What's the Best Color in Commander? | Commander Clash Podcast #44
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- The crew analyzes each color in Commander to determine the best one in each deckbuilding category.
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Here's an image of all our rankings from this video: i.imgur.com/pdiWIJH.png
So if you assign each ranking a number value S:5 -D:1 then Green and Black would currently be tied at 70 and Red would be the lowest at 35.
Rot wolf's commentary was fire, is there any chance of making them a permanent member of the cast?
Their charisma is infectious
@@delathenleso5793 to be fair crim is the spike of the group, and while you may not like them, spikes definitely exist
Sadly, Rot Wolf caught a nasty infection and cannot make any reapperances for the foreseeable future.
@@kylarcheng1346 crim is my favorite member of the cast, him raging against green, while playing control is just like me. He resonates with me, this was just a joke on rot wolf
@@ArleneMarvell I think it kinda sounded like he was hating on crim, but maybe I’m just dumb
I’d love it if you show each of your tier lists visually, side by side when you each say your list. Would help a lot!
I wasn't happy with how I tried to add it in this video but I'll have it done for next time. Thanks for the feedback!
@@MTGGoldfishCommander appreciate it! I scrolled through the beginning a couple times trying to find the Letter Grades on screen or something but realized it was all verbal
@@MTGGoldfishCommander I'd like that too! Also it would be great to do a combined List for each segment were you diskuss your Lists to make one combined list you all can agree on. This would make it easier to draw conclusions from this potcasts. At least I often don't really know, what to "take home" from your videos because you talk so long discussing but rarley agreeing on anything. And when you finish with the follow up you could do a end rating for each color just by combining all previous lists.
In casual play, blue's strengths are very muted since players will assemble stable value engines that can't all be disrupted by 1-for-1s. In cEDH when everyone is running tons of interaction, as well as 1v1, its stack interaction is a hallmark of the most powerful decks in formats where games routinely end before turn 5
I wouldn't even say just CEDH, I'd say as soon as you're no longer in a combat meta
Its actually more based on how people give up green and white ramp in cedh for the more explosive and more powerful Red and black ramp (and high tide... lel).
So people use counterspells to break the red/black chain ramping and combos.
Again ramp is ramp. Playing cards earlier than their turn in cost. For example I can drop omniscience turn 1 in my izzet deck.... can't do it in my simic deck tho.
The commander clash podcast!
Where W is considered a "good" mono color
and U is considered the worst mono color.
Never change team.
I can’t believe y’all did colorless dirty like that in ramp
Gotta disagree with Richard on Red card draw. Red is VERY good at using “discard your hand then draw X” effects while it’s hellbent. Not just with Wheel, but with things like Ox of Agonas. Burn out your hand, then discard nothing and draw 3 cards. White doesn’t get that kind of luxury
I think its not Draw or card advantage… its more likely looting… u sacrifice something to get something
@@gerogero2011 I feel wheels are reds ONLY card positive draw by Tomer's wording. Soon as he said "cards to hand" it threw impulse draw out. By the wording if you include in exile but can be played, black gets way stronger because of it's various effects.
Wording matters, and ESPECIALLY with a game as complex as mtg.
Red is VERY good at cycling through the deck to get what tou need but by definition, aside from wheels when you are hellbound or close to it, red has no card draw that doesn't sacrifice cards in return or is the very niche card (like browbeat).
White still adds cards to hand which puts it above red for card draw, but not necessarily for card advantage.
Did everyone forget about red's artifact recursion? Goblin welder, goblin engineer, trash for treasure, deretti, etc.
I would say the category missing for me is interaction, I know I rate it highly, being able to interact or disrupt my opponents from finishing their gameplan before mine is really important.
Next week we discuss interaction including targeted removal, board wipes, and countermagic, along with other categories such as protection.
Richard: “Black doesn’t have the 5-mana draw a billion cards.”
Ad Nausem: i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/242/692/07f.jpg
Also the most efficient draw spell in the game is peer into the abyss, based on cards per mana. If you average 35 cards from peer, that’s 5 cards per one mana. Rhystic Study I’ve never seen draw more than 10 cards before being destroyed and that’s still only a little more than 3 cards per one mana.
Not to mention Necropotence. Black draw was so good it was even banned w/ Griselbrand and Yawgmoth's Bargin.
Not the first time they’ve forgotten about necro
you're technically correct, however I think that in mtg 90% of the time 3 mana draw 10 is much stronger than 7 mana draw 35
@@ConstanceMists they talk about it it's even litterally on screen around min 48
@@sushicuit14 ya i wasn’t even past the ten min mark on this vid when i commented that. Its was in reference to them leaving it off of their “best card at every mana value” vid
I really wish we could've seen the ratings on screen while they talk about it. This visual aid would be so good
Crim is not there, but the cast still relies on him having the answer.
Poor blue, it was like hearing your friends talking shit about you before entering the room and then getting sad and leaving instead.
I’d usually agree that blue is the worst at ramp but got to wondering if that’s really the case. Blue’s untapping and copying abilities can allow it to milk the lands and rocks it does have more than other colors. I’m sure we’ve all seen blue decks untap or copy their Thran Dynamos and Sol Rings loads of times, does this make it stronger in ramp than black or red?
Yes, because that’s generally permanent ramp lots of red/black ramp is either temporary or easily disreputable ramp black especially. Or they have ramp (mostly black) that requires things from other people like black market to be REALLY good
I agree untapping lands and ovar the all form recycling lands and counter spells that untap lands with the combination of card draw you’ll never miss land drops for sure i think its in B tier
no there's too many loopholes in order to make blue competitive ramp wise so it sucks
@@JacobSmith-rh2sr surely no less loopholes than black or red which rely heavily on rituals. We just saw tomer copy sol ring and arcane signet several times each and this sort of artifact copying is fairly common, at least in my meta
@@frosty980 no red doesn't need loopholes. Has the most treasure synergies and treasure producers, the best burst mana...none of which blue has. Usually it has to like copy high tide ten times to do anything
I think you may have missed out on a key piece of red's recursion suite, artifact reanimation. It's very good at putting artifacts into play from the graveyard, and although that is archetype specific it's still incredibly powerful.
Red also does the Shamanic Trance type thing where it gives spells a flashback type effect. There are a few red planeswalkers that do this too.
Goblin welder defines red recursion better than gamble defines red tutors.
What other color can effectively interact with the stack?
It used to be simic decks were green decks that added blue to be able to instant speed interact on other turns to make up for the more sorcery speed nature of greens acceleration.
I think if Blue gets consistent hyper efficient ramp the it would eclipse the other colors. In most formats it's the best color for being the only color that has access to stopping spells before they resolve and often for free.
I think it's okay for blue to have one format or two where it's not the strongest solo color.
I wish they'd just open up stack interaction to black and white. It's silly to have it in only one color.
@@RyanEglitis all colors have their own interactions. Gentrification of the colors isn’t the way to go. Make color combos better at interaction if you want but don’t make every color do every other colors thing like green has kinda become.
Green has a lot of "can't be countered". And stack interaction is usually blue removal, so you are playing counterspell because other colours have swords, terror/whatever, beast within or chaos warp. Is it better? Most of the time yes, but it is situational as in, it has to be on the stack. A remove soul reads "destroy target creature card that is on the stack". I do agree that more ways to interact with instants and sorceries would be better that just plain "can't be countered". But then again, it depends on what your instant and sorceries are doing, you interact with the stack with instants and abilities (protect a creature from removal, remove a creature to prevent pump, get proteccion from stupid everything...), and all colours have that, blue is just the best at it.
