Read a full nostalgia-riddled article on old rules changes here: www.cardmarket.com/en/Magic/Insight/Articles/Famous-Rules-and-Card-Changes-in-Magic-History
Great video. I went through all the changes. But with winterorb, you are a little wrong. when the rules changed, winter orb and howling mine got an erata from WotC, so they were still inactive, when tapped. Like all old Artifacts did back than, like black vise, Ivory tower etc. But to know that, you'd had to look it up at the website. With Mirror Universe you couldn't use manaburn to bring you to 0, because manaburn accoured at the end of the phase. That's why you had to use painlands like City of brass. How about a video, where cards got better due to rule changes? I'm looking at Mana Drain for example. With Manaburn, you needed a way to get rid of the mana. Now you can counter everything without drawbacks.
Your explanation of mirror universe is confusing. How can you burn yourself to zero AND switch life totals if manaburn didn't trigger until the end of phase? You can't burn yourself to zero then switch life totals in the same phase.
There's actually another rules change involving tolarian academy. It was actually *because* of academy that the original mulligan rule changed. It used to be a free mulligan if you had zero lands or all lands in hand or if your opponent took a mulligan. So decks would run 4 academy as their only lands and free mana rocks for all the rest of the mana, and as you can guess, that was a very busted deck, so they had to change the Milligan rule
What rules did you play? Paris mulligan was in effect before Tolarian Academy existed and Tolarian Academy was restricted to 1 per deck within 3 months of release. Also original mulligan rule only allowed you to do it once based on all land/no land.
@@acollectorslifeforme4201 this wasn't type 2. I forget what the format was called for all sets being legal at the time but basically vintage because they were using moxen and mana crypt alongside academy
@@Roll-Penut gotcha, I played classic, extended, block, and limited back in the 90’s, we always used the restricted list even in casual play. Tolarian Academy was broken even with only 1 in a deck regardless.
As mentioned above, the Paris mulligan (any number of reshuffled starting hands drawing 1 card less) was introduced at PT Paris, which featured Visions as the newest set. That was over a year before Urza's Saga released.
I’m not following you I guess. The rules were one way, so the card was normal at the time, not buffed, then the rules changed and it got a nerf, not returned to original functionality, it was future functionality? I’m not actually familiar with this specific card, but the whole do combat damage then sac it to do more damage is a specter I remember well in my nightmares.
Damage on the stack was hilarious: i still remember one time I was playing Urza standard and I was running Academy, my opponent dealt lethal to me, and since that Academy deck could go off at instant speed, I had him draw his whole deck. Back then, while damage went on the stack, drawing with no cards in the deck was instant loss
It wasn't instant, it was just checked when a player would gain priority, just like having 0 life. Damage was assigned, the assigned damage went on the stack, but hadn't been "dealt" yet
Academy is my favorite deck of all time. Love the fact the entire combo goes off at instant speed. Opponent has Wasteland? Just go "lel. Lmao, even" and make them draw 8,792 cards. Even more hilarious that it wasn't an infinite combo, you just created that much mana to feed Stroke of Genius.
The game was very different back in the day. I started around the Revised time. People built decks with big creatures. Creatures were a major way to do damage. Build that green deck and fill it with Craw Worms and Force of Natures. Bring those artifacts. Don't have a Sol Ring? You are probably in trouble.
I came in expecting Jace Beleren and his ability to destroy Mind Sculptor but ended up learning even more about the Legend rule! Awesome video, I'd love to see another video along the same line as this one! :D
It's funny; I played standard only briefly from basically before Innistrad rotated out to the end of RTR being in. And the only reason I started playing standard was because Liliana of the Dark Realms had just come out and I thought that card was hilariously fun. I absolutely got to enjoy swatting Lilian of the Veil for the small period where that could happen. But yeah I assume that would've been too obvious; Clone would've hit it even closer to home.
I was legitimately sad when mana burn was removed. I always wanted to see if it was possible to construct a deck that would kill your opponent purely by using mana flares and whatnot to kill your opponent with mana burn.
Honestly I couldn't see a reason why WotC couldn't just make a card that re-enables mana burn for those who want to play around with the Isaac flying too close to the sun scenarios of massive mana. Personally I think it was a good thing mana burn got removed, mainly because it got rid of a mechanic that was just a bit annoying that you could manipulate your life total with mana and it made sure that massive mana givers were not "checked" by this rule, so WotC made less types of ritual cards or those rituals were not as efficient as older versions. It's also likely that abilities that only required mana were worsened because it was a safety net against mana burn, so many artifacts or creaturers all had tap abilities for things you would not tap for in modern designs.
I had a green/white deck that had mana burn as the main win condition. Eladamri's Vineyards, Holistic Widsom, Howling Mines, Orim's Chant and lots of other G/W instants. Each turn, use your Vineyard mana through Holistic Wisdom to get an Orim's chant from graveyard, then cast it during their upkeep. Each turn they spend that they get Vineyard mana and can't spend it was 2 damage per Vineyard that turn.
This was actually a component of Mono Red Chaos Decks back then. 4 Mana Flare, 4 Manabarbs, 4 Power Surge. Nasty little combo. You die unless you're good at math.
I remember in the distant 90s I was playing kitchen table magic at the school cafeteria with decks that basically had every card I had ever opened in the few booster packs I could afford to buy. At one point an older dude told me hey kid you can kill my elf if you sack your fanatic and still have it deal one damage to me. I was like that's cool but how can the creature deal damage to you if it is not even there any more? That is the most stupid rule I've ever heard in my life. Are you sure it is like that?
The way it was explained back in the day (at least to me) was that dealing damage was like throwing a grenade; even if the creature wasn’t there anymore, the grenade had still been thrown so it would still explode and deal damage. But I agree, that system is pretty unintuitive
@@wimoore I mean for some wizard or archer type creature things it would make sense, scince they shot a projectile and then die but the projectile still exists, meenwhile a grizzly bears (why is the one creature named as multiple anyway?) it doesn't, I think there should be a keyword a creature can have that mnakes their combat damage specificaly use the stack to capture such a flavour distinction.
Gosh, I remember playing 4th edition on the picnic tables at recess in Elementary school. I literally didn't understand that 60 card decks were best and stuffed every single card I had into mine, most of which were just big dumb green creatures. The kid I played against, if I remember correctly, ran a blue deck with actual card draw, counters, and some sort of combo that could kill me in one turn. Also I really liked Ironroot Treefolk for some reason. I have no clue why.
@@wimoore similarly, it was explained to me as two archers flying arrows towards each other, then one being sacrificed before getting hit by the arrow ;)
Old-timey Magic player here, stopped around 5th edition. I heard later that they canned mana burn and I was like "Well, RIP my Mana Flare-Power Surge-Carrion Ants deck :/"
Thy printed an RBG legendary that ads manaburn to the game as long as it is on the battlefield Yorlok Its 1 + Jund/RBG 4cmc ang can giv every player 3mana or something
Same here, stopped buying cards after ice age came out and stopped playing like a year later. One of the youngsters in the family started playing this summer and found out I played last millennium. It has been fun dabbling in it again.
