Still my favorite Magic story: I was at an SCG Legacy Open, and I was playing Abzan against Hypergenesis. He casts Shardless Agent and then drops Emrakul and Progenitus. I drop Knight of the Reliquary and some other stuff. At the end of the turn, I go into the tank and then think, “I got this.” I Swords to Plowshares the Agent and then untap. I use Knight to fetch Karakas to bounce the Emrakul and then use Liliana of the Veil to make him sacrifice his only remaining creature, the Progenitus. His jaw hit the floor. Yes, I won that game and match.
@@crazygermn I have no idea about the Venezuela thing, but in terms of Karakas, I've always heard it pronounced closer to "kuh-rah-kis" or "kuh-rock-us"
We are getting closer to 500 and I can't wait. I haven't played Magic the Gathering in a very long time (since Mirroden) but I never miss your videos because they bring back so many amazing memories!
Tabernacle + enchantments that turn all lands to creatures was always my go to! Way later when I finally got into commander, I instantly went back to it but added Humility to the group, just to be extra obnoxious 😅 Rarely ever won with the deck, but stalling out games? 100% success rate 😆
I started playing around Revised/Fallen Empires and I wanted SO many of the cards from this set back in the day. Crazy cards like MIrror Universe, All Hallow's Eve, and so on... They did botch Legendary creatures, but hey you gotta start somewhere right?
Misstep is great, but a little too narrow to outdo mana drain. It is great in Eternal for sure, but that's because of the intricacies of the format, not how good it is in a vacuum
I always felt that Legends was a set of extremes. The good cards are great, and the bad cards are absolutely awful! The set is a big risk to open, because it seems like for every good card, there are 10 terrible cards. And the bad cards in the set are extremely awful!
It's better than every other card in this list. Thanks to being too powerful (and hence banned in Legacy) it UNFAIRLY loses out on what would be so many more top 8s. It eats every other card on here for breakfast. Let's not forget it misses out on Standard, Modern top 8s because again, it's better than any other card on this list. It's the best card in Legends. Easily.
Yeah, I have seen it every once in a while, but it's not nearly as popular as other choices. Since the format is slower than other Eternal formats, a great deal of the time it's completely dead. You really need a way to discard it for profit in some way, perhaps to Moon Circuit Hacker, in order to justify playing it.
I'm surprised you hadn't covered this set in a top ten before. But I'm even more surprised that Moat and The Abyss didn't make the cut. I mean, the numbers don't lie, but if anyone had told me that Boomerang had more points than either of them, I would have assumed they were messing with me.
This list is heavily biased towards recent decks. Note how quite a lot of cards start in the mid-2000s even though they certainly were seeing play in Eternal formats before that; the reason is that there weren't any premier events in Eternal formats until then. So the days of Abyss and Moat being good were only when there weren't any events being played. These days the cards don't see much if any play in Legacy. At 4 mana each, they're pretty big investments, and there are plenty of decks that simply don't care about them. They do have potential uses as sideboard cards, but they are somewhat narrow and there's a lot of pressure on sideboard slots. While this is a recent development, the new Boseiju means that a lot more decks will have maindeck enchantment hate.
Legends is one of those sets that I truly can appreciate as a relative newcomer to the game. I think that it was a truly groundbreaking set. Cosmic Horror is one of my favourite MTG cards of all time, as are the many amazing stax pieces in the deck. Truly though, my appreciation goes to the banding lands, since banding is probably my favourite mechanic in all of MTG. I am honestly surprised that Mana Drain didn't have way more points, but I'm pretty sure it got banned from pretty much everywhere except Vintage, where it would just get Force of Will'd anyway. Speaking of Vintage, it would be truly swell if we got "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)"!
The one thing I remember most about Legends is that WotC seriously underestimated demand for the set and severely under printed it. I got into MtG shortly after Legends came out, and it was impossible to find even single boosters because the entire print run had been pre-ordered and sold out. The demand was so great that game stores had to limit the number of booster boxes people could buy. I therefore, I got to play against a lot of the original Legends cards, but only ever owned a handful. Arabian Nights and Antiquities cards were easier to come by that Legends cards for a time. Unfortunately, I stopped playing in '95 shortly after Fallen Empires and sold my collection (which I wish I still had today, since at one time I owner the power 9's , 4X every dual land, etc. etc.)
Not much of a competitive player here and my favorite card in this set is Fallen Angel. Once Homelands hit, I started running Angel + Sengir Autocrat + Animate Dead for 19 to the dome (as early as turn 4 on occasion, thanks to Dark Ritual), much to the dismay of my play group. Good times.