@@NotSoSerious69420 Every other mechanic is spread across multiple colors - it's silly that such a basic mechanic is only allowed to one color. Especially when that mechanic is as overpowered as stack interaction. It doesn't need to be in every color, but it would be best to open it up to more than a single color.
"black doesn't have 5 mana draw a billion cards" its not 5 mana but peer into the abyss is insane and game winning if it's resolves. I would say black is actually the best at drawing cards. In a 40 life format the life loss isn't even a factor.
That varies pod to pod if your playgroup is an agro mindset lifeloss matters a lot when you halfing your life total to draw some of your deck especially when your not guaranteed to have the mana afterward to just combo out before the table just murders you. Some cards do break that mold like bolas Citadel and ad naus cause they can be instant speed. But a "fair" necro or peer gives people a turn usually. And for the incremental card draw like sign in blood one and two life adds up not to the extent of th big spells but given enough time you can be put in danger zone
@@jamiebasarab7409 that’s actually not really a counter argument. The only lofe point that matters is the one that if you lose it you lose the game. If you draw half your deck and are unable to make the mana to combo/boardwipe or do something to not die that’s not the card/color being bad that’s just a bad deck.
Wait, black doesn't have Ad Nauseam? Black doesn't have Necrologia?
Necropotence lmao
I actually might have to agree with Richard on the card draw argument. Now, I do believe impulse draw is good, but you know whats better than impulse draw? Normal draw. And recently, more and more, White is getting actually no joke staple level card draw effects. Esper Sentinel, Smuggler's Share, Welcoming Vampire, Mangara, Sanctuary Warden, Rumor Gatherer, Bennie Bracks... these are all incredibly strong card draw effects in Commander that will net you tons of card draw over the course of a game. Red, while it can explode one turn, can easily find itself in a spot where its top decking, running low on resources, and in general just not being able to keep up. White, as long as you put some of these cards in your deck, does not run into that issue as much anymore.
But Richard saying Black doesn't have high end draw a billion cards... he has clearly never played Black stuff like Peer into the Abyss, Ad Nauseum, and Vilis.
My personal rankings would be:
Card Draw
S- Blue
A- Black, Green
B- White
C- Red
D- ???
Ramp
S- Green
A- White
B- Black
C- Red
D- Blue
Recursion
S- Black
A- Green
B- White
C- Red
D- Blue
Tutor
S- Black
A- Green
B- White
C- Blue
D- Red
Your ranking mirror mine pretty much 1 to 1, except I'd swap green and white in the recursion. White has so much more variety in types and targets, that green plain and simple can't compare. It does selective hand recursion often focused on creatures well, but relies on singular outliers or very rare/inefficient effects for anything else. If Regrowth is your specific need, green is your choice (out of the two), but white leads in everything else.
My ranking is virtually identical to yours. I'd have put white two spots lower on card draw just a year ago, and one spot lower on ramp. However, as you mentioned, white has been getting a lot of good cards of late.
I've cut most of the tutors in my decks, after 10+ years of playing commander, I appreciate the variance much more as it leads to more interesting game. If I wanted to play the same sequence of cards every game, why play a 100 card singleton format?
"Crypt Ghast is not ramp because it costs 4 whole mana, but Hedron Archive is because it only costs 4 mana."
-Richard
The difference is that crypt ghast is a creature, and a big threat. So if you play it on turn 4, it's probably gone before you can use it to actually ramp. But if you play a hedron archive, you can almost guarantee that you will have access to those 2 mana on your next few turns.
If you're playing crypt ghast correctly, it's either on a turn where it gains you more mana than it costs, or where you can go infinite with it
Blue does have a regrowth: "Recall" (not the one you're thinking of). Starting at three, and having to pitch another card for each card you recur is not always great look, but if you really want to have access to that effect to grab a key piece, you can. It is bad, but I play it in every mono blue deck because I like niche colour breaks even if they're not on rate.
Blue does have a little bit of secret tech that the crew forgot to mention in the ramp section. Fatestitcher style effects let it untap lands and mana rocks which effectively turns them into an arbor elf that can do other shenanigans. That doesn't save its ramp package by any means, but it does make it better than they were giving credit for.
i think the problem with this argument is that, if you're only using it for ramp, another mana rock does the job, just fine. untaping your stuff is your gameplan with the ramp as an upside, not the other way around
@@fernandotanigushi8310 yeah, but i see his point, blue seems to have the most playable free spells with the untap land stuff and other stuff like the counterspells which is pseudo ramp by the definition they used. "Doing stuff sooner."
I was thinking the same thing, also you can make token copies of lands / artifacts in blue.
You also have Mitotic Manipulation, retrace image and energy tap, among other things like stealing mana producing permanents and counters that give temporal mana like mana drain.
You also have paradoxical outcome and the best artifact synergies for a clutch of moxen, and dramatic scepter
blue still takes the cake. best stack interaction, it's board interaction also doesn't get behind. best card draw that doesn't need a preboard and easiest to combo off.
We talk more in length about Blue's stack interaction next podcast. More than makes up for other areas imo
I agree in 1v1 and cEDH, but in casual blue's stack interaction is much less powerful because it's all 1 for 1, which is disadvantageous against 3 opponents
@@towelociraptor Which doesn't matter if you build your deck correctly. If your blue deck can't get that card back, its built incorrectly imo. Also by your logic, almost all spot removal is bad, because its generally a 1 for 1 trade, which has put 2 players down in resources compared to the rest of the table. People always use this sort of argument to downplay counterspells, but it just doesn't work in practice. If you are playing removal properly, you've gained yourself advantage which outweighs the card loss.
@@towelociraptor But you don't have to stop every card, you play a rhystic study, draw a bunch of cards and counter anything that could win the game, at that stage you should have enough counters to stall the board and protect your combo, I personally feel counters are the most powerful form of interaction in the entire game and its not even close
Blue's weakness of speed was severely negated with 40 life and four players, not to mention in EDH you can use almost as many mana artifacts, tutors, and draw as vintage.
If EDH is a 30 life format, it would've allow white/red to exercise their power more readily.
You have to do a board wipe category, also you could do a stack interaction category:
S - Blue
A
B
C
D
F - Everything else
Blues ability to interact with the stack makes it overwhelmingly powerful. Torment of hailfire for x = inf always will win a game... unless theres a blue player at the table, they dont even need to have mana open to counter spells anymore with the amount of free counters they have access to.
I can understand the sentiment to want all colours to be equal in commander, since commander is essentially the only popular format in mtg, but it makes sense that the colour identity for each one doesnt lend itself as well in a slower format.
Almost every single standard theres a monored aggro deck that has tournament success, but red doesnt do as well in commander, and thats okay
Reiterate would like a word with you
Blue is clearly the best, but Red seems to stand out above the other three. Spell/ability redirection, spell copying, in some cases the anti-Blue REB effects are all stack interaction. Nowhere near as good as blue, but I think Red has at least separated itself from the bottom three.