I still say "sack in response" referring to damage on the stack. It's wild to remember how much a core part of the game that was. My biggest memory of it was against a friend playing tooth n nail. He'd block with Sakura tribe elder, damage trades, sack in response for the ability. Coming back with mana burn gone was such a weird experience too. Too bad I wasn't collecting back then, I'd have gotten gaeas cradle when it was cheap because I liked Mark Zug. I played during 8ED through guildpact before coming back last year.
to be fair, howling mine and winter orb haven't actually been changed by the rules in current day because of the oracle/errata so they aren't rendered terrible
Trample has changed a lot. I remember blocking an opponents trample creature and then sacrificing my creature to a sacrifice effect, and the opponent's creature would still be considered blocked and deal less trample damage as a result. This is thanks to damage on the stack. Similarly, you could save your creature from dying to a trample creature by giving it +0/+1, back when damage used the stack. Also, there was a time that trample creatures could assign all damage to just one of the blocking creatures, so the player would get some trample damage. Nowadays, you must assign lethal damage to all blocking creatures before you can trample over to the opponent. If I recall correctly, a trample creature could also trample over a creature with protection from that creature's color, it wouldn't kill the creature but the player could still get trample damage. One more very odd one, regeneration used to tap the creature before taking lethal damage which meant you could tap the creature if it was about to get swapped with an opponents creature. Finally, there cards like Fear and Lifelink that became printed abilities. Lifelink now reads "Enchanted creature has lifelink" which is good for a laugh.
Citadel of Pain was my favourite card of all time (for each untapped land at the end of your turn, take one damage) but the mana burn changes made it incredibly niche.
It still does what it's design to do: punish players who want to play things on your turn. I think the card is much more fair now, because it only punishes those kinds of people, and not those that simply can't play anything.
I would've liked to have seen Morphling instead of Mogg Fanatic for the Damage on the Stack part. When Damage could be put on the stack, Morphling was known as Superman because of the things it could do as long as you had enough mana to use. Now... Morphling is a bulk rare with outdated abilities. So sad.
Morphling was amazing back then, but for whatever reason fanatic became the poster boy for cards that got worse when damage on the stack was changed. Every GP I went to I would grab any Morphling I saw in the bulk boxes cause I love the card it didn't deserve to be with all the other chaff, it's up to $15 now though so I doubt I'll be finding any more of em.
I remember when I finally got my hands on a copy of Morphling. I revered that card back then. It just felt special. I ran it in any deck that played blue, regardless of how well it fit.
For the legend rule, there was an even earlier version of the legend rule, at the beginning, where you could only have one copy of a legendary creature in your deck. In the second major phase of the legend rule, where any two copies of a legendary permanent destroyed each other, Umezawa's Jitte was an example of a card that people played, not because it benefited their deck, but just to destroy one's opponent's copy of that card.
The legend rule that makes the most sense is that if you play a legend card, it destroys any legend card of the same name anywhere on the table. That way it is as if you are summoning the legend away from your opponent.
I loved to play with "Braid of Fire" back when mana burn was a thing and mana didn't disappear until the end of your turn. That sweat of having to spend all that mana was so cool!
Mana has always emptied at least at the end of phases, and later (currently) at the end of steps as well. Unless you had something like Upwelling, Braid of Fire burned you before your main phase until mana burn was removed.
@@shadowfate05 Nope, there was a time when mana didn't empty until the end of the turn. Radha, Heir to Keld is another card that got pretty useless with this change. Nowadays they have to add an extra clause to the card that assures mana doesn't empty at the end of combat. You can see it e.g. on "Grand Warlord Radha" which is like a bigger, "fixed" version of the aforementioned card.
@@couchpotatoe91 Those clauses already existed in Kamigawa with things like Sakura-Tribe Springcaller, which was printed with "At the beginning of your upkeep, add {G} to your mana pool. This mana doesn't cause mana burn. Until end of turn, this mana doesn't empty from your mana pool as phases end". The attack trigger on Radha was designed to be very aggressive and only used in combat. That's why it was a 2/2 for 2 that could produce 2 mana AND attack. Braid of Fire was designed to help fuel other cumulative upkeep cards. If you can show me when mana only emptied at end of turn, between the release of Coldsnap in 2006 (where mana emptied at the end of each phase) and Magic 2010 in 2009 (mana burn is removed, mana now empties at the end of each step AND phase), I'll believe you.
@@shadowfate05 Ah ok. Well, I suppose you're right then. Back in those days I only played casually, so those were the rules we followed. Thanks for the info.
When Academy was in Standard briefly, I was playing Academy/Spiral, against the same deck. My opponent played a Wasteland, stalling the game by preventing me from playing my Academy. We both built up our board with normal lands, and artifact mana, while he looked for a Academy of his own. He eventually cast a Mana Vault. I had a Power Sink in hand, and cast it for a ton, matching his available mana exactly. He was forced to tap his Wasteland for mana. So he got his vault, but I took my turn, played my Academy, and won.
I remember a game when life totals were checked at the end of any phase, the guy made infinite mana with palinchron with a city of brass among his lands taking millions of damage but still won with his stroke of genius that instant killed his opponent, you can still do it nowadays if you can cast palinchron with flash by any means, put all the damage of city of brass on the stack and cast the stroke in response but it's kind of ugly...
The rules change I've never quite forgiven them for was creating Exile. I used to have a deck that put a Cunning Wish onto an Eye of the Storm and went infinite that way. SO MUCH FUN. Especially as, once the cards are on the Eye, *any* player can jump in with an Instant and take over. I remember a game where we had six players go infinite one after the other 8 times with the others still on the stack using my combo. Glorious chaos.
@@dylansylvester4719 Cunning Wish currently can't get cards from exile, only from sideboards (or other "outside of game" cards in more casual games). Before Magic 2010 added the exile zone, Wishes could get cards that were "removed from the game" because that was "outside of the game". So the combo doesn't work anymore because "removed from game" used to be a valid Wish location but "exile" is not. Check out the "Magic 2010" exile rulings for more information.
It's great to see that stuff! Some history, some remembering^^ Would love a series where you talk about major artists in MTG, those that are well know.
I thought I was going to see a Jace Beleren, aka "Little Jace", for the same reasons than the Tolarian Academy. Planeswalker rules also changed a lot, but share a lot of similarities with legendary rules: When The Mind Sculptor was printed, the planeswalker rule was that if two planeswalkers of the same subtype would exist in the battlefield at the same time (doesn't matter what side of the field), both would be sacrificed by a state-based action. So "Little Jace" could not be near another Jace without killing them both, even if they were on opposite sides of the battlefield. That meant that people played 4 copies of Mind Sculptor, but also 3-4 copies of "Little Jace" so they could use them as cheap removal against opponent's Mind Sculptors.
Yeah I remember that during cawblade standard when it was literally just everyone playing the same deck. You go to a PTQ? If you're on cawblade, be ready for 9 rounds of cawblade mirrors. If you aren't on cawblade why are you even there the deck was broken. Little Jace for removal made sense because at the time oblivion ring wasn't in standard or pithing needle too IIRC so answers to Jace, the Mindsculptor were super scarce.
Yeah they probably picked academy because it's way more notable, but Lin Sivvi was just broken with this rule. You had all the advantage in the rebels mirror if you had Lin Sivvi and opponent couldn't do anything about it unless they dealt you lethal somehow.
@@dark_rit Lin Sivvi is the real catalyst for the rules change. The need was there for over a year, but Masques block was just "Who can cast Lin Sivvi first?"
Damn, I love how you guys make REALLY interesting videos about MTG. I play magic since 2017 and I love to search for old interactions, interesting ruling or weird combos.... and you guys always bring up some of those contents! Love you guys! Keep up the AMAZING work!
