedh format, no? It was 100% stronger than every partner commander at that time besides maybe RogSi
It had a very impressive conversion rate in tournaments, and I certainly made changes to my deck to help fight it.
I think it would have ended up with a "normal" (but still competitive) win rate if cEDH players had been allowed to metagame against it for a few more months.
"Grievous wound is basically doom blade because it's single target" was very funny to me.
Happy New Year, Goldfish crew! Looking forward to a lot more spicy takes and good banter in 2025!
"They'll never normalize land destruction" is rly not a WotC issue its a player issue. Wizards has and continues to print answers to lands.
What's a recently printed new card that deals with the 'land issue'?
I'd love to expand my options.
@@_claymore Harbinger of the Seas is the first that comes to mind
@@_claymore demolition field
I'd love a blue card that returns all non basics to hand. Globally.
Or a keyword that benefits spells and creatures based on how many basic lands you control.
I think one thing that would help your discussions about certain cards is to differentiate between STAX effects (stasis, winter orb, smokestacks) and TAX effects (Trouble In Pairs, Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe). Stax effects deny something - they outright stop you from doing a certain thing. Tax effects impose a cost on doing things - mana, life, whatever.
In most situations, while people might not like the powerful tax effects, they don't really care (I know Tomer goes mental over them). Almost no one has a similar reaction to actual resource denial. They should not all be lumped in.
In regards to the Trouble in Pairs discussion, I honestly think a lot of people don't consider their opponents drawing extra cards as much of a threat as they should. I view it kind of like the expectation of how people respond to Treasure Nabber. The expectation is that people are of course going to use their mana rocks, and if they do you get to use them on your turn and then they get them back. But from playing Treasure Nabber (in my Be'lakos deck), people will more often set themselves back, and not use their mana rocks because they don't want you to get them, even though they get them back, instead of using them to keep up and play cards that would put them in a position to rival what you might do with the extra mana.
So I think Wizards thought Trouble in Pairs would be a kind of "stax" piece like Treasure Nabber, but drawing cards doesn't seem as scary as ramping.
It's nearly not possible to play around trouble in pairs. Any relevant game action you can take gives the TIP player a card. Yes, threat evaluation potentially plays a role, but not using a mana rock is a much easier play around than TIP offers.
@@lVideoWatcherlyeah, never drawing cards on your own turn outside of the first, never attacking the TIP player with more than one creature, and also playing under a rule of law is quite a significant amount of effort to avoid the card draws
@@winter945 Never drawing two cards a turn _at all._ If you yourself have some kind of draw engine going, it is possible that you draw two cards on an opponent's turn just as well - immediately getting the TIP player to draw just as well. If that alone was on the card, that would be fine, faerie mastermind has exactly that on the card. Mangara the Diplomat is a 4 cmc creature, making it easier to remove, and does not draw on each second draw of an opponent. TIP is just so overtuned that it could just as well say "draw a card each turn".
Great episode. CLASH ON!
Richard: and they work everytime
Tomer and seth: eeehhhh
😂😂😂
I dont understand the point about Grievous Wound. Game gotta end. Same for Ulamog. Games gotta end . You would not like being Voltroned by my Pako deck T5-6 with a Leyline Axe equipped. You gotta accept that sometimes you get killed quickly . At the same time, if you dont want to play targeted removal a plenty that is a problem in itself.
A lot of the rest is also being so CC meta heavy problems. I saw no one complain about any of the other thing mentionned except Voja
i feel like the problem with ulamog and wound is that they DON'T end the game. they just kill one person and make them sit there for the next hour. Especially with wound; at least ulamog can start going after another person after annihilating someone. Wound just screws someone over without hurting the other two people at all.
I've said years ago, that we need a three-tiered lands system.
Basic, medium, advanced:
Basics have special bonuses like fetchable and no hate printed, but are limited to one colour, no utility.
Medium can be enter tapped duals or other limited effects. For those also no hate is printed.
Advanced lands can have unique utility effects, bit are kept in check by land replacement effects like Demolition Field and burned by price of progress. Those effects should be more common.
Also winter sun like effects work well then!
There is counter play to advanced lands then, but medium and basic lands are safe, basics even rewarded with payoffs and fetchability.
It's totally true that people don't play enough board wipes.
I agree with Richard on Grievous Wound. It should be banned for the same reason that Iona is banned. Targetting out a player like that is kinda crappy.
Tomer agreeing with Crim on ways to answer Lands was not on my 2025 Commander clash bingo card 🤣
1:18:01 The blue flare is crazy good in the right shell too. Any kind of blue deck that expects to have any number of dorks at some point should consider it.
For example…
My commander was primed to take out my opponent, they threw a removal spell in her direction, and I countered it with the blue flare by sacrificing my own Lier (who says spells can’t be countered). No other counterspell would have worked for me there, only Flare of Denial. That card is the truth in a deck that can support it.
Ngl I kind of agree with Richard on the curses thing, especially with more low curve ones like the infamous curse of opulence.
"We don't like cards that take people out of the game early" My boy Phil just exists and gets smoke by turn 5... I mean he does deserve it half the time 😅
Tomer's reaction to Seth saying lands are boring do nothing cards and I don't care if they get replaced was absolutely hilarious. Never change Tomer!
Appreciate the video and the discourse! A humble request please; let the Trouble in Pairs discussion have a rest for several months please :)
I could definitely see design space made for rewarding playing basics and punishing playing non-basics. Red does a little of this already eith older cards like price of progress and from the ashes and could definitely see them bringing this back
On the subject of nonbasic land hate, I think the solution is more effects like Decimate. We need more ways to remove exactly a problematic land, or to cull only the lands the player ramping has, but they need to be tied to effects you'll want your deck anyway. No one is running Stone Rain on the chance that an opponent plays Shifting Woodland, but if an Escalate card just had "Destroy target land" tacked onto it then they could tap a creature to deal with it and not feel like they were wasting a deck slot on potentially worthless (or, gods forbid, salty) land destruction.
I think the whole “power creep” land thing is super valid this year.
Even in Modern, I have won and lost many games to Sink into Stupor, Barbarian Ring, Arena or Glory, etc.
Lands are becoming so powerful that they can single handedly win games in constructed formats and EDH. It’s a blessing and a curse.