Does "can't be countered" count as stack interaction? Because if so, green has a few things as well
@@leonjakobsen272 no that would be a protective effect or a hate effect
I think one reason they're ranking black lower is that all the good black draw is really only run in combo decks, which they never really see in their meta. Ad Nauseam & Necropotence are really good at drawing, but they're gonna get the table looking your way next time they go to combat. Which is why you want to run these when you combo out and can win, not just as a value play. Similar reason you don't see them mentioning Urza as good blue ramp.
Which is why their "tier lists" and "best list" are subpar everytime.
Yup there’s a ton of 5 mana draw 10s in black but they cost 5-10 life so it does add up
@@FearOgre more like subjective.
@@alexmanzanares200 Which is not best/tier.
@@FearOgre To them it is, and to anyone with similar groups or game enviroments. Just like every single best/tier list video youd find on the internet for any game.
Surprised red was so low for ramp. I would've put it in second position after green:
Dockside, Jeska's Will, Treasonous Ogre, Ragavan, Red Rituals plus a few casual all-stars like mana geyser and mana echoes.
Blue's weird in the sense that it doesn't have great generic ramp options but it has amazing ramp commanders - Malcolm, Urza etc.
Dreamscape Artist turns all the cards in your hand into Harrow.
IT'S FINE. Discarding a card is the same as casting the card (in this case). Casting Harrow also costs you the card itself and a land.
problem is its actually spending 2 cards to cast one Harrow. imagine you manage to tap it once before the board gets wiped, and there youve spent both the dreamscape artist and whatever card you discarded
@@alaraplatt8104 Ehhh, i get what you're saying but I don't think that's correct.
What you're describing is just the mana dork life. They get collateral effed all the time.
So here's my opinion:
Firstly, you're not actually casting a Harrow. You're discarding a "dead card" to ramp. You didn't have to draw a harrow. Instead all the cards in you hand become "Modal Harrows" you can cast them as they are OR you can cast them as "harrows".
Secondly, I think it's incorrect to say that you're "spending" 2 cards to cast the harrow. I think this for the same reason you wouldn't say that you spent 2 cards to cast a turn 2 Kodama's reach if you used a Llanowar elves that dies the next turn. (I know, it's not the same thing at all but that's the best comparison i can come up with right now).
I'm not saying Dreamscape artist is an insanely broken card or anything, but it's at least decent (and fair).
In mono blue, you can smooth out your curve by consistently dropping lands on each turn but there are very few ways to actually ramp (outside of mana rocks and Animist/Hearth & Home/Retraced Image).
Not to mention that this lets you hold up interaction as well.
But yeah, all the points above are very meta dependent too. The games in my playgroup are much slower because we use much more casual decks (bordering on straight up bad. It doesn't help that we also play like garbage).
I can very easily see that this is worse in a faster meta.
But I still think the card is at least Okay.
@@alaraplatt8104 This is a problem for any creature with a tap ability and thus any spellshaper. Some of those creatures are worth it because their tap ability is impressive, some are not. Paying 2 mana and a card and waiting a turn cycle to turn the worst card in your hand into a Harrow could be exciting to some people and not so much to other people.
Things to consider: it puts 2 cards into your graveyard each time you use it, it triggers discard effects, it's a repeatable shuffle effect, triggers landfall. I actually kind of agree with Shobz, as land ramp it's fine, leaning toward less fine with the format getting faster. If you can make use of some synergies, I could see it being pretty nice.
When talking about card draw/advantage I'm surprised no one talked about cards that let you play the top card of your deck, like the absolute powerhouse Bolas's Citadel (is it ramp? is card draw? Nope, it's a bit of both!). They are often permanents that stick around, often with other uses so you aren't down a card, and they are often lasting effects.
It’s card advantage, but neither ramp, nor card draw
You essentially always have +1 cards in hand, but you can’t use “play from hand” effects, in exchange for being immune to discard while being interactable to mill, scry, shuffle etc.
It’s very powerful, but nothing beats having multiple card options in hand.
“Why tutor when you could just play good cards?” I seem to remember quite a few games, including this last clash, where someone drew almost half their deck looking for a boardwipe or an answer and just died instead. Seems like a tutor might have been a good way to avoid that.
Don’t get me wrong, unless I’m playing cEDH, I tend to play less tutors than everyone else at my LGS. Sometimes none. But they definitely have their place.
Yep, a tutor always gets you exactly what you need. A good card is not always what you need.
don't play tutors is also saying don't play tool box decks. and it seems like most people I've seen speak against tutors or doesn't use tutors does use redundant card effects still which is the same thing.
id rather play and play against a tool box deck with a lot of tutors than a deck thats effectively trying to play 4 copies of every card anyway
I'm surprised y'all didn't factor in that colorless ramp is kinda S tier which makes blue and black late game ramp patterns really easy. If you're not met with interaction you can charcoal diamond into Crypt Ghast into Nirkana Revenant, that's like 16 mana on turn 5
i feel blue does have access to ramp, it just needs to use artifacts to do it. it has stuff like tezzeret the seeker and teferi, temporal archmage, which untap artifacts, as well as urza and grand architect, which let you tap permanents to add mana. it's definitely still the worst ramp color, but it can leverage artifact ramp the best.
A consistent way of grading (relative to each other vs. playability lvl) would have been nice. That way, you could actually throw together a comparison like "In our 4 categories with 4 people voting(16 votes total), green got 5 S rankings, 3 A....". Or actually come up with an average ranking out auf the 4 votes and then compare. Otherwise, appreciate the individual thoughts and discussion!
Seth: whites not that great at ramp, sometimes you dont get your bounce land
also Seth: blacks so easy to ramp just get coffers/urborg
Well in fairness black does have the necessary tutors to find those but yeah
Also, the fact people aren't playing nykthos in basically every 1 or 2 colour deck they own is a mistake, its generally just better than the urborg, coffers combo imo
@@spudster8887 it is also really expensive
@@leonjakobsen272 Its commander, proxy it who cares?
@@spudster8887 not every playgroup is ok with proxying
Y’all are sleeping on Blue Transmute cards. If you play Dizzy Spell, Muddle the Mixture, Drift of Phantasms, and Tolaria West, and build around them, you can find just about everything you need. That’s on top of stuff that finds artifacts like Whir of Invention, Trinket Mage, and Tezzeret the Seeker and stuff that finds spells like Solve the Equation and Mystical Tutor. Blue should always be able to find whatever it needs.
MaRo's commented before, they don't want to give Blue treasures because blue has too many artifact synergies that can easily abuse a free artifact token. he's even gone so far as to say giving pirates treasure in Ixalan was a mistake (a "if we were making Ixalan today, either pirates wouldn't get treasures or Pirates would only be RB").
prints hullbreacher
@@delathenleso5793 I get what you mean but it is important to keep in mind that, as one of WoTC’s Senior Lead Designers and the head of the Council of Colors, his opinions do hold a lot of sway.
That being said, from his responses this decision seems to come from the Council. Treasures been labled a firmly Jund mechanic: primary red (because red is the best color at producing “burst” / temporary mana), secondary green (because green is the best color at producing mana outside its own color), and tertiary black (similar reasons as red, but at a cost usually. Also sacrificing for gain).
White is severely limited because white is supposed to be the worst at producing mana outside its own color as a weakness, and blue for the same reason plus the aforementioned “blue has way too many strong artifact synergies” reason.