The changes to Split cards made and destroyed decks. In modern you can play fire//ice, but before you would cascade into it. Next the brain in a jar decks with breaking // entering and Beck// call doesn't function anymore.
Yeah I really don't like that change. I kinda understand why they did it (because what's a split card's CMC?) but I wish they had kept the whole cascading aspect functional.
First off: I love these videos, the combination of enthusiasm and clarity is just *chef's kiss*. Second: I really wish Arena had a "weird custom mode" type thing where you could play games with "historic rules" enabled like mana burn and stuff like that. But that's probably way too niche an appeal, idk.
The removal of Mana Burn hurt a few cards that were better when your opponents had untapped lands. Nowadays you can just tap out in response, but back then, that meant you were going to take a lot of damage.
A very minor change that sadly killed one of my deck was the "token ownership change". Back then, the owner of the tokens was determined by the person whose effect created the tokens. In most case, that was also the controller, but for some cards like the Hunted cycle from Ravnica ou Forbidden Orchard, the owner and controller would end up being different players. That meant, effects with "gain control of all permanents you own" (such as the very bad rare card Brand from Urza) would let you get back those tokens. I had a deck that could go "Hunted Horror" into "Brand" realtively early. That was a 7/7 trample and two 3/3 with Problack on the board for 3 mana. Nowadays, the owner of the token is just the player who got the token first.
Correction correction. Lifelink used to work with a trigger. Thus two instances of lifelink stacked on the same creature ; I used to play a fun deck with creatures where I stacked multiple lifelink instances on them. I think they changed it at the same time they removed damage from the stack. So there was a period where 0 life killed you at a state based action but lifelink effects still used the stack.
@@ohno_22 It is. Non keyworded lifelink still uses the stack and thus cannot save you from lethal damage during the same combat, as you'd gain the life after you're already dead. Only keyworded lifelink can save you, because it doesn't have to use the stack for the ability to function. Stuff like Armadillo Cloak still doesn't save you. Keywording enables/causes changes to how an ability can function.
A perfect example of the difference between lifelink and it's old-school equivalent ith the cards "Lifelink" and "Spirit Link." Unlike Spirit Link, Lifelink won't benefit you if you enchant it on an opponent's creature. And unlike Lifelink, Spirint Link uses the stack so if your damaged at or below 0 while it's on the stack you'll die first. Of course there wouldn't be much of a difference if we only died at the end of phases.
This was the worst. It really was awful. For me, combat damage is pure. I don't get how you can tap, bounce, sac, reanimate, fling, untap, etc. and get 10 damage from a 1/1 (being sarcastic of course)
Losing damage on the stack made combat boring and garbage. Made tons of good cards instantly bad, not just creatures, but also spells. Assigning combat damage, Flicker. Made that spell (and related spells) good for not just abusing Come Into Play effects and dodging removal.
@@joseph1150 You can still flicker after declaring a blocker. You can still flicker after attacking and having a pseudo-vigilance that way. There are a lot of interactions that flickering and bouncing can bring to the table, but assigning combat damage without suffering the consequences of being in combat was not a fun one, nor one that made any sense in the first place. This was a needlessly frustraring and convoluted interaction, and the game is better with it gone.
@@bouboulroz I completely disagree. That change is 100 percent the straw that broke the camels back in why I quit competitive magic and only casually play a couple times a year at best. It needlessly took a ton of fun and interesting interactions away from the game and reduced complexity. Being able to save a creature fully committed to combat with a giant growth was good, the opponent couldn't counter with a pump spell because damage was already assigned. Being able to get two for ones with strong value creatures is good. Blinking spirit was great at combat, assign damage, go back to hand. None of these interactions are unfair compared to some of the BS printed these days in terms of raw power creep.
Another recent change was that Chandra, Torch of Defiance used to be able to hit Planeswalkers with her Impulse +1 ability with the old redirection rules. Now that that rule no longer exists, she can't ping PW's for 2 anymore. Big sad. :(
@@TheMCGamer2012 That's a big one too. I remember when that Leyline shot up in price, then started tumbling down after the rule change. And then the reprint happened. XD
Turning planeswalkers into legendary permanents made Honor-Worn Shaku a pretty cool card. A friend of mine saw the rules change and immediately bought the maximum amount of these at an online store that hadn't updated their prices yet, getting him 8 of those in foil for I belive less than two euro's or something.
This is so much fun to watch, would love to see hazoret, the fervent used to be able to use her ability to damage planeswalker (pw redirect damage rule) featured in this kind of video. Love this
@cardmarket - magic Fun video! While I played a lot in the early days (revised-4th ed and onslaught block), I now regularly play with many of these cards in the premodern format and often encounter other cards that seem outdated with rules changes. One such card is “interdict,” though I don’t know how good it actually was at the time. I’d imagine there’s a whole slew of interrupts that lost playability…
I nailed them all! That was a fun video and a nice throwback to bygone era’s. I remember one Legend Rule Variant with double dragons in Kamigawa. Play 2 Kokusho, they both die, triggers, you die!
Some more rule changes: Everything was weird before there was a real stack (when everything was resolved at once when both players passed priority) Interrupts, Mana Sources and their timing Weird damage prevention and regeneration "window" The weird short time when "in between turns" was a thing for Time Vault and abused with Wall of Roots Tapped blocking creatures did not deal combat damage Drawing the first card in the draw step used the stack (was changes when Stifle was printed, to prevent Isochrone Scepter + Stifle)
It's amazing how elegant of a solution The Stack is compared to batches that came before it. I don't think anyone was unhappy when the stack was introduced. It made things a lot more intuitive. For those unaware, before the stack, effects came in "batches." Players couldn't add cards to the batch unless they had an effect that was faster. So if you cast a sorcery, and your opponent responds by casting an instant, you couldn't respond unless you cast an interrupt. Then your opponent couldn't cast anything other than interrupts or a mana source. Once someone used a mana source, you couldn't cast anymore interrupts. Once players had done everything they could, the batch was resolved with its own complicated set of rules and triggers. Then R&D went "This is fucking stupid" and created the stack, which did pretty much the same thing as batches, without worry about 194 different card types or what triggers happened where.
Abeyance. At the time, EVERYTHING was an activation cost, including tapping a land for mana or tapping a creature to attack. Abeyance was almost a white Time Walk, allowing your opponent to draw and play a land and nothing more. Then, if I recall correctly, they changed the rules and severely limited what was considered an "activation cost."
What's curious is that in the same block you have Cursed Totem, which DOES turn off creature mana abilities, and in the same set even Null Rod, which is a famous hate card for artifact mana (used in Vintage prison decks in the past and cEDH decks now). They didn't change the rules; they post-changed the text of Abeyance with errata. Aside from power level, there's really no reason why Abeyance should NOT turn off mana abilities. WotC has a "no power level errata" policy but clearly they made an exception for Abeyance, as you say, as printed it's a Time Walk.
I feel like being made to use the mana only during your upkeep is going to confuse a lot of new players that don't get why they can't play their creature spells with it.
A very interesting that got buffed is the red enchantment card called Braid of Fire. Which reads "Cumulative upkeep-Add red mana" This was during mana burn but at current rules as written, it's an enchantment that gives you mana at upkeep to play around with without the burn.
Power Sink is another great card to use in this video format. I doubt most people know why it was so much better before! You can also maybe use like Shahrazad which was destroyed by a rule change.