My disappointment that Chains, Nethervoid, and Moat did not make the list is indescribable. I demand a recount using only the low level events I have personally played counting as first tier events. That isn't even to mention gems like the Abyss, Divine Intervention, and Concordant crossroads. Its time to bring World Enchantments back! The game needs more hate pieces and staxy effects. We dont get sweet color hosers like Acid Rain or Active Volcano anymore and its really a big shame. You haven't lived until you get locked out by Nethrvoid and land destruction while you slowly loose life to underworld dreams or you try to play your cantrip heavy control deck against and In the Eye of Chaos, I mean Wrath is sweet at four but at eight, you'll already be dead. Times were just different and I miss them sometimes. I actually love a lot of modern magic design and this set also showcases all of the bad parts of early designs as you alluded to but I do wish we could see some modern takes on the old stuff like that. What would a fire design Smokestack look like? Doom foretold aint it. I need some powercreep to my sphere of resistance. Where is my asymmetrical mld? I dont know, I love magic and I just want to see what they could do in that space if they wanted to with all the time and experience they've gotten since then. Some of it is probably simple like Tabernacle and the Abyss would be sacrifice effects, not destroy effects. And while it being the way it is does make for some fun ways to break the symmetry, that seems like an easy modern update. Bring back Stax!
Agreed: Legends is iconic but it does have so many trash cards. In addition to the cycles you mentioned, the lore of the set led to some iconic characters in the modern day: Nicol Bolas and Chromium made their 1st appearance there. Tetsuo Umezawa also appeared there and one of the direct descendants of Toshiro Umezawa. Kithkins also made their first appearance here. There are actually some cards in that set that I feel would still hold up today that did NOT make this list... albeit more as a secondary choice. Cards like Arena of the Ancients can stop Eldrazi and Griselbrand from curb stomping you by making sure they're tapped down. Nether Void adds 3 mana cost to all spells, greatly slowing the game down. Whirling Dervish is great against black decks and an unprepared player can find themselves in deep sh** in a few turns. Land's Edge turn all Lands in hand into Shocks (although its symmetrical compared to Seismic Assault). Reset untaps your lands to extend your plays for the turn (Rest + High Tide = tons and tons of mana), and Active Volcano and Flash Flood can destroy a blue or red permanent or bounce an island or mountain for 1 mana. Of course, for each card we can still use in today's metagame, there's like 5 cards that aren't even good enough enough to be coasters. It hurts that some iconic names like Tolaria, Cathedral of Serra and Urborg are tied to garbage cards. I have to admit, MANY of those cards have AMAZING art with a great gold border finish, making them great collector's item (i.e Kasimir the Lone Wolf)
We can play mana drain in commander/edh. I also have a vehicle deck where I play Tabernacle and love to see peoples reactions to that coming down on the board.
seeing wood elemental in the vid hit me with the classic "but what if it wasn't _entirely_ ass tho?" inspiration because it's always been a card with interesting design space, it just ... doesn't actually _do_ anything with it, even in terms of flashy and impractical combos. so, in part inspired by legends's introduction of multicolored cards: As Wood Elemental enters the battlefield, sacrifice any number of untapped lands that could produce G. For each of them, choose a color of mana it could produce. Wood Elemental has protection from the chosen colors. Wood Elemental's power and toughness are each equal to twice the number of lands sacrificed as it entered the battlefield.
me: Ok, mana drain _is_ good even enough for eternal formats even though you have to pay mana for it. Why haven't I seen it in any legacy content? Nizzahon: It's banned in legacy. me: Oh, that'd do it.
Legends may still be my favorite set. It is one of the last sets that didn't feel like the designers were creating premade decks around specific mechanics, then selling random parts to those decks in packs. It also is one of the last sets that deserves the first "C" in "CCG", even after the damage done in Chronicals and 4th. In it's time Legends expanded the game in ways few sets since have done.
@@NizzahonMagic From where is there an official pronunciation of the place in Magic lore? If you're referring to some real world word in a foreign language, how it's pronounced there is totally irrelevant.
Legends was one of the worst designed sets ever. The best cards were mostly Enchantments with super effects and lands that broke land rules (mana/restrictions). The best spells had weird Side effects such as chain lightning.
What people don’t seem to understand about Mana Drain, is that it is a truly awful card in an environment when you have Mana burn and control decks. It really only became reliably good after the rule changes of the modern era.
I remember playing it in "type 1.5" the precursor to Legacy, and it was absolutely nuts. Most cards that are played in the old formats don't cost much mana, so not only did you not burn for much if it came to that, but getting any amount of mana also greatly accelerated your plays.
This is false. Mana Drain was one of the three "pillars" of mana acceleration in the Vintage format (the other two being Dark Ritual and Mishra's Workshop). Mana Drain was prevalent in the old Type 1 of the 90's, where the mana it generated was used to power out Mind Twist or Braingeyser. Control decks back then frequently used other mana sinks, such as Jayemdae Tome. Mana Drain carried some risk, but was hugely popular. As the format evolved, the mana from Mana Drain started being used more for things like Mindslaver. Mana Drain wasn't quite as prevalent in the old Type 1.5, but it was a control staple thanks to the lack of other strong countermagic back then and the potential to rush out Nevinyrral's Disk.