@@oORoOFLOo yes, and MaRo, as well as Gavin, Melissa, and others have all agreed Hullbreacher was a mistake on multiple fronts.
@@delathenleso5793 And the most recent visible way, Companion.
On white ramp, I would do a half split or so. Some mana rocks and some catch up. The catch up ramp cards are usually creatures and they have a relevance on white weenie decks. The white ramp works very well mainly in mono white decks. Once you add another color, rocks in general are much better to me personally. It also depends on your meta. My LGS doesn't use a lot of artifact removal so I feel safe running rocks. If my LGS had a lot of artifact hate I would lean more on catch up land ramp as its more protected besides land destruction. I'm curios if blue will be the worst color in a year because of the focus on buffing the other colors and leaving it in the dust.
Tutors. Green/Black S> White B> Red/Blue C. Red and blue tutor archetype. Red is more for dragons/goblins. But Blue tutors artifacts. Red and Blue both have 1 or 2 universal tutors, but at a massive cost/drawback. But Green is only S at creatures, but still its creatures do everything. For non-Creature based decks.... stop running green?
So The Commander Theory podcast did an episode about basically this in 2019, so the data is a little different now, but basically shows similar trends. Play experience usually matches data, but in the case of things like red tutors you can usually find that depth is extremely important. Red was definitely worse off in 2019 due to lack of draw and tutors, but has definitely come around now IMO! Another example is white: what's the second best Disenchant? Third? Why are there a million naturalize variants and almost no functional reprints of disenchant? And there's no Reclamation sage in white because....? Anyway love the episode! Love seeing convos like this about the format!
1:18:30 For me it’s a mix of budget and deck focus. I used to play more tutors to make my deck work, but at the same time I didn’t own many of the staple tutors, like Vampiric, Demonic, Diabolic Intent etc.
I now run Eldritch Evolution on my green decks (Reaper King and First Sliver) and Scheming Symmetry on my black decks. On my Edgar Markov I run a Vampiric Tutor I opened on Commander Legends but that’s it
I think Crim rated Green as S because green draws by playing stuff they already want to play plus it progresses their game plan, while blue needs to put cards that draw and that's it and don't do anything besides drawing.
If you're drawing tied up to dealing damage, sure you're conditioned to HAVING to deal damage to draw, but you're drawing AND dealing damage. Blue is just passive/pacifist draw.
Not watched through yet but my prediction is green>blue>black>white>red overall.
I think green and blues relative power depends a lot on power level, blue probably gets stronger in higher power while green will in a more casual setting.
I think black still just edges out white due to tutors, better card draw and better big ramp(what Seth called late game), but the card draw given to white along side it's strong removal is closing that gap.
Red is really the weakest colour at the moment in my eyes, treasure is finding its way all over the colour pie, impulse draw is now worse than white, it's interaction has arbitrary limits or randomness. Don't get me wrong red has cool stuff to but just not to the extent of the other colours staples.
Edit: i also don't think you should change your rankings before discussing your reasoning, i get being convinced during discussion but i'd love to know why Tomer had red below blue.
White ramp is ok and ill play ldn tax and some catchup ramp but mostly mana rocks, red drawing is ok when its big score and thrill of possibility but impulse draw is bad in edh beyond a jeskas will, black draw is bonkers with necropotence and decent with the instants and sorceries but does require life, green is just overall way too busted, and blue is decent enough where we could use more etherium sculptors and such but i dont want to see more treasures…..and in mono blue i play dreamscape artist over burnished hart since it can be used more than once.
okay, yall are completely missing the dreamscape artist. To put it simply, you tap dreamscape artist to turn any card in your hand into a harrow. Because harrow is 3 mana, artists ability is 3 mana, the card you are discarding is the card you would have lost casting a harrow from your hand.
Artist is better than just color-shifted harrow because it is repeatable, on an activated ability, and can discard cards with gy effect or to help with treasure cruise effects. Dreamscape artist is a fantastic card.
By their own definition ruclips.net/video/an_iLjdNDU4/видео.html, red "impulse" draw isn't card draw. It is card access/advantage but it doesn't add cards to your hand. Therefore I think Richard got the closest on these rankings.
Richard never ceases to amaze me with his completely wrong takes on white. He sprinkles in a few good points so people can’t say he is completely wrong. He is just MOSTLY wrong.
Blue tried treasure ramp and made Hullbreacher. Maybe blue could try something else, but blue hits land drops pretty consistently since it's drawing more cards in general and I think that's enough with the other options it already has.
ramp is not THAT necessary when your color wants the game to go long. sometimes playing control is just as simple as not dying
In 2022, hitting 1 land a turn with no extra help isn’t enough anymore. Every other color accelerates fast enough as to where the late game no longer matters as much
"No one expects the first Fade Away, Tomer."
i have no idea what power level these guys play at. they can say in one sentence that getting cabal coffers with urborg/crypt ghast is too slow and is more of a finisher than ramp and then in the next sentence say blinking sun titan is good ramp. it's not the only thing but it is the most recent thing that made me think that. and i have to wonder what world white ramp is good when all of it piggy backs off your opponents ramping first. that means your opponent is always going to be able to use their new mana faster then you and you can never really get ahead of them. hell white is infamously the worst colour cause its ramp and draw are so bad. i love the pod cast but this has got to be your guys worst take yet. even at lower power levels games tend to end around turn 8 so early ramp and burst ramp are by far the best. case and point being dock side (a glorified and over powered ritual spell), jeskas will, all the 2 mana rocks and 2 mana green land ramp being the best form of ramp.
What are you talking about black has like 5 rituals turn 1-2. Dark ritual is insane ramp. Take out smothering tithe and black is insanely better than white at ramp.
"Crypt Ghast is not ramp"
This is going to be great.
Bubbling muck … dark ritual…blood pet… basal thrull… 11 mana turn 3… black can play way ahead of curve… i rest my case
"If I play blue, I get no ramp. That's the tradeoff" - okay. So colors should have costs and benefits associated with them.
What's the cost associated with playing Green?
exactly I think green has been getting way to much power lately
Lack of board wipes. Not really much of one but there it is.
Very limited creature removal, mass creature removal in just one card (ezuri's predation), no exiling creature removal (unless you count Duplicant), and instant speed removal limited to fight spells and effects.
@@shayneweyker So the color that has the best creatures is a B for removal (those fight spells are rather potent when you have a 7/7). I mean, it does satisfy my question of "what does green give up," but I feel like it also highlights the fact that anything another color does well, green does passably at worst.
These are also problems that Blue has, btw, with its removal being largely limited to bounce effects, so you get tempo instead of actual answers, meaning you need another card to handle the spell on the stack after you've removed it from the battlefield. Heavens forbid the card you want to answer is a Carnage Tyrant.
1:08:00 this happened a couple times throughout the episode. Tomer is ranking things 1-5 Best to Worst, and the rest of you are using your Tier Letter grade system.