Really great video guys! Entertaining and super useful, full of nostalgia about old card interactions... 😎 Magic has changed rules lots of times and every time it was a bit of a strange period until we adapted. Remember the "Interrupts"? 🙂 Then around year 2000, damage went on the stack and we abused it to the max... Remember "Prophecy" set? Its mechanics were based so much on the concept of mana burn. There are cards from that set almost useless now, just because they got rid of mana burn.. Ah, fun times! Keep these vids comin' guys 👌
My favorite rules change was the way split cards use to be selected by either half and then if you got to cast it for free you could choose either one (or some times both if it was a fuse card). Examples of this was you could put Research/Development under isochron because you were imprinting research and then activation you could choose either one. Similarly if you played a expertise you could use both halves of a fuse card example: Kari zev's expertise and play a breaking and entering.
Yes, this was destroyed 2017, when split cards stopped answering two values when asked for their mana value (back then called "converted mana cost") and started answering with the sum of the two values. But why is this your favorite change? I hated this when I found out in 2020 that my "IsoSplit" deck (Isochron Scepter and Copy Artifact, with numerous split cards including Research // Development) doesn't work anymore!
I enjoyed this! Also I would really love to see another video of playing with ai generated cards like the first ai generated cards video you did. Those cards were so silly, I remember one of them was an enchantment that just said "creatures with flying."
I had a deck in the old days that leaned heavily on Mana Burn to other players. Back in 1994-1995, multiplayer games with normal 60 decks rules were common (later Type 1 and now Vintage). One of my decks was designed around combinations with Power Surge. Power Surge would do one damage at the end of the turn of every untapped land. Players would be forced to spend all of their mana or take damage. The deck would use some cards (Nova Pentacle was the most funky choice), to reduce the controller's damage, and would also try to directly out players on low life totals. Without mana burn, Power Surge is mostly useless on it's own since players can tap all of their lands to get around it. The deck's use of Power Surge would still function now, but it would be a much weaker. In addition to 4 Power Surges, the deck had 4 Mana Barbs. Mana Barbs deals one damage when you tap a land for mana. Part of the deck's goal was to force players to take damage for every land. The difference in the deck is that the Power Surge won't do anything until a Mana Barbs is in place, and if there's no benefit to having more Power Surges in play than Mana Barbs.
Lazav Dimir Mastermind became really good as a Commander when they changed the replacement death rules for commanders, since he can now trigger when an opponents commander is destoryed and returned to the command zone to become a copy of it. I think he's very overlooked nowadays bearing that change in mind ^^ Thieving your opponents strategies and cards in Dimir has long been a staple, but copying your opponents commanders and then using their own cards against them with other Dimir strategies is really flavourful for Lazav and I love it :D
A huge rule that I always forget until I go back to playing the old PC Magic Shandalar affected a lot of cards back before the rule was changed: Tapped defending creatures didn't deal combat damage. Any instant speed effect that tapped creatures (Icy, Mind Games, and most famously, Master of Arms) could be used after blocks and before combat damage assignment to double as miniature fogs. Master is especially hit by the change since its ability does virtually nothing otherwise.
9:40 I remember there being cards that say you gain life when this creature does damage. It worked similar to lifelink, but in today's magic is an ability that goes on the stack. So if the game didn't check till the end of a phase to see if your dead I assume you didn't die if one of those creatures saved you?
Right so the old ability was "whenever this creature deals damage you gain that much life" which was eventually turned into lifelink. So combat damage is all dealt at once, you take lethal and go to zero, lifelink triggers and you gain a couple life. Then at end of combat phase you're above zero so you don't lose. Fun fact: lifelink originally used the original wording until people realized multiple instances of life link triggered independently. It was changed to "damage this creature deals also causes you to gain life"
@@cstaie85 Spirit Link (originally printed in Legends, reprinted in 4th. through 10th. Edition) still lets you gain life multiple times with lifelink or if you have multiple Spirit Links.
@@nekrataali it only works with cards that specifically do not say lifelink or that were eratta to lifelink. Otherwise it becomes the static ability and do not stack. But I see what you mean with the old ones as long as the cards still don't say it. But lifelink has an errata so it wouldn't stack anymore. After Magic 2010 was released they changed the rule.
This was the freshest most unique mtg video I've seen in a lonnnnggggggg time. Great work love the different angles and knowledge I didnt know myself. So cool great work
Fun video. I thought mana burn only hit at the end of a phase. So i'm having a little trouble figuring out Pulse of Forge. Player 1 at 4, Player 2 at 7. Deal 4 damage, P2 is at 3, you are at 4. Even if you had a floating mana, how would Pulse come back? The spell checks right after the damage, not in the graveyard. Or are you tapping 2 during the draw phase, to mana burn to 2, so that you can get Pulse back? But then in this scenario you need 8 mana for win. Also when did damage on the stack go away? I'm still playing with that ruleset...
Reverse Damage could give you the life back if you played it at the end of the turn, no matter when you recieved the damage, so it was a much more powerful card.
Honestly I am still confused about whether any of the old prevent damage cards work today. If you have to regen something before it actually takes the damage, do you have to have a third eye to predict that a creature is going to take a lethal damage. Guardian angel, death ward, fog ( do you have to play that before ) hell, a sammite healer?
@@CruentusDK1 The rules have been adapted to make it all work. Regeneration creates a continuous effect that lasts until end of turn and prevents the creature from dying the next time it would. You know a creature is going to die in combat because you can cast spells and activate abilities during the declare blockers step (after blockers are declared, before damage is dealt), and you can cast/activate in response for non-combat damage.
Weird question... is there a website that has CUSTOM made up cards RANKED. So fan-made cards and people agreeing on "yeah that'd be awesome to be made into a card"
I miss mana burn. It was a cool rule that allowed for all sorts of things. I also miss damage on the stack...Bottle Gnomes was actually a good card at one point.
1:01 Now wait a minute. Damage on the stack was only in effect for a few years. Okay. Almost eleven years. But that still means that most of its existence the akward damage on the stack wasn't in effect. Not before and not after (now).
The best thing about the tapped artifacts not working and the workaround they did with errata, is that they printed a few cards that used the "As long as ~ is untapped" clause despite never being printed before 6th edition. The most popular one is probably Trinisphere.
I think there was an offhand reference to damage on the stack being removed in 6th edition but that's actually backwards. It was introduced in 6th edition to add more depth to combat. Before combat damage worked basically as it does now. It was reverted essentially in M10. Definitely still a long time ago though, more time has passed since its removal than its entire lifespan in the game.
Fun vid. Yeah, back in the 90s, damage dealt from any creature during the combat phase was immediately reconciled during the exchange, which led to an instant death. BUT, any damage dealt during any non-combat phase was reconciled at end of turn. So, negative life totals were possible during any non-combat phase. Since burn happened at end of phase; Mirror decks were usually RGU direct damage-control decks. The general idea was: get Mirror out, protect it for a few turns, ouch and mana burn down a bit with City of Brass, then swap life totals for the win. Or, finish off with direct damage depending on the draw and tempo of the game. ... The thing with Mirror decks was that these were more of a combo deck than a lock deck and the mana curve was kinda of high. Other than that, it was a fun play.
Good example for legendary rule is Lin Sivvi where rebel mirrors were determined by who was able to play her first. it is interesting to know that every deck played an academy though, i did not know that. Also when i started playing around scars block i remember running phyrexian metamorph in sb's to kill Thrun and Gesit of Saint Traft
I once lost a game (or rather didn't win, so we drew the match) in Vintage because of the legendary rule with Tolarian Academy, back in 2006 (so legend rule #2). We were low on time and I cast a quick Necropotence; when I picked my 7 cards, I kept Tolarian Academy as my only land and my opponent played his the next turn. I had to play wrath of Academy but it left me short on mana that turn and since we were out of time, I wasn't able to finish my win and the game ended in turns without a winner. That non-win put me in 9th place at the SCG Event, meaning I walked home with packs of Saviors of Kamigawa or whatever instead of a Mox Pearl at the least.