I was already shocked when Land Tax was revealed at Number 10. If Land Tax is Number 10, the rest of the list is going to be stacked. I was further shocked when Mana Drain was Number 6 AND beaten by Pendelhaven (I was expecting that card on the list but at a lower position). Sylvan Library and Karakas were the other two that I expected in the top five but I completely forgot Chain Lightning came from this set.
Not a single legendary creature or multicolor card, and no real surprise there. Considering what a disaster thier introduction was, its a little surprising that they both caught on so well
It's pure collectability: with these really old sets, one isn't buying a game piece for playing, but a piece of history of the game. That's why also unplayable garbage cards are more expensive than modern staples. If it's just to play some random Commander game, of course one should use proxies. Damn, I use them despite owning for years the real thing- not going to be carrying around thousands dollars that can easily get lost or stolen at a lgs.
I would suggest Nizzahon's top 10s and worst 10s for all these sets NOT counting tournament (competitive Magic) scoring would be great, purely your opinion is just as interesting.
Oh, I didn't name all of them. The set is filled with lots of awful cards - those were just examples. I never claimed that that was an exhaustive list.
Oh easy, Karakas. Edit: My friend has a deck built around finding this land then abusing the shit out of it whether he is bouncing his own legends or ours, shit is nasty
Tabernacle.... I don't play with it as proxied and the real one under lock and key because i can stall the game indefinitely with it without an infinite loop. it should be number 1 and banned in all formats.
Ouch Mana Drain getting punished for being TOO powerful. Wow. Like if were historically always legal in Legacy, it would always be a 4 of and get so many more top 8s; it would crush ever other card on this list. Full stop. The best card on here bar none. But instead it gets punished for being TOO POWERFUL. Wow.
I don't see in which way this set is underrated. Everyone knows it has a lot of power cards. And if it comes to design you can hardly underrate it. This is a pile of random cards more than a set.
While I don't think that anyone would deny that the set has some severe flaws, it also has some very clever design elements. I do not think that it's particularly random. Most of the themes here expand on the mechanics originally developed in the core set. The original core set was kind of overloaded on enchantments and enchantment-based cards. It also did a lot with the basic land types and with color-hosing. Walls were another huge theme in the core set. Legends doubled down on all of those things. The other two sets prior to Legends were tiny and explored confined niches. This was the first expansion set to take expanding the game seriously.
dude, the bands with other lands are actually busted in commander. bands with other is way better than just banding. the reason why pre fallen empires sets will all post badly in this series is only because the pro tour didn't exist at the time. you're really talking about chronicles and 4th edition reprints for this reason. legends is actually a legendary set, and was more sought after than antiquities at the time. the 4 horsemen weren't pro tour cards, but i assure you, they were always highly sought after.
These are some..uhm, interesting takes that don't seem based in reality. The bands with other lands are God awful, and no one plays them in Commander. Check out EDHRec. Bands with other is actually WORSE banding, because it requires the other card to have the same type. So it is strictly worse than banding.
@@NizzahonMagic you clearly don't understand banding, i don't blame you. yes they do have to be legends, but look up how many you can band together, and what the ruling actually is. bands with others had a rule change. and idc what edhrec says, y'all play terrible cards as a norm on there. if you're playing mono black, for instance, it's a free roll. but you can think whatever you want, "strictly worse," lol, like you're an authority, lol.
@@NizzahonMagic and dude, i was alive and playing the game "competitively" back in the 90s. you're reading off a website the reality i lived... and you're missing all the minutia. don't mean to bust your bubble, but you're the one talking about "takes." you clearly don't have a clue about the 90s era.
@@NizzahonMagic dude, you do legends as a topic, and no mention of "the deck" or moat... yeah, imma take your comments on my knowledge level with a grain of salt. you don't know what you're talking about, nerd.
I understand banding, I played the game in the 90s (though late 90s), I have a PhD in history, and I have been writing about and researching Magic's history for 7 years. I don't just make stuff up or omit things without doing a ton of research. Your criticisms basically amount to "I was there you weren't so to hell with the data!" without any real response to any of the points I originally raised! I didn't mention the Moat or the Deck because they didn't need to come up this video. This video isn't "What Magic was like when Legends comes out," it has more to do with the long legacy of the cards in the set. Yes, Moat is super important (it was #11) even today in EDH, but I have to do what the data tells me to. And the Deck is incredibly important in the history of Magic, but I wouldn't just randomly bring it up here. I am going to do a Deck History on it at some point though. The most baffling part of your rant is still the bands with other part. It is definitely not a "free roll" to play a bands with other legends land ever, since they never produce mana and have far too narrow of an ability. Bands with other was never good. it has always been a strictly worse version of banding. That take has nothing to do with any authority I may or may not possess. It is a fact! Banding is more flexible than bands with other. Period. It only lets you form bands with creatures who have some matching quality (in this case, legendary), while banding let's your creature band with any other creature. You are right there was a rules change, but it actually used to be even worse! Only things with bands with other could band with other things with bands with other. No matter when you want to talk about the mechanic, it has always been strictly worse than the more flexible banding. Your play group may have done it differently, but that means you were doing it wrong.
the excuse wizards said to reprint some legends cards is so fuckign ridiculous at least they are starting to reprint reserve list (which is absolute bs and should be removed) so that's something
You: This is such a great set. Also you: One of the best cards in the set is "Boomerang", a card that now would be considered about two degrees too weak to be playable.