Green is S tier card draw for sure, blue has good options but almost all of them are less efficiently costed
yall really got me with the ranking of blue at recursion, like, if green gets a pass for needing creatures to draw then blue deserves one for needing spells to recur stuff.
it should be at A with black:
only gets back creatures= only gets back non-creatures.
also archaeomancer is over rated as heck, just play flood of recollection (half the mana), bond of insight (twice the cards) and spell-twine (won me every game I played it, gives you an average of 12 mana regularly). if your not comboing don't play the creature versions of the effect.
also reanimating Razaketh on turn two isn't recursion its a combo\main plan for a deck
Archaeomancer is good because you can loop it, which all 3 of those are specifically designed to avoid. Spelltwine is going to depend on your playgroup and your deck. I probably wouldn't play it in something like veyran, where most of the deck is cheap spells.
Bond of insight seems really good as a standalone card though. I'm probably going to start playing that in some of my decks.
Edited because i misread spelltwine
A lot of mentioning blue, but not smothering tithe for ramp, and I wanna point out Blue had smothering tithe, but better. Blue had Hulbreacher and it decimated the format.
You can't use banned cards as an example. That's like saying black should be higher on card draw because of Griselbrand
Also, they did mention smothering tithe. They all agreed that smothering tithe is one of the best ramp cards in the format
@@leonjakobsen272 I wasn't saying it as an example. It's funny they kept mentioned smothering tithe when talking about blue ramp though because blue had hullbreacher which was just a better smothering tithe.
My mono white deck consistently has the most or 2nd most mana at the table and usually I still have less lands than my opponents, we don’t run a ton of land destruction so I run basically all the bounce lands and bury lands, karoo guildless commons lotus field lotus vale. It ends up being not very difficult in mono white to build a land base that functions for how white ramp functions
honorable mentions for tutors in blue: Intuition, Long-Term Plans and also we can't forget cards like Acquire and Bribery
Interesting podcast and discussion! I generally agree. One of my favorite blue tutors is Long-Term Plans, which is: (2)U, Instant: Search your library for a card and put it 3rd from the top. In most decks, this ends up becoming a 3 mana vampiric tutor because Blue is just so good at drawing cards in basically any strategy.
For BLUE: Why not have blue ramp be a copy spell for lands? like "Cost = UU" "Sorcery = Create a tapped legendary token of target land an opponent controls. Scry 1."
Or a temporary Control effect like "Cost = 1U" "Instant = You gain control of target land until the beginning of your next end step. Untap it."
Why is Rot Wolf always the "404 Item Not Found" image? I remember there was a story behind this years ago but I've forgotten what it was.
The first time it happened was on an early season of Commander Clash when someone (I think it was Jen?) was playing an Infect deck with Rot Wolf but their camera broken so we didn't have their hand cam, so we replaced it all with Rot Wolfs as a joke and it sort of stuck.
Richard is so wrong about black ramping that it hurts. He need to rethink things.
Please don't split this into 3 parts. The topic is garbage. And tier lists suck
Regarding blue, I think a big way it currently gets around needing ramp is via cheap counter spells that allow you to trade up on resources.
Not against the table, though.
I definitely think Blue tutoring is underrated. Solve the equation, mystical tutor, reshape, whir of invention, fabricate are all really good, miles ahead of what red gets
It kind of depends on what you want from your tutors. If you only need 1-2, gamble is much better than all of those, because it's cheap, gives you the card immediately, and can get anything. Reshape and whir of invention can potentially be much better, but they require more setup, and are restricted to artifacts.
On Ramp, Green is S Tier, Black is probably A tier in Mono Black but sucks in a multi-colour deck, White is probably B+ where it's decent but it's all catch up and can easily be dead cards, Red is probably C where it can storm off but that's kinda it, and Blue is D for having mostly combo stuff or solid '1 offs' like Retraced Image or Dreamscape Artist. It can ramp but it's part of combos usually, and often wants another colour or two. Blue does have the odd good ramp card it's worth noting, but Urza is probably King of Blue Ramp.
For a quick bit on why Dreamscape Artist is actually pretty good, please remember that it can fix your mana in a Grixis deck, and it's a Harrow effect so you get untapped lands. Discarding a card and sacrificing a land each time can be a substantial upside if you care about filling your graveyard, and it's worth noting that it's also 2 landfall triggers and can be done at instant speed if you're, you know, HOLDING UP INTERACTION. It can also thin your deck a tad if you actually drew a land, note it only costs you 1 actual mana (and it can be colourless) to thin your deck of 3 lands instead of just hitting a land drop. Dreamscape Artist is secretly a shockingly powerful card in Control decks, feeding the yard while offering you an instant speed mana outlet that gives you an actually valuable resource, and it even can find non-Islands. I'm not saying it's Gush, but it can do a ton of work, even if you have to pay 5 mana to Harrow the first time (but Harrow gives 2 mana, so it's like it cost 3 total to Harrow) you're getting access to a super-off colour ability that can be repeated as desired. Does Tomer like Dawnstrider, is that a good enough Spellshaper, a very frustrating take on Spore Frog, or is that bad too because it doesn't have Haste?
For White card draw, yeah, you have to jump through hoops because that's how it's draw works, White is inherently janky. It's getting to the point where it actually has a decent amount of options. Red is super-bad at actually drawing cards, which is the standard that Richard set for this, not just card advantage. For Green, you're actually really good at drawing absurd amounts of cards. Blue is better at evasive weenies than Green is, so Toski isn't better than Bident IMHO, even if Toski isn't very much worse. In a deck that cares about big power, there are umpteen options to draw cards equal to your higher power creature, and various other payoffs for high power exist, ranging from ramping to making tokens to mini-wipes. I think Sultai in general has access to huge card draw effects, ranging from Necropotence to Mystic Remora to Beast Whisperer/Return of the Wildspeaker, all of these can draw absurd amounts of cards. Richard is bad at magic on this, Black is arguably the best at drawing half it's deck kind of draw, Ad Naus or Peer are both popular options in cEDH, and you don't see Blue played that way very often, where a single Instant or Sorcery just delivers huge card draw and swings the game in your favour at the highest power levels in Magic. My cEDH deck uses Necropotence, but it's pretty janky for a cEDH deck. White is probably in 'good enough to compete' territory, which is nice, I just wish those cards weren't all so pricey, but people want good White cards. Black's 'Life for Cards' motto is a pretty solid deal usually, Green gets access to 1G to each turn get the option of paying 4 life to draw a card, up to twice, which is a huge pile of life and is still considered one of the better cards in print.
Blue has one of the best Graveyard recursion options in Timetwister right? Black is good at certain things, Reanimation is good but Green is great at getting stuff back and putting your graveyard in your library, Primal Command is a hell of a card, White has some nice stuff for smaller things, but tends to be limited enough that you have to build around the ability or it sucks. My Green decks often have no trouble recycling my graveyard, either digging out a key card or two or just reshuffling the lot of it back in, it's the best at this, with Blue probably being the next best at clunkier recursion. Red has stuff like Flashback sometimes, or Jump Start, but it's stuff like Underworld Breech that proves Red can work with the bin. I'd probably not give any colour an S in this area, but Green and Black get an A, Blue and White get a B, Red gets a C- for having a few great examples but usually being awful.
Tutoring is in Black's wheelhouse, but other than Red they each have something. Black is S, Green and Blue are A, White is C and Red is E (there is almost nothing there period, Gamble looks playable in mono-Red). Black has tons of good tutors, but Dimir in particular feels very good at finding what it needs, and Sultai at higher power levels can run a lot of tutoring without running stuff like Grim Tutor even. I feel like it's a sharp drop from Grim Tutor to Idyllic Tutor, and Idyllic is one of White's better Tutors, it's really bad at it if we're honest. Blue is actively good at finding artifacts and can find spells, Green is really good at finding lands and creatures (two of the best things to find btw), while Black just finds anything it wants whenever it wants for 1B, even putting it into hand so it's card neutral.