I have an old precon where a creature (cave cockatrice or something similar) had the following effect : "Pay 1 Life: Return Cave Cockatrice to your hand" and the deck descrition was making it look important. I actually contacted judges online to understand and that's when I learned of damage on stack
Very cool video. I played with mana burn, damage on the stack, and various iterations of the legend rule. Mono artifacts were before my time, sadly. Damage on the stack was a thing during onslaught block. I remember agonizing over the decision to either have goblins hit or sac them to clickslither
Original Text on Time Walk: "Opponent loses next turn". There was an early Pro Tour game which caused the game's very first errata, because the person playing the card pointed out that the opponent LOSES next turn (i.e. loses the game next turn). That's the first indication that they had to be very careful with the cards' wording. And the birth of "take another turn after this one".
Before watching: The Legendary Dragons of Kamigawa have death triggers. Under the old rules of the time, when you cast a second, both would die. As a result, Kokusho would deal 10 and you would gain 10, probably after attacking for five and having done 5+ before casting the second, which is why casting the second was almost always game over, or the 10 life gain ensured you lived for another turn to deal the final damage. The white one tapped 5 permanents that didn't Untap, so you would target 10 things, such as their lands, which was another way to seal a game.
While I was aware that mana burn died as a rule and expected it to show up in this quiz... my take on "Pulse of the Forge" was it now can hit Planeswalkers because it was printed before them.
If you want to look up the original ruling of Black Knight vs Wrath of God. The old black protection prevented white spells and effects, plus couldn't take any damage. It was a very 50/50 ruling on if black knight should die from Wrath because wrath doesn't target. Just imagine how the game would have changed if protection prevented Wrath of god from killing things.
I started playing Magic in 1995 and still have issues with damage on the stack. I was expecting a regeneration type one in there somewhere (or is that too easy) as there were so many cards ruined by the regenerate rule change. Not just regenerate abilities but instants that regenerated creatures like death ward. I pulled an old blue squeeze deck on some friends a while back, not knowing about the rule change concerning "tapping an artifact doesn't turn off artifacts now" but I guess the Winter Orb and howling mine trick still work due to the wording change. I think that's great! Winter's Orb, the rack, black vise, mana short, psychic venoms, brain geyser, meek stone, stasis, icy manipulator, Ankh of Mishra Tap land take damage, play new land, take damage, summon new creatures stronger than power 2 and they won't untap, untap 1 land per upkeep, mana shorts to retap lands once they get close to having the mana to do anything, take damage for more than 4 cards or less than 3. Watch the hope dwindle as they realize they are in for a game of being able to do almost nothing. More people quit just seeing the squeeze get started. It was the first deck that my friends just asked to never have to play again. Life goes on, nearly 30 years later, Magic has so much power creep that 95% of the old cards have no real value minus my 15 duel lands from revised (3rd edition). Creatures are so fast, so cheap, so many abilities, and so huge in comparison to the classic 5 mana Sera Angels and Sengir Vampires 4/4s that ended duels in 6-8 turns. I mean most of the old cards didn't even have abilities. When is the last time anyone has seen a loss due to a milled library? Heck most 4 man commanders we play don't get to see 1/4 of the 100 card deck. Half the time we just exile the cards we saw from the last game, clear the board, draw a new 7 and commence another game. I gotta say that the coolest video you all did was that challenge where you had to play the cards immediately and trigger every ability, even if not beneficial to you. If not, you lost. What a great practice in game mechanics! Keep it up gents. Honestly I love the passion you both show just talking about the game, the history, and the rules.
One artifact interaction that I used to use when we had the tapped artifacts don't work rule was Sands of Time which skipped the untap phase as part of its text. Phasing happens during the untap phase. So I would combine this with Teferi's realm which would let me phase out all of one type of thing, then I could tap it to give myself an untap step and phase all my stuff in, meanwhile my opponents things would never phase back in.
You could do a video on some other cards that had their rules text changed, for better or worse, and have Aura of Silence and Laccolith Rig as two of them. Aura of Silence now works in multiplayer (and doesn't target the opponent when cast anymore) and Laccolith Rig is a huge one because if you cast it on an opponent's creature you could redirect their combat damage to a creature of your choice which was a bonkers oversight. Like Time Vault, they tried changing the rules of the cards to fix them - and then later decided outright that those kinds of errata were unfair and decided never to "nerf" cards by changing their rules text. Could be a fun video - not sure how many cards there are like that though.
Elenda, the Dusk Rose got better with the recent change in commanders actually dying now, instead of replacement effect! :) (thank god you didn't cut that out in the end! xDD)
i love hearing about the old rules and seeing how or why they changed. i remember the mana burn days and when i returned to playing again it was such a different game with weird formats and new cards lol
This reminds me of how old I am. Although I didn't guess all of them, I am aware and have played in the era of these past rules where it affected these cards. Damage on the stack made bounce effects really strong. You put damage on the stack and then bounce your creature back to your hand and saving the creature. I had a deck that took advantage of this. I was initially sad that mana burn went away because I had a deck with Power Surge. Overall, I felt it was a good thing that mana burn is no longer part of the game. I remember going through many legend/legendary rule changes. I think even before I started, there was a rule where you can only have one copy of legend in your deck. I did play in the era where your life total was only checked at the end of a phase. I cannot recall if I played a game where someone had 0 life at one point. I think there may have been. I do recall the Mirror Universe trick, with mana burn. I think the person only went down to 1 life and then lightning bolt for the win. The tapped artifact deactivation rule was used quite a bit. I have a Winter Orb deck and was happy to see they updated the card rule to make it not work when tapped.
One of my friends had a casual deck full of Citadel of Pain, Power Surge, and so on. Getting rid of mana burn made half of it useless... (It did also have Mana Barbs in, but makes the deck a lot worse). Of course, we can just reinstate mana burn for kitchen table play.
I also built a citadel deck. It was fun putting that 2nd or 3rd Citadel in play and seeing your opponent realize it was better for them to mana burn themselves rather than take double or triple that damage
About checking health at the end of the phase - Back then, I recall being at negative health on my main phase, then using demonic tutor to go through my deck to see if I could get back up, finding something like Healing salve, that brought me back to "ok" status before phase ended. Normal procedure for the time. Also, Winter orb / howling mine with Icy manipulator was pretty default tech for everyone...
In that example used for Pulse of the Forge, Manadrain went the complete opposite way of Pulse. It went from nearly unplayable to becoming the best 2-mana counter spell ever.
There were a couple of cards (Thawing Glaciers and Waylay) which had to be errata'd to have an effect happen during the cleanup step, rather than at end of turn (beginning of the end step). One could use Thawing Glaciers in two consecutive turns by making the first activation during the end step, and Waylay's tokens could otherwise stick around to attack the next turn.
this video was wonderful! i'd love to see more like it, this is the first one i've seen from your channel and i've already subscribed. i love your enthusiasm.
Braid of Fire, which has "Cumulative Upkeep: Add R to your mana pool" seems like a pretty obvious candidate for cards changed by rules text. That upkeep cost once was technically a cost if you couldn't immediately use the mana.