@@NizzahonMagic The only relevant text here is the missing "non-land" qualifier. Otherwise, we see those effects for 1 and a blue with upside all the time. For 1 and a blue with upside, those cards do see some play. But Boomerang has seen like 9 reprints and rarely was relevant in format, because before it is relevant bouncing lands in mono-blue or near enough mono-blue has to be relevant. Yes, in the early game this is almost always an effective timewalk in stopping the build of board presence in the same way that counter-spell can be a time walk. But if it's a two mana blue unsummon, that's not so great.
Boomerang bouncing creatures is an option, but not why you play the card. It's the general flexibility of it to temporarily deal with any possible permanent type, including setting your opponent back land drops. If you don't care about bouncing lands and aren't mono-blue there's Disperse, but there's only one 1-mana card that can deal with any non-land permanent, Chain of Vapor, and it has it potential drawback as well as not bouncing lands. The only other 2 mana spell that bounces lands as well as any other permanent is Eye of Nowhere. Soon after that card's printing in Kamigawa they really stopped printing efficient ways of removing lands from play, because people don't like not being able to play their cards.
They're all terrible by today's standards, where every playable creature HAS to leave behind value even if it's killed immediately when it enters, but cards like Thunder Spirit and Stangg were perfectly good in 1994. Heck, people were always coming up with fun/infuriating things to do with the OG Nicol Bolas.
That lottery card thing is a smart move from WOtC... but it's indeed a lottery. It's a large set, so the chances that the very expensive collectors pack not only contains a Legends card but a good rare are very very low. People of course are hyped at the idea to crack a Tabernacle or an Abyss, but the reality is that it's more likely to get a Holy Day, Boomerang or Lady Orca.
Still my favorite Magic story: I was at an SCG Legacy Open, and I was playing Abzan against Hypergenesis. He casts Shardless Agent and then drops Emrakul and Progenitus. I drop Knight of the Reliquary and some other stuff. At the end of the turn, I go into the tank and then think, “I got this.” I Swords to Plowshares the Agent and then untap. I use Knight to fetch Karakas to bounce the Emrakul and then use Liliana of the Veil to make him sacrifice his only remaining creature, the Progenitus. His jaw hit the floor. Yes, I won that game and match.
Such an iconic set, so many great card as well as unplayable charming and yet collectible garbage. 🙂
lol well said
I'm here to accumulate likes for noticing Nizzahon's weird pronounciation of Karakas
I'd literally always heard it pronounced the same way most Americans pronounce the capital of Venezuela and this pronunciation has me shook
I thought I'd been saying it wrong for years, that pronunciation has me all messed up lol
@@crazygermn I have no idea about the Venezuela thing, but in terms of Karakas, I've always heard it pronounced closer to "kuh-rah-kis" or "kuh-rock-us"
Mold demon might be one of the worst cards ever printed, but it also has some of the most... unique art.
We are getting closer to 500 and I can't wait. I haven't played Magic the Gathering in a very long time (since Mirroden) but I never miss your videos because they bring back so many amazing memories!
Underworld Dreams was a great card too.
Tabernacle + enchantments that turn all lands to creatures was always my go to!
Way later when I finally got into commander, I instantly went back to it but added Humility to the group, just to be extra obnoxious 😅
Rarely ever won with the deck, but stalling out games? 100% success rate 😆
Land tax+Scroll rack is a tried and true combination. Love these things.
Land Tax + Land's Edge = pretty much 6 damage a turn :)
I started playing around Revised/Fallen Empires and I wanted SO many of the cards from this set back in the day.
Crazy cards like MIrror Universe, All Hallow's Eve, and so on...
They did botch Legendary creatures, but hey you gotta start somewhere right?
I would actually argue that Mana Drain is the *third* best counterspell of all time, behind Force of Will and Mental Misstep.
Misstep is great, but a little too narrow to outdo mana drain. It is great in Eternal for sure, but that's because of the intricacies of the format, not how good it is in a vacuum
I always felt that Legends was a set of extremes. The good cards are great, and the bad cards are absolutely awful! The set is a big risk to open, because it seems like for every good card, there are 10 terrible cards. And the bad cards in the set are extremely awful!
Mana Drain is such a sad card. It's absurdly powerful, but it's too good for Legacy but not really good enough for Vintage.
It was actually pretty terrible in a Mana burn environment
Was*, manaburn doesn't exist anymore, not even in eternal formats.