Putting your graveyard into your library is not recursion.
@@FearOgre That depends on the deck actually, it's just fine if you can tutor stuff up or draw your deck at instant speed and have flash for all your stuff, and those are both things Blue decks are pretty good at usually. If your deck almost always wins by going infinite, putting cards into your library again is about as useful as putting them into play, especially if you can repeatedly recycle stuff (such as having 2 or more recycle effects you can juggle with your infinite resources) and thus will have access to infinite countermagic as well. Blue is not the colour of 'everyone has fun', it's the colour of 'I do what I want and you'd better not complain too much or I'll call your a griefer.' Blue also has stuff like Recall fwiw, one of the more decent multi-card recursion options, it's not like it's only putting stuff in your library, Call to Mind etc.
I guess you can call it graveyard recycling if you want, I'll give you that instead of recursion, but the outcome is very similar in the right deck, even if it can feel nothing like recursion elsewhere. Blue does however have actual recursion spells, more than a few, it just also has a better option in infinite recycling for certain decks.
in the future could you just have a picture of nicol bolas as crims away photo
In all my decks I don’t really have much for tutors I have one in my goblin tribal deck with goblin matron but I find I cut most tutors because I’d prefer to just have a fun card to draw then go find it in my deck
I am not sure what the categories are but blue is at least decent at ramp. It has the best synergies with artifacts. Also, are extra turns ramp?
At the very least, you to draw a card and try again lol... I think that counts for something
The cast actually forgetting that blue has Recall. Not Ancestral Recall, the card named "Recall". It's a regrowth in blue, it just exiled itself and is a sorcery and requires a discard for X targets.
There's probably not much need to mention it, it's doo doo.
@@firstandlast.1254 how bad can a mono-blue way to Regrowth any card type be? This is 3 mana sorcery minimum and discarding a card in the color with the best card draw access is not really a harsh downside. For being the only mono-blue spell (afaik) that doesn't have to bend over backwards to get any card back, this is very solid. Searchable off Spellseeker? Can be pitched to Forces? IDK man it doesn't sound like absolute doo doo to me.
The thing about ramp or rather just colours mana generation is that even tho other colors don’t have greens brain dead ramp cards or whites conditional stuff. blue and blank draw cards and filter through their decks so swell that it makes consistent land drops trivial. White doesn’t have that backup because white card draw is still weak leading to said inconsistencies.
Also also, why the hell would you give the color of extra turns spells ramp? Extra turns is one of the ways blues gets around its restricted mana on top of its synergies with artifacts making mana rocks better in blue than any other color, including white.
The reason red is the worst color in card draw is because there's literally a single digit number of cards that draw cards without breaking even or impulse drawing. Red also has little graveyard interaction making these discard card draws an actual downside. Richard got it so right and everyone else is in the stone age
I feel like you severely underestimate how useful impulse draw is though, sure it's not straight-up card draw, but it is card advantage in a way that both feels red and is also effective.
@@BigBoi237 plenty of times those cards are either not what you need at the moment, uncastable, or multiple lands. I'm not saying that it's a completely useless mechanic but it is no way better or even close to as good as actually just drawing a card
It's "Seth, probably better known as Seth probably better known as Saffron Olive".
Definitely agree that impulse draw is effectively card draw. Sure, you have to play those spells, but the fact of the matter is that you end up casting more spells over the course of the game than if you weren't using the impulse draws. It works especially well with the explosive ramp that Red has. Impulse 2, cast a ritual, cast the other impulsed card basically for free; you cast an additional spell with an effect without using the resources on your board, meaning your hand is free to use still. You're just as far ahead as if you had cast a Divination.
Noone ever said it wasn't card draw, just that it's worse than all the other options. Yeah, in that example it's pretty good, but what if you get 2 lands? Or a combo piece and a piece of interaction with no good targets. Yes, you can build your deck in a way where that rarely happens, but that restricts your deckbuilding options in ways that normal draw doesn't require.
Urza is blue ramp.
If he sees this, I would like to solicit Phil's rankings as well.
Ditto
I think the card draw definition needs a revision. It should be based on how much of your deck the color allows you to utilize at a time. So Red doesn't technically draw cards well; but it does give you access to a larger amount of your deck at one time than most other colors.
Really enjoyed this episode definitely need to do another with board wipes single Target removal and other things
For sure; I thought it was going to be in this one.
Red draw is not bad at all with stuff like Anjes Ravager and Ogre Head Helm. Its getting there.
Also I play usually around 7-10 tutors depending on what i can run or fit in. Cant find a thing without my tutors!
LOL RED IS S++++
But honestly. Red> all other colors in temp ramp its just bad at perma ramp.
Blue is good at instant and sorceries creature based ramp.
Black is bad at all ramp, but has 3 or 4 rituals. Usually mana neutral or slightly risky mana positive. However it has doublers and ritualistic cost based ramp
Green is USUALLY MANA NEGATIVE but it sticks around and is less risky(because you all collectively decided to stop nuking lands)
White ironically is great at land or artifact ramp now for some reason.
So ironically. Red>black>green>white>blue.
But if you don't have the cards to use the mana aka reds issue, you don't really feel it as much.
Red has like 30 ritual or "cast X cards for free" or "treasures everywhere".
Ramp is Red S for burst.
Ramp is pretty nuetral.... except blue..... blue just sucks.
Green Card draw feels like S Tier to me, great henge, beast whisperer, return of the wildspeaker, toski etc. draw insane amounts of cards, even better than blue sometimes
In general, I'd have to agree, but what I think needs to be mentioned is that green doesn't draw you cards on an empty board. After a farewell for example, you might find it hard to get back into the game, because your engine was removed or you don't have that 20-ish power creature anymore. So, while it usually doesn't feel hard to draw a lot of cards with green and the hoop seems really wide, there is still a hoop.
@@leonstein7037 I think what kinda gets underrated though is that Green card draw is rarely just card draw and the conditions often only make it better (more cards for more power, more creatures). Great Henge gets life, mana and buffs creatures, and sticks around. Fact or Fiction is instant which is sweet, but great blue card draw in Commander like that and Consecrated Sphinx, even Rhystic Study which I include for fairness because it just wins early on, is kinda JUST card draw and doesn't scale up unless we're counting something like Blue Sun Zenith, which is great really but an empty board isn't something Green has to deal with that often.
@@Spaced92 true that. I would still argue though, that it's just more of the same. Now that they started compensating for greens weaknesses, drawing 15 for 1 card seems insane. Before, there wasn't really anything to protect your board in mono G, so even when you went off and committed to the board you ended up with nothing when they actually had the boardwipe. Then came cards like Henge that would allow you to get back into the game, even when you lost your army. And another point is, that most of them aren't an auto-include. Like, Toski is great in go-wide, but for a voltron-y decks I'd actually think twice before including him and vice versa. When you have a lot of small creatures, Henge might come too late and hit the board when you did empty your hand already. Additionally blue has them at every point of the curve, from a Brainstorm, over Fact to an Enter the Infinite which outright draws your whole deck.