I'm only at 4:52. I would have personally used Eladamri's Vineyard to explain the mana burn rule. I remember when tempest was new and this was essentially a green burn spell in some matchups. A control player trying to play draw go would often not have a lot to do with GG in the first few turns of the game.
One of the nastiest misprints ever was Bloodlust. The card read "Target creatures gain +4/-4 until end of turn." So on turn 0 you could play a mountain and a handful of Kobolds of Kher Keep, Crookshank Kobolds, Crimson Kobolds and Ornithopters. Next turn you play a land, swing with 4+ creatures and cast Bloodlust, hitting for 16+ damage, often before your opponent's second turn.
OG Omnath is my favourite example.Here's the timeline: - Mid-2008 to early-2009: Mana burn still exists. Omnath is being originally designed as a cool tightrope walk of mana/life totals; you can make Omnath big by floating your mana, but then you lose life yourself to mana burn. - July 19th 2009: Magic 2010 is released, and with it the rules changes which makes mana burn obsolete. - February 5th 2010: Worldwake is released and Omnath is just a super-good bomb with no downside at all, where even the mana-saving aspect is pure upside now. Probably the only card that benefited from a rules change that came about between its design and release! I've had this discussion before and people often say "Yeah, but they designed Omnath knowing they were gonna remove mana burn; it was always just meant to be a good bomb!", but that's not true - Maro has previously explained it was indeed designed as a tightrope walk (much like Death's Shadow), and while the mana burn removal did make it better, that wasn't the original plan when it was first being designed. They even debated adding another downside to make up for the original downside of it causing lifeloss to you not working anymore, but decided to keep it as-is because it was still a cool, contained-to-mana design and adding an extra unrelated-to-green-mana downside ability (or simply adding mana burn back onto one card's ruletext so soon after it was taken away from the game in general) would have made it a worse-designed card.
A more recent change, Chandra Torch of Defiance used to be able to beat up on opposing Planeswalkers and was changed while she was still in standard by the Planeswalker damage redirect rule being changed.
. There is one little example (kind of a obscure one, because it's related to a "bad" card) that I would have liked to see mentioned. The card *Master of Arms* (likely depicting Weatherlight crew member Gerrard) was a 2/2 first striker tha had an activated ability that allowed it to tap any blocker for 1W. The twist is that tapped blockers didn't dealt combat damage by the time the card was printed. Nowadays, the ability is almost useless. That same rule change buffed cards that can use a tap ability now to help them in combat, allowing Mishra factory to block as a 3/3, for example.
Read a full nostalgia-riddled article on old rules changes here:
www.cardmarket.com/en/Magic/Insight/Articles/Famous-Rules-and-Card-Changes-in-Magic-History
Great video. I went through all the changes. But with winterorb, you are a little wrong. when the rules changed, winter orb and howling mine got an erata from WotC, so they were still inactive, when tapped. Like all old Artifacts did back than, like black vise, Ivory tower etc.
But to know that, you'd had to look it up at the website.
With Mirror Universe you couldn't use manaburn to bring you to 0, because manaburn accoured at the end of the phase. That's why you had to use painlands like City of brass.
How about a video, where cards got better due to rule changes? I'm looking at Mana Drain for example. With Manaburn, you needed a way to get rid of the mana. Now you can counter everything without drawbacks.
good stuff! tons of nostalgia! i would love to see more videos like this!
Your explanation of mirror universe is confusing. How can you burn yourself to zero AND switch life totals if manaburn didn't trigger until the end of phase? You can't burn yourself to zero then switch life totals in the same phase.
@@Thumper770 The deck was a thing, but yyou burned yourself with City of brass to get to 0.
@@TheTrashMob I know how it worked but, that's not what the "League Pro" said. What he said was wrong.
There's actually another rules change involving tolarian academy. It was actually *because* of academy that the original mulligan rule changed. It used to be a free mulligan if you had zero lands or all lands in hand or if your opponent took a mulligan. So decks would run 4 academy as their only lands and free mana rocks for all the rest of the mana, and as you can guess, that was a very busted deck, so they had to change the Milligan rule
What rules did you play? Paris mulligan was in effect before Tolarian Academy existed and Tolarian Academy was restricted to 1 per deck within 3 months of release.
Also original mulligan rule only allowed you to do it once based on all land/no land.
@@acollectorslifeforme4201 this wasn't type 2. I forget what the format was called for all sets being legal at the time but basically vintage because they were using moxen and mana crypt alongside academy
@@Roll-Penut gotcha, I played classic, extended, block, and limited back in the 90’s, we always used the restricted list even in casual play. Tolarian Academy was broken even with only 1 in a deck regardless.
As mentioned above, the Paris mulligan (any number of reshuffled starting hands drawing 1 card less) was introduced at PT Paris, which featured Visions as the newest set. That was over a year before Urza's Saga released.
@@Roll-Penut Type 1 only restricted a sizeable chunk of banned, non ante cards. Type 1.5 was my personal favorite.
Mogg fanatic was originally printed before damage used the stack so technically it received a buff and was later returned to original functionality
Removing combat damage on the stack killed Ghost Council of Orzhova.
I’m not following you I guess. The rules were one way, so the card was normal at the time, not buffed, then the rules changed and it got a nerf, not returned to original functionality, it was future functionality? I’m not actually familiar with this specific card, but the whole do combat damage then sac it to do more damage is a specter I remember well in my nightmares.
@@bobjohnson7683 in the very beginning of the game damage didn’t use the stack. Mogg fanatic is older than the stack as we know it
@@bobhockey2509 but glarecaster became a fun commander card
@@riddick1128 mogg fanatic is older then the game
Imagine how good death shadow would be with mana burn
Pulse actually would work well in shadow without manaburn
If it's Black, there's a Jund or Grixis commander that was introduced in Commander Legends that reintroduces it as an ability.
@@tallynnyntyg6008 Jund, it's the Viashino guy. I wanted to build around him, and I still might at some point.
@@nicholasfarrell5981 Right, thanks. I still have to work a deck around Esika based off a video game series.
Would be hilarious in my vilis edh deck
Damage on the stack was hilarious: i still remember one time I was playing Urza standard and I was running Academy, my opponent dealt lethal to me, and since that Academy deck could go off at instant speed, I had him draw his whole deck. Back then, while damage went on the stack, drawing with no cards in the deck was instant loss
It wasn't instant, it was just checked when a player would gain priority, just like having 0 life. Damage was assigned, the assigned damage went on the stack, but hadn't been "dealt" yet
Academy is my favorite deck of all time. Love the fact the entire combo goes off at instant speed. Opponent has Wasteland? Just go "lel. Lmao, even" and make them draw 8,792 cards. Even more hilarious that it wasn't an infinite combo, you just created that much mana to feed Stroke of Genius.
@@nekrataali i have said it before and I'll say it again: urza standard made me the man I am today
Nice flex, if you can win at instant speed so you can let your opponent damage you first just to bm.
The game was very different back in the day. I started around the Revised time. People built decks with big creatures. Creatures were a major way to do damage. Build that green deck and fill it with Craw Worms and Force of Natures. Bring those artifacts. Don't have a Sol Ring? You are probably in trouble.
I came in expecting Jace Beleren and his ability to destroy Mind Sculptor but ended up learning even more about the Legend rule! Awesome video, I'd love to see another video along the same line as this one! :D
There was also a time where you could play a Legendary thing while one was in play, but doing so would annihilate both of them.