It's better than every other card in this list. Thanks to being too powerful (and hence banned in Legacy) it UNFAIRLY loses out on what would be so many more top 8s. It eats every other card on here for breakfast. Let's not forget it misses out on Standard, Modern top 8s because again, it's better than any other card on this list.
It's the best card in Legends. Easily.
@@rashakor It wasn't.
Force spike is fairly popular in pauper aswell! I play it in MU faeries cause it can hit creatures early as opposed to spell pierce
Yeah, I have seen it every once in a while, but it's not nearly as popular as other choices. Since the format is slower than other Eternal formats, a great deal of the time it's completely dead. You really need a way to discard it for profit in some way, perhaps to Moon Circuit Hacker, in order to justify playing it.
I'm surprised you hadn't covered this set in a top ten before. But I'm even more surprised that Moat and The Abyss didn't make the cut. I mean, the numbers don't lie, but if anyone had told me that Boomerang had more points than either of them, I would have assumed they were messing with me.
This list is heavily biased towards recent decks. Note how quite a lot of cards start in the mid-2000s even though they certainly were seeing play in Eternal formats before that; the reason is that there weren't any premier events in Eternal formats until then. So the days of Abyss and Moat being good were only when there weren't any events being played. These days the cards don't see much if any play in Legacy. At 4 mana each, they're pretty big investments, and there are plenty of decks that simply don't care about them. They do have potential uses as sideboard cards, but they are somewhat narrow and there's a lot of pressure on sideboard slots. While this is a recent development, the new Boseiju means that a lot more decks will have maindeck enchantment hate.
Legends is one of those sets that I truly can appreciate as a relative newcomer to the game. I think that it was a truly groundbreaking set. Cosmic Horror is one of my favourite MTG cards of all time, as are the many amazing stax pieces in the deck. Truly though, my appreciation goes to the banding lands, since banding is probably my favourite mechanic in all of MTG. I am honestly surprised that Mana Drain didn't have way more points, but I'm pretty sure it got banned from pretty much everywhere except Vintage, where it would just get Force of Will'd anyway. Speaking of Vintage, it would be truly swell if we got "Top 10 Vintage Cards (Minus Power 9)"!
Not a single hyper-efficient, multi-colored creature made the list? I'm shocked!
i just realized why boomerang is a cleverly named spell
The one thing I remember most about Legends is that WotC seriously underestimated demand for the set and severely under printed it. I got into MtG shortly after Legends came out, and it was impossible to find even single boosters because the entire print run had been pre-ordered and sold out. The demand was so great that game stores had to limit the number of booster boxes people could buy. I therefore, I got to play against a lot of the original Legends cards, but only ever owned a handful. Arabian Nights and Antiquities cards were easier to come by that Legends cards for a time. Unfortunately, I stopped playing in '95 shortly after Fallen Empires and sold my collection (which I wish I still had today, since at one time I owner the power 9's , 4X every dual land, etc. etc.)
Not much of a competitive player here and my favorite card in this set is Fallen Angel. Once Homelands hit, I started running Angel + Sengir Autocrat + Animate Dead for 19 to the dome (as early as turn 4 on occasion, thanks to Dark Ritual), much to the dismay of my play group. Good times.
Oh the memories! Never mind mana drain, I still recall the thrill of resolving a lure on my Craw Giant!
sylvan library; i see what you did there nizzahon!
Jeez. What a wild set. Mana Drain alone should stop it from being on the worst set of all time lists for people!
My disappointment that Chains, Nethervoid, and Moat did not make the list is indescribable. I demand a recount using only the low level events I have personally played counting as first tier events. That isn't even to mention gems like the Abyss, Divine Intervention, and Concordant crossroads. Its time to bring World Enchantments back! The game needs more hate pieces and staxy effects. We dont get sweet color hosers like Acid Rain or Active Volcano anymore and its really a big shame. You haven't lived until you get locked out by Nethrvoid and land destruction while you slowly loose life to underworld dreams or you try to play your cantrip heavy control deck against and In the Eye of Chaos, I mean Wrath is sweet at four but at eight, you'll already be dead. Times were just different and I miss them sometimes. I actually love a lot of modern magic design and this set also showcases all of the bad parts of early designs as you alluded to but I do wish we could see some modern takes on the old stuff like that. What would a fire design Smokestack look like? Doom foretold aint it. I need some powercreep to my sphere of resistance. Where is my asymmetrical mld? I dont know, I love magic and I just want to see what they could do in that space if they wanted to with all the time and experience they've gotten since then. Some of it is probably simple like Tabernacle and the Abyss would be sacrifice effects, not destroy effects. And while it being the way it is does make for some fun ways to break the symmetry, that seems like an easy modern update. Bring back Stax!
Agreed: Legends is iconic but it does have so many trash cards.
In addition to the cycles you mentioned, the lore of the set led to some iconic characters in the modern day: Nicol Bolas and Chromium made their 1st appearance there. Tetsuo Umezawa also appeared there and one of the direct descendants of Toshiro Umezawa. Kithkins also made their first appearance here.