So I’m going add a level, SS tier because I want to highlight the specialized nature that S tier just doesn’t do.
Ramp
Operational Definition: greater access to potential resources than you would normally have. This is referring to mana from all sources.
SS- Green (duh)
S- n/a
A- Blue (if you consider free spells ramp)
B- Red/Black (slight edge to red)
C- White
D- Blue (if you don’t consider free spells ramping)
I personally consider free to be ramp. You’re playing a card without paying its mana cost, which would be the same as if you have created infinite mana. I do not like “catch up ramp” and it almost doesn’t meet the definition of ramp.
Card draw
Operational definition: greater access to actual resources than you would normally have. This includes draw, impulsive draw, put into hand effects, etc.
SS- Blue (double duh)
S- Green
A- Black (req’s sacrifice; creature or life)
B- Red
C- n/a
D- White
I’m hoping to move white up a level as it gets more draw. I’m a big fan of impulsive draw. It lets me play a land from exile and if I exile a second land, I won’t care.
Recursion
Operational Definition: utilizing a card from graveyard or non-impulsive exile. This means, to hand, battlefield, or impulsive exile.
SS- Black (this was actually very close)
S- Green
A- Blue (buyback, flashback, jump-start)
B- n/a
C- White
D- Red
White once again suffers from having to jump through hoops that other colors don’t have to do. Red just doesn’t have many options outside of the one’s mentioned here that aren’t tribal restricted.
Tutoring
Operational Definition: Searching your library. Pretty simple.
SS- Black (more duh)
S- Green (this high due to land tutoring)
A- Blue
B- White
C- n/a
D- n/a
F- Red
I will never use Gamble in a non-mono Red deck. I might not use it in a mono-red deck either.
For the next episode, we need mass removal, single (permanent or player) targeted removal, doubling effects (I include copying here), milling and discard effects, and unique abilities to each color (ex. counter spells and extra turn spells for blue). The last one I think is especially important.
Regarding tutors... I've gone 2 opposite directions depending on what power level I'm playing at. If I'm playing competitively, I'll have 10+ of the most efficient tutors, otherwise I've pretty much removed all of my tutors in favor of more ramp and draw. I'd rather have the variation in gameplay at the lower power levels.
To expand on this, I agree with Seth in terms of red not having the depth that other colors have, despite having one of the most efficient tutors in all of MTG. It helps to break it down into a point system or something similar.
Example of possible point system.
Efficiency (CMC): 1-5 points
Specificity (any card VS card types): 1-5 points
Potency (direct to hand VS in GY or top of library): 1-5 points
Gamble: 5 efficiency, 5 specificity, 4 potency (puts in hand with possible discard downside) = 14/15 points. But now compare that to red's overall depth of tutors, none of the other ones even come close. On average, most of red's other tutors would rank extremely low so I agree with red being in C/D Tier for tutors.
ah card draw a 47:28 yall seem to think that "green NEEDS creatures to draw cards" is a weakness. No. Blue doesn't GET to have creatures AND draw cards. Green gets to get out a creature that draws cards, such as toski, and use those drawn cards, to further empower its card draw. Blue gets to have creatures OR draw cards. Blue creatures not only come with an extra hoop, draw for not playing creatures, but also come with the drawback of being weak overall. The sheer number of times you as a blue player WANT to draw 6 but CAN'T because a 3/3 will hit you and proc some stupid game ending effect is INSANELY high in blue. The Ragavan's of the world abuse and use you for free engines. Black makes this negative, of bad card draw that isn't on creatures, and amplifies it by ALSO making you punch yourself while your at it. Green has very little cost to mana ramp or card draw. Red has the most explosive turns of mana ramp and card draw. Blue is literally just about counterpells and mostly the free ones at this point. Like, Blue is B tier at pretty much everything except removal, which its S+ tier at. Its the single best "interaction" color. Thats all its got and why its hated/abused in cedh.
Oh card draw, there is a reason prosper works so well, red card draw is actually really good, it you can play around and not fret the exile effects.
But one *Rakdos* commander doesn't set a rule. Red impulse draw works but is generally the worst variant given its limitations and open information.
i was literally gonna make a video just like this. you guys beat me to it.
Guys.. 24:26 yall seem to be missing something important. Blue ramp is cost reductions. Cost reductions allow you to cast MORE low cost spells per turn. For every spell you cast -1, you generate a mana. A simple baral, can give the equivalent of (tap) add 4 colorless mana use this mana only on instants and sorceries.
I can think of tons of cards like the myriad card who reduces them by 1, AND gives sorceries flash.
Blue jumps through hoops for mana. Thats its niche on the mana ramp.
Tap/untappers, only X cards mana, cost reductions, etc.
It has fine ramp. Its just not great at allowing you to steam off and cast 7 and 8 drops on turn 4. Its more about casting 4, 3 drops on turn 4.
Seth " does blue need more ramp" no blue's ramp comes from cost reductions, and mostly functions on instants and sorceries. Blue uses X cost draw effects so they are one in the same.
The worst part of current mtg is how ramp bleeds into ramp. Blue green already bleeds its instant and sorcery mana back into land ramp spells.
The thing about green and ramp is, its creature ramp is risky, but powerful. While its land ramp is safe but weak or costly. Its always slow tho. And yes. Green is slow. Green is factually slow methodical growth.
Lands entering tapped. Mana negative interactions bleeding into one another, no haste in creatures, etc. Slow but stable. Powerful and repeatative.
Blue..... even if you gave blue more ramp than it already has, what would it matter? Blue can already ramp, it just doesn't. Combo decks already use high tide, frantic search, apprentice wizard, vhaal, etc. Do you want MORE Urza? Blue has tons of ramping creatures (honestly more than I expected) we still don't want them in our decks.
I came here to like the video and share some hot takes. I was listening on CastBox and I wanted to share my personal thoughts. The more I listen to MTGGoldfish content, the more I find that I like Richard's playstyle and that it aligns with my own.
In terms of Draw, I think Black is much better than the cast gave it credit. I think Blue is actually overrated. I find Blue's card draw options in Commander are not impressive. After Rhystic Study, I don't like many (if any) card draw effects in Blue. All of them feel over costed compared to their Black counterparts. Blue certainly has the most diverse and pure number of options. However when it comes to generic card draw, Blue suffers a bit.
Show me a 2 Mana Draw 2 in Blue. Chart a Course is the closest thing that I have found and that is conditional. Black has 2 (Sign in Blood and Night's Whisper).
Show me a 3 Mana Draw 3 in Blue. Ingenious Mastery and Secrets of the Golden City exist, but they are also conditional or have sizeable downside. Black has Painful Truths, which is basically draw 3 with a small downside.
Blue is good at card selection with cantrips and is the best at dumping a ton of mana into drawing cards. However, personally I have found myself moving away from 4+ mana cards that only draw cards. Especially cards like Recurring Insight which cost a lot of mana and are sorceries. I like Pull From Tomorrow and Even the Score because they are instants. After that, unless I am in a specific strategy, Blue falls off in efficient options to draw cards.