It's funny; I played standard only briefly from basically before Innistrad rotated out to the end of RTR being in. And the only reason I started playing standard was because Liliana of the Dark Realms had just come out and I thought that card was hilariously fun. I absolutely got to enjoy swatting Lilian of the Veil for the small period where that could happen.
But yeah I assume that would've been too obvious; Clone would've hit it even closer to home.
@@matthewgagnon9426 that was the best version IMO. especially funny with kokusho in play
I was legitimately sad when mana burn was removed. I always wanted to see if it was possible to construct a deck that would kill your opponent purely by using mana flares and whatnot to kill your opponent with mana burn.
Honestly I couldn't see a reason why WotC couldn't just make a card that re-enables mana burn for those who want to play around with the Isaac flying too close to the sun scenarios of massive mana.
Personally I think it was a good thing mana burn got removed, mainly because it got rid of a mechanic that was just a bit annoying that you could manipulate your life total with mana and it made sure that massive mana givers were not "checked" by this rule, so WotC made less types of ritual cards or those rituals were not as efficient as older versions. It's also likely that abilities that only required mana were worsened because it was a safety net against mana burn, so many artifacts or creaturers all had tap abilities for things you would not tap for in modern designs.
@@m.r.r.2636 “Yurlok of Scorch Thrash” can be used to reenable mana burn.
I had a green/white deck that had mana burn as the main win condition. Eladamri's Vineyards, Holistic Widsom, Howling Mines, Orim's Chant and lots of other G/W instants. Each turn, use your Vineyard mana through Holistic Wisdom to get an Orim's chant from graveyard, then cast it during their upkeep. Each turn they spend that they get Vineyard mana and can't spend it was 2 damage per Vineyard that turn.
This was actually a component of Mono Red Chaos Decks back then. 4 Mana Flare, 4 Manabarbs, 4 Power Surge. Nasty little combo. You die unless you're good at math.
@@Oujai had a deck like that, made it to basically hurt every time you tried to do anything or punished you for cards 9n the table. Was fun.
I remember in the distant 90s I was playing kitchen table magic at the school cafeteria with decks that basically had every card I had ever opened in the few booster packs I could afford to buy. At one point an older dude told me hey kid you can kill my elf if you sack your fanatic and still have it deal one damage to me. I was like that's cool but how can the creature deal damage to you if it is not even there any more? That is the most stupid rule I've ever heard in my life. Are you sure it is like that?
It used to be that way, it's not that way anymore. This rule was changed in 2010 or so.
The way it was explained back in the day (at least to me) was that dealing damage was like throwing a grenade; even if the creature wasn’t there anymore, the grenade had still been thrown so it would still explode and deal damage. But I agree, that system is pretty unintuitive
@@wimoore I mean for some wizard or archer type creature things it would make sense, scince they shot a projectile and then die but the projectile still exists, meenwhile a grizzly bears (why is the one creature named as multiple anyway?) it doesn't, I think there should be a keyword a creature can have that mnakes their combat damage specificaly use the stack to capture such a flavour distinction.
Gosh, I remember playing 4th edition on the picnic tables at recess in Elementary school. I literally didn't understand that 60 card decks were best and stuffed every single card I had into mine, most of which were just big dumb green creatures. The kid I played against, if I remember correctly, ran a blue deck with actual card draw, counters, and some sort of combo that could kill me in one turn.
Also I really liked Ironroot Treefolk for some reason. I have no clue why.
@@wimoore similarly, it was explained to me as two archers flying arrows towards each other, then one being sacrificed before getting hit by the arrow ;)
Old-timey Magic player here, stopped around 5th edition. I heard later that they canned mana burn and I was like "Well, RIP my Mana Flare-Power Surge-Carrion Ants deck :/"
Thy printed an RBG legendary that ads manaburn to the game as long as it is on the battlefield
Yorlok Its 1 + Jund/RBG 4cmc ang can giv every player 3mana or something
Same here, stopped buying cards after ice age came out and stopped playing like a year later. One of the youngsters in the family started playing this summer and found out I played last millennium. It has been fun dabbling in it again.
I too stopped just after 5th. Still have my cards and a smattering of stuff after but only play against family that use my cards and 1996 rules.
I had one of those too, those were fun times.
mana flare is still good i just bought one of those a few weeks ago 😅
I still say "sack in response" referring to damage on the stack. It's wild to remember how much a core part of the game that was. My biggest memory of it was against a friend playing tooth n nail. He'd block with Sakura tribe elder, damage trades, sack in response for the ability.
Coming back with mana burn gone was such a weird experience too. Too bad I wasn't collecting back then, I'd have gotten gaeas cradle when it was cheap because I liked Mark Zug.
I played during 8ED through guildpact before coming back last year.
Sakura Tribe Elder was god-tier when damage went on the stack lol 😂
Yep, Sakura Tribe Elder was always the card I associated with damage on the stack. The Elder was basically a mini Fog plus Rampant Growth back then.
@@keithbarlow9701 sakura tribe elder can still stop creatures without trample completely
to be fair, howling mine and winter orb haven't actually been changed by the rules in current day because of the oracle/errata so they aren't rendered terrible
They weren't be terrible even without that, they've both been played in decks that had no way of tapping them.
They were both terrible card when printed
@@jasoneggleston1879 No they weren't. Winter Orb has seen competitive play.
They were terrible because they were much too powerful and miserable to play against and with.
@@jasoneggleston1879 Don't say something is terrible if it's too good, that's just intentionally misleading.
Trample has changed a lot.
I remember blocking an opponents trample creature and then sacrificing my creature to a sacrifice effect, and the opponent's creature would still be considered blocked and deal less trample damage as a result. This is thanks to damage on the stack.
Similarly, you could save your creature from dying to a trample creature by giving it +0/+1, back when damage used the stack.
Also, there was a time that trample creatures could assign all damage to just one of the blocking creatures, so the player would get some trample damage. Nowadays, you must assign lethal damage to all blocking creatures before you can trample over to the opponent. If I recall correctly, a trample creature could also trample over a creature with protection from that creature's color, it wouldn't kill the creature but the player could still get trample damage.
One more very odd one, regeneration used to tap the creature before taking lethal damage which meant you could tap the creature if it was about to get swapped with an opponents creature.
Finally, there cards like Fear and Lifelink that became printed abilities. Lifelink now reads "Enchanted creature has lifelink" which is good for a laugh.
Citadel of Pain was my favourite card of all time (for each untapped land at the end of your turn, take one damage) but the mana burn changes made it incredibly niche.
It still does what it's design to do: punish players who want to play things on your turn. I think the card is much more fair now, because it only punishes those kinds of people, and not those that simply can't play anything.
I would've liked to have seen Morphling instead of Mogg Fanatic for the Damage on the Stack part. When Damage could be put on the stack, Morphling was known as Superman because of the things it could do as long as you had enough mana to use. Now... Morphling is a bulk rare with outdated abilities. So sad.
Dude I remember when that guy was like a 7 dollar card lol shit I'm old
Morphling was amazing back then, but for whatever reason fanatic became the poster boy for cards that got worse when damage on the stack was changed. Every GP I went to I would grab any Morphling I saw in the bulk boxes cause I love the card it didn't deserve to be with all the other chaff, it's up to $15 now though so I doubt I'll be finding any more of em.
I remember when I finally got my hands on a copy of Morphling. I revered that card back then. It just felt special. I ran it in any deck that played blue, regardless of how well it fit.