There are actually some cards in that set that I feel would still hold up today that did NOT make this list... albeit more as a secondary choice. Cards like Arena of the Ancients can stop Eldrazi and Griselbrand from curb stomping you by making sure they're tapped down. Nether Void adds 3 mana cost to all spells, greatly slowing the game down. Whirling Dervish is great against black decks and an unprepared player can find themselves in deep sh** in a few turns. Land's Edge turn all Lands in hand into Shocks (although its symmetrical compared to Seismic Assault). Reset untaps your lands to extend your plays for the turn (Rest + High Tide = tons and tons of mana), and Active Volcano and Flash Flood can destroy a blue or red permanent or bounce an island or mountain for 1 mana.
Of course, for each card we can still use in today's metagame, there's like 5 cards that aren't even good enough enough to be coasters. It hurts that some iconic names like Tolaria, Cathedral of Serra and Urborg are tied to garbage cards. I have to admit, MANY of those cards have AMAZING art with a great gold border finish, making them great collector's item (i.e Kasimir the Lone Wolf)
I realized how brutally powerful Land Tax was when I'd cheerfully say "Land tax!" and my opponent would visibly flinch.
People DO hate taxes!
We can play mana drain in commander/edh. I also have a vehicle deck where I play Tabernacle and love to see peoples reactions to that coming down on the board.
I want to see this list for Commander. I wouldn't be surprised if Mana Drain was much higher on that list.
Stasis
Instant - 1U
Destroy target island you control and untap steps all opponents controls.
WHAAAT?! Right hand to God I didn't know anyone out there thought Legends was anything other than awesome. Wow.
Just leaving a thanks for you putting out this video, I download these and listen to them at work 👍
Thanks!
"Underrated" is not an accurate description of "Legends". "Bloated" is the description you are looking for.
seeing wood elemental in the vid hit me with the classic "but what if it wasn't _entirely_ ass tho?" inspiration because it's always been a card with interesting design space, it just ... doesn't actually _do_ anything with it, even in terms of flashy and impractical combos. so, in part inspired by legends's introduction of multicolored cards:
As Wood Elemental enters the battlefield, sacrifice any number of untapped lands that could produce G. For each of them, choose a color of mana it could produce.
Wood Elemental has protection from the chosen colors.
Wood Elemental's power and toughness are each equal to twice the number of lands sacrificed as it entered the battlefield.
me: Ok, mana drain _is_ good even enough for eternal formats even though you have to pay mana for it. Why haven't I seen it in any legacy content?
Nizzahon: It's banned in legacy.
me: Oh, that'd do it.
i like how both ygo and mtg started with broken noncreatures and useless creatures and slowly moved to stronger and stronger creatures
Almost every card game start the same, pokemon has low level pokemon cards as well if irc
Nice timing, good morning 😀
Love your content. And how you go over so many different things
Glad you enjoy it!
Definitely think showing the newer art of Sylvan library Is the right choice Harold McNeill is aweful and the less I see that man's art the better
Man's drain is the shit. Especially in decks with expensive artifacts or midrange shenanigans
Legends may still be my favorite set. It is one of the last sets that didn't feel like the designers were creating premade decks around specific mechanics, then selling random parts to those decks in packs. It also is one of the last sets that deserves the first "C" in "CCG", even after the damage done in Chronicals and 4th. In it's time Legends expanded the game in ways few sets since have done.
"Karah-Kaas"
It's Kuh-rak-us, at least that's how everyone, including hall of fame players, pronounce it.
That's how I used to say it, but I looked up the pronunciation and it didn't agree.
@@NizzahonMagic From where is there an official pronunciation of the place in Magic lore? If you're referring to some real world word in a foreign language, how it's pronounced there is totally irrelevant.
Legends was one of the worst designed sets ever. The best cards were mostly Enchantments with super effects and lands that broke land rules (mana/restrictions). The best spells had weird Side effects such as chain lightning.
I am surprised that Arboria never did anything at tournament play. So awful in commander.
I expected Invoke in the list lol, if you are playing mono blue, opponent doesn't play, pretty good until being banned in all formats
This list predates that card.
No Moat, Abyss or Nether Void?
"Back in the days" :) I had a no creature deck, with Abyss. Very powerful card
In Latin America everyone just calls Karakas "Caracas" as in the capital of Venezuela.
Jesus the build up to 500 is intense
Struck me that the April Fools episode should be top 10 basic lands...
Hey, neat! With the 500th episode coming up, I was the 500th Like on this video!
Cool, thanks!
Love your vids!
Woooooow we're almost at 500!
No Underworld Dreams ?
I expected Mana Drain to rank higher...
So was I. I’m not surprised Karakas was number 1 though
Problem is it's banned in Legacy but not quite good enough to see play in Vintage.
What people don’t seem to understand about Mana Drain, is that it is a truly awful card in an environment when you have Mana burn and control decks. It really only became reliably good after the rule changes of the modern era.