In terms of Recursion, I don't think the flexibility of Green was given enough credit. Yes, Black can spend 1 or 2 mana to put a big creature into play. However, that only applies to creatures. I understand Yawgmoth's Will exists and gives that flexibility too, but in paper it is very expensive and is the only option to get back anything but a creature. Green doesn't have many (if any) options to put permanents directly onto the battlefield. However, you are likely willing to cast whatever you get back again with a Regrowth. So I think the flexibility to recur anything is something that shouldn't be overlooked.
I think people need to reevaluate how they think of tutors in terms of which colour has the best ramp. Sure, Blue doesn't have mana cards that directly ramp, but it does have Trinket Mage, Whir of Invention, and Fabricate, all three mana cards that fetch your Mana Crypt (and then Blue has the best ways of abusing that Mana Crypt with untap effects). The best part about these effects is they're very useful even later in the game. Blue is probably the best colour for using Walking Atlas too, a card that puts one land into play every turn in most blue decks. Black can do the same thing but better with Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, and Grim Tutor. I'd rate Green as S, White as A, Black as B, Blue at C, and Red at D. I am not saying Blue is insane at ramp, but I think people are vastly underrating how good it is. Blue's ramp is very tied to artifacts and creatures/lands that tap for more than one mana, and it's pretty unfair to disregard these when talking about ramp; every colour can play Sol Ring/Mana Crypt, but Blue is the one that gets to play them every game and then untap them and clone them.. Also this was briefly touched on in the podcast, but theft cards (Archmage's Charm, Thada Adel) and efficient artifact clones (Phyrexian Metamorph, Copy Artifact, Mirrormade, etc) are also good ramp as well (if I'm spending 2-3 mana to get 2 mana back I'm very happy). The strength of Blue ramp is all of these cards are better for more than just ramping, which no other colour except Black can claim. I also think it's pretty unfair that you guys considered Storm-Kiln Artist for Red when Urza is just a much better card for ramping. That's not even getting into stuff like Mana Drain, Dramatic Reversal, Turnabout, Teferi, the land untappers, Grand Architect, etc.
I feel like every color should have effectively similar mechanics.
Blue is card draw but this also accelerates your mana base, but more importantly; I think mana cost reduction effects should be blue's shtick, efficiency from magical study.
Black should have cheating mana effects primarily, or mana stealing/absorption.
White should be taxation/farming (maybe an evergreen white mechanic that untaps a land when ~ comes into play. to mimic crop rotation. A decidedly white, not-green form of growth.)
Red uses treasures which are impulsive, like red's card-draw.
It's really simple but important and I'm not sure why it's taken so long to really hammer out the "souls" of the colors.
Black does have Carnival of Souls for early ramp. 1B- Gain B and lose 1 life every time a creature ETBs
Gotta be careful to not ping yourself to death though, it triggers when anyone has a creature ETB.
I would argue Cabal Coffers/Crypt Ghast/Etc are more effective as early ramp in mono black decks. Not a lot of hoops to jump through since you'll be running mostly basics for mono black decks.
Red does have Mana Echoes. 2RR- Whenever a creature comes into play, you may add 1 to your mana pool for each creature you control that shares a creature type with it.
In my non combo toolbox Meren I'm running 14 tutors which are the following...
Birthing Pod
Urza's Saga
Elvish Reclaimer
Fauna Shaman
Fiend Artisan
Survival of the fittest
Crop Rotation
Entomb
Vampiric Tutor
Vivien Monsters Advocate
Buried Alive
Demonic Tutor
Diabolic Tutor
Green Sun's Zenith
On the ramp conversation... on Moxfield, I tag spells up to MV 4 (think up to Migration Path) as ramp. Everything else, in particular Mirari's Wake, Zendikar Resurgent, or Nyxbloom Ancient is tagged as Big Mana rather than ramp. If card doesn't get me ahead of curve turns 1-3 or so, it needs to help win the game within 1-2 turns. Untap with Nyxbloom, you have to win.
Blue seems to do everything badly, except go infinite. It has SO GOD DAMNED MANY WAYS TO GO INFINITE. Also, removal. It may not handle things on the board as well, but counters are just universal removal, and the mass bounce available is honestly really strong.
"black ramps too late, crypt ghast is too slow" (completely ignore all the "creature-to-mana" sacrifices red also loves)
now WHITE! white really ramps, just look at sun titan... which costs six mana... and everything else is catch-up landramp.
I swear this channel is 80% bs bad takes lol
A point I'd like to add that I don't generally hear enough when people talk about the colour pie - especially during the blue ramp discussion - is that, from a commander perspective, the 2 important things a deck can do is draw cards and ramp. So when we talk about if blue should have ramp, i tihink the simple answer is no, because form a commander perspective, it draws cards SO WELL.
I think this was also the contention for so long with white, and to a lesser extend red because for so long they did neither of those well, which was OK in 1v1 formats because they have other considerations there. And this is also why I'm OK with white getting only OK card draw (you and target opponent) and OK ramp (catch up) because by having "OK" ramp and card draw, it gives it its own place in the colour pie - not good at either, but doable. It's now starting to get a bit over the line, but only just.
This is also my problem with green because obviously it ramps super well, and is now drawing cards so well too!
I'm with Richard on ramp for Blue. Decks want ramp; before it was you had to run Green, or rocks, and that's been broadened. I think there is enough now (And blue has a few more untap, and instant/sor discounting than you might think). You can choose Green/White/Red/Black for your mana gen. It's the same idea of how you don't go to Green when you're looking for creature boardwipes, you don't go looking at blue for ramp.
I really don´t like tutors, because it kind of destroys the premise of the singleton format. Run them, if you want, but does it make the gameplay more fun for anyone?
For me Commander is the challenge of building a deck, where every card needs to have a purpose. Tutors are fine if you want to do a purely combo-thing, but it´s put in decks for "consistency purpose", which I think is often a bad excuse for powering up a deck and adding recurrent gameplay.
Protection is a big thing imo, because it somehow correlates with graveyard recursion or bouncing. Where do counterspells allign, as they are protection, removal and a bit more in one card?
I would love for crim to get some time to discuss the topics in this video and his takes in the beginning of the next one.
Best MTG Podcast for me, thank you guys :)
I do understand counting card draw as coming out positive on cards in hand. However, to jump to Red's defense, I think card selection is a comparably important category especially because, when you think about it, card draw turns into looting with discarding to hand size.
Having more cards in hand IS better than not. However, it's like fixing is to ramp, card selection gets what you need into your hand, draw gets more into your hand. Having 7 lands IS worse than 3 or 4 relevant cards.
In terms of selection, I think Red stands pretty tall with rummaging as well as impulse draw to find the cards you need to progress your board state or find answers. As true as Richard saying all cards are good in a commander deck, not all cards are good for the game state and I think that after Black and Blue, Red does give Green a run for its money.
You can see A LOT of your deck very efficiently with Red and I think that's why I don't feel left behind in terms of relevant plays in a Red deck because it is great at digging. Mono Green is probably better than Mono Red but I think Red wins out because it is generic enough to be useful and desirable in a wide range of multicoloured decks and archetypes, especially recursion.
Red is certainly better than White at card selection with its draw and tutoring being so narrow.
I feel like a hugely underappreciated aspect of Blue recursion is Graveyard Shuffle Wheels and Draw spells. Wheeling your Graveyard back into your Library and getting a full grip can be absolutely game changing, and really leans into Blue's card draw strength - alongside their strong library searching synergies.