In fact, the enchantment that gave a creature Morphling's abilities was named "Pemmin's Aura", which is an anagram of "I am Superman".
For the legend rule, there was an even earlier version of the legend rule, at the beginning, where you could only have one copy of a legendary creature in your deck.
In the second major phase of the legend rule, where any two copies of a legendary permanent destroyed each other, Umezawa's Jitte was an example of a card that people played, not because it benefited their deck, but just to destroy one's opponent's copy of that card.
But why include a legend card if you didn't use for the sake of destroying opponent's legend? Might as well use destroy cards like disenchant.
@@fighterz7985 Umezawas Jitte is a good card anyways, and cheaper than disenchant. Also you can play it before they play their Jitte
@@fighterz7985 it can destroy cards with destruction protection
The legend rule that makes the most sense is that if you play a legend card, it destroys any legend card of the same name anywhere on the table. That way it is as if you are summoning the legend away from your opponent.
@@greywolf7577 The good old legend rule. It made Mirror matches horrible though, no matter what you played.
I loved to play with "Braid of Fire" back when mana burn was a thing and mana didn't disappear until the end of your turn. That sweat of having to spend all that mana was so cool!
Mana has always emptied at least at the end of phases, and later (currently) at the end of steps as well. Unless you had something like Upwelling, Braid of Fire burned you before your main phase until mana burn was removed.
Yeah it was pretty garbo until mana burn stopped being a thing. Now there’s little risk and you can really have it grow big a few turns in
@@shadowfate05 Nope, there was a time when mana didn't empty until the end of the turn. Radha, Heir to Keld is another card that got pretty useless with this change. Nowadays they have to add an extra clause to the card that assures mana doesn't empty at the end of combat. You can see it e.g. on "Grand Warlord Radha" which is like a bigger, "fixed" version of the aforementioned card.
@@couchpotatoe91 Those clauses already existed in Kamigawa with things like Sakura-Tribe Springcaller, which was printed with "At the beginning of your upkeep, add {G} to your mana pool. This mana doesn't cause mana burn. Until end of turn, this mana doesn't empty from your mana pool as phases end". The attack trigger on Radha was designed to be very aggressive and only used in combat. That's why it was a 2/2 for 2 that could produce 2 mana AND attack. Braid of Fire was designed to help fuel other cumulative upkeep cards.
If you can show me when mana only emptied at end of turn, between the release of Coldsnap in 2006 (where mana emptied at the end of each phase) and Magic 2010 in 2009 (mana burn is removed, mana now empties at the end of each step AND phase), I'll believe you.
@@shadowfate05 Ah ok. Well, I suppose you're right then. Back in those days I only played casually, so those were the rules we followed.
Thanks for the info.
When Academy was in Standard briefly, I was playing Academy/Spiral, against the same deck. My opponent played a Wasteland, stalling the game by preventing me from playing my Academy. We both built up our board with normal lands, and artifact mana, while he looked for a Academy of his own. He eventually cast a Mana Vault. I had a Power Sink in hand, and cast it for a ton, matching his available mana exactly. He was forced to tap his Wasteland for mana. So he got his vault, but I took my turn, played my Academy, and won.
I remember a game when life totals were checked at the end of any phase, the guy made infinite mana with palinchron with a city of brass among his lands taking millions of damage but still won with his stroke of genius that instant killed his opponent, you can still do it nowadays if you can cast palinchron with flash by any means, put all the damage of city of brass on the stack and cast the stroke in response but it's kind of ugly...
The rules change I've never quite forgiven them for was creating Exile. I used to have a deck that put a Cunning Wish onto an Eye of the Storm and went infinite that way. SO MUCH FUN. Especially as, once the cards are on the Eye, *any* player can jump in with an Instant and take over. I remember a game where we had six players go infinite one after the other 8 times with the others still on the stack using my combo. Glorious chaos.
Changing "remove from game" to "exile" affects the functionality of both cards in zero capacity. Your combo should still work
@@dylansylvester4719 Cunning Wish currently can't get cards from exile, only from sideboards (or other "outside of game" cards in more casual games). Before Magic 2010 added the exile zone, Wishes could get cards that were "removed from the game" because that was "outside of the game". So the combo doesn't work anymore because "removed from game" used to be a valid Wish location but "exile" is not. Check out the "Magic 2010" exile rulings for more information.
It's great to see that stuff! Some history, some remembering^^ Would love a series where you talk about major artists in MTG, those that are well know.
I thought I was going to see a Jace Beleren, aka "Little Jace", for the same reasons than the Tolarian Academy.
Planeswalker rules also changed a lot, but share a lot of similarities with legendary rules: When The Mind Sculptor was printed, the planeswalker rule was that if two planeswalkers of the same subtype would exist in the battlefield at the same time (doesn't matter what side of the field), both would be sacrificed by a state-based action. So "Little Jace" could not be near another Jace without killing them both, even if they were on opposite sides of the battlefield. That meant that people played 4 copies of Mind Sculptor, but also 3-4 copies of "Little Jace" so they could use them as cheap removal against opponent's Mind Sculptors.
Yeah I remember that during cawblade standard when it was literally just everyone playing the same deck. You go to a PTQ? If you're on cawblade, be ready for 9 rounds of cawblade mirrors. If you aren't on cawblade why are you even there the deck was broken. Little Jace for removal made sense because at the time oblivion ring wasn't in standard or pithing needle too IIRC so answers to Jace, the Mindsculptor were super scarce.
Honestly, I kinda wish they would go back to only allow 1 Jace or 1 Nissa per player. Seeing a board with 3 Jaces on one side just feels wrong.
@@dark_rit pretty sure valakut was very playable as well
Who doesn't call that one "Party Jace"?
@@DAFIZZIF anyone who played him competitively, since you were playing him to either kill their jace or use his -1 3 times and nothing else
I absolutely love these two together, such a great energy and chemistry!
We agree!
I remember the Rebels mirror being awful due to the old legend rule.
Yeah they probably picked academy because it's way more notable, but Lin Sivvi was just broken with this rule. You had all the advantage in the rebels mirror if you had Lin Sivvi and opponent couldn't do anything about it unless they dealt you lethal somehow.
Man, being a magic player during Masques block was rough.
@@dark_rit Lin Sivvi is the real catalyst for the rules change. The need was there for over a year, but Masques block was just "Who can cast Lin Sivvi first?"
Every time I am going through my cards and see Citadel of Pain/Chimeric Idol side-by-side I get wistfully nostalgic and remember a time that was.
Damn, I love how you guys make REALLY interesting videos about MTG. I play magic since 2017 and I love to search for old interactions, interesting ruling or weird combos.... and you guys always bring up some of those contents!
Love you guys! Keep up the AMAZING work!
The changes to Split cards made and destroyed decks. In modern you can play fire//ice, but before you would cascade into it. Next the brain in a jar decks with
breaking // entering and Beck// call doesn't function anymore.
Yeah I really don't like that change. I kinda understand why they did it (because what's a split card's CMC?) but I wish they had kept the whole cascading aspect functional.
First off: I love these videos, the combination of enthusiasm and clarity is just *chef's kiss*. Second: I really wish Arena had a "weird custom mode" type thing where you could play games with "historic rules" enabled like mana burn and stuff like that. But that's probably way too niche an appeal, idk.
The removal of Mana Burn hurt a few cards that were better when your opponents had untapped lands. Nowadays you can just tap out in response, but back then, that meant you were going to take a lot of damage.
Forcing