I remember playing it in "type 1.5" the precursor to Legacy, and it was absolutely nuts. Most cards that are played in the old formats don't cost much mana, so not only did you not burn for much if it came to that, but getting any amount of mana also greatly accelerated your plays.
This is false. Mana Drain was one of the three "pillars" of mana acceleration in the Vintage format (the other two being Dark Ritual and Mishra's Workshop). Mana Drain was prevalent in the old Type 1 of the 90's, where the mana it generated was used to power out Mind Twist or Braingeyser. Control decks back then frequently used other mana sinks, such as Jayemdae Tome. Mana Drain carried some risk, but was hugely popular. As the format evolved, the mana from Mana Drain started being used more for things like Mindslaver.
Mana Drain wasn't quite as prevalent in the old Type 1.5, but it was a control staple thanks to the lack of other strong countermagic back then and the potential to rush out Nevinyrral's Disk.
funny that the best card from legends is the card that is tailor-made to hose legends.
Just legendary!
honestly shocked tabernacle only has that many points, was my guess for a higher slot honestly
I was already shocked when Land Tax was revealed at Number 10. If Land Tax is Number 10, the rest of the list is going to be stacked. I was further shocked when Mana Drain was Number 6 AND beaten by Pendelhaven (I was expecting that card on the list but at a lower position). Sylvan Library and Karakas were the other two that I expected in the top five but I completely forgot Chain Lightning came from this set.
If tabernacle didn't cost $3000+, it would see more tournament play.
Not a single legendary creature or multicolor card, and no real surprise there. Considering what a disaster thier introduction was, its a little surprising that they both caught on so well
i love seeing the prices, makes me laugh that people dont proxy
It's pure collectability: with these really old sets, one isn't buying a game piece for playing, but a piece of history of the game. That's why also unplayable garbage cards are more expensive than modern staples.
If it's just to play some random Commander game, of course one should use proxies. Damn, I use them despite owning for years the real thing- not going to be carrying around thousands dollars that can easily get lost or stolen at a lgs.
I would suggest Nizzahon's top 10s and worst 10s for all these sets NOT counting tournament (competitive Magic) scoring would be great, purely your opinion is just as interesting.
Top ten legends. Not included, any legendary creatures. Fair enough.
Did anyone else learn about hat Legends was underrated?
Legends had more than just three terrible cycles. There are also the cycle of cards that shut out landwalkers and the one that changes cards colours.
Oh, I didn't name all of them. The set is filled with lots of awful cards - those were just examples. I never claimed that that was an exhaustive list.
I've always pronounced it ka-rack-as
Oh easy, Karakas.
Edit:
My friend has a deck built around finding this land then abusing the shit out of it whether he is bouncing his own legends or ours, shit is nasty
Tabernacle.... I don't play with it as proxied and the real one under lock and key because i can stall the game indefinitely with it without an infinite loop. it should be number 1 and banned in all formats.
i have a bad quality shitty looking german land tax ... well first card of any top10 i ever own xD
Where’s moat? I thought moat would be on this list.
Ouch Mana Drain getting punished for being TOO powerful. Wow. Like if were historically always legal in Legacy, it would always be a 4 of and get so many more top 8s; it would crush ever other card on this list. Full stop. The best card on here bar none. But instead it gets punished for being TOO POWERFUL. Wow.
I don't see in which way this set is underrated. Everyone knows it has a lot of power cards. And if it comes to design you can hardly underrate it. This is a pile of random cards more than a set.
"Bloated" is the best description of the set.
While I don't think that anyone would deny that the set has some severe flaws, it also has some very clever design elements. I do not think that it's particularly random. Most of the themes here expand on the mechanics originally developed in the core set. The original core set was kind of overloaded on enchantments and enchantment-based cards. It also did a lot with the basic land types and with color-hosing. Walls were another huge theme in the core set. Legends doubled down on all of those things. The other two sets prior to Legends were tiny and explored confined niches. This was the first expansion set to take expanding the game seriously.
dude, the bands with other lands are actually busted in commander. bands with other is way better than just banding. the reason why pre fallen empires sets will all post badly in this series is only because the pro tour didn't exist at the time. you're really talking about chronicles and 4th edition reprints for this reason. legends is actually a legendary set, and was more sought after than antiquities at the time. the 4 horsemen weren't pro tour cards, but i assure you, they were always highly sought after.
These are some..uhm, interesting takes that don't seem based in reality.
The bands with other lands are God awful, and no one plays them in Commander. Check out EDHRec.
Bands with other is actually WORSE banding, because it requires the other card to have the same type. So it is strictly worse than banding.
@@NizzahonMagic you clearly don't understand banding, i don't blame you. yes they do have to be legends, but look up how many you can band together, and what the ruling actually is. bands with others had a rule change. and idc what edhrec says, y'all play terrible cards as a norm on there. if you're playing mono black, for instance, it's a free roll. but you can think whatever you want, "strictly worse," lol, like you're an authority, lol.
@@NizzahonMagic and dude, i was alive and playing the game "competitively" back in the 90s. you're reading off a website the reality i lived... and you're missing all the minutia. don't mean to bust your bubble, but you're the one talking about "takes." you clearly don't have a clue about the 90s era.
@@NizzahonMagic dude, you do legends as a topic, and no mention of "the deck" or moat... yeah, imma take your comments on my knowledge level with a grain of salt. you don't know what you're talking about, nerd.
I understand banding, I played the game in the 90s (though late 90s), I have a PhD in history, and I have been writing about and researching Magic's history for 7 years. I don't just make stuff up or omit things without doing a ton of research.
Your criticisms basically amount to "I was there you weren't so to hell with the data!" without any real response to any of the points I originally raised!
I didn't mention the Moat or the Deck because they didn't need to come up this video. This video isn't "What Magic was like when Legends comes out," it has more to do with the long legacy of the cards in the set. Yes, Moat is super important (it was #11) even today in EDH, but I have to do what the data tells me to. And the Deck is incredibly important in the history of Magic, but I wouldn't just randomly bring it up here. I am going to do a Deck History on it at some point though.
The most baffling part of your rant is still the bands with other part. It is definitely not a "free roll" to play a bands with other legends land ever, since they never produce mana and have far too narrow of an ability. Bands with other was never good. it has always been a strictly worse version of banding. That take has nothing to do with any authority I may or may not possess. It is a fact! Banding is more flexible than bands with other. Period.
It only lets you form bands with creatures who have some matching quality (in this case, legendary), while banding let's your creature band with any other creature. You are right there was a rules change, but it actually used to be even worse! Only things with bands with other could band with other things with bands with other. No matter when you want to talk about the mechanic, it has always been strictly worse than the more flexible banding. Your play group may have done it differently, but that means you were doing it wrong.
Anyone else read the title and think this was a top 10 on Legendaries?
anyone else thinking why mana drain isnt #1?
No, because the video explains it. Haha
Thanks for not including Commander statistics when making your determinations.
the excuse wizards said to reprint some legends cards is so fuckign ridiculous
at least they are starting to reprint reserve list (which is absolute bs and should be removed) so that's something
@Sega-16 nah, I dont buy it. What a coincidence the ratio of chance is the same as textured foils...
We'll be able to tell if they are lying to us, they don't have the same kind of card stock these days.
I dont have any of these cards 🐞🐌🐙
yeah legends is underrated. LOL
You: This is such a great set.
Also you: One of the best cards in the set is "Boomerang", a card that now would be considered about two degrees too weak to be playable.
You may miss the fact the words "non-land" is nowhere on the card.
I think if it was reprinted in Standard it would see a bit of play. We don't see effects that can bounce any permanent at two mana these days.
@@NizzahonMagic Especially not when that effect can bounce lands and potentially stall a critical bomb.
@@NizzahonMagic The only relevant text here is the missing "non-land" qualifier. Otherwise, we see those effects for 1 and a blue with upside all the time. For 1 and a blue with upside, those cards do see some play. But Boomerang has seen like 9 reprints and rarely was relevant in format, because before it is relevant bouncing lands in mono-blue or near enough mono-blue has to be relevant. Yes, in the early game this is almost always an effective timewalk in stopping the build of board presence in the same way that counter-spell can be a time walk. But if it's a two mana blue unsummon, that's not so great.
Boomerang bouncing creatures is an option, but not why you play the card. It's the general flexibility of it to temporarily deal with any possible permanent type, including setting your opponent back land drops. If you don't care about bouncing lands and aren't mono-blue there's Disperse, but there's only one 1-mana card that can deal with any non-land permanent, Chain of Vapor, and it has it potential drawback as well as not bouncing lands. The only other 2 mana spell that bounces lands as well as any other permanent is Eye of Nowhere. Soon after that card's printing in Kamigawa they really stopped printing efficient ways of removing lands from play, because people don't like not being able to play their cards.
Legends is basically the best and the worst of MTG in the same set.
Its funny this set is full of overpowered cards, but the creatures really suck, like all of them
They're all terrible by today's standards, where every playable creature HAS to leave behind value even if it's killed immediately when it enters, but cards like Thunder Spirit and Stangg were perfectly good in 1994. Heck, people were always coming up with fun/infuriating things to do with the OG Nicol Bolas.
1st finally
Love this set but dont get baited by dominaria, its somehow cheaper on average to just buy legends singles.
That lottery card thing is a smart move from WOtC... but it's indeed a lottery.
It's a large set, so the chances that the very expensive collectors pack not only contains a Legends card but a good rare are very very low. People of course are hyped at the idea to crack a Tabernacle or an Abyss, but the reality is that it's more likely to get a Holy Day, Boomerang or Lady Orca.
Legends is basically the best and the worst of MTG in the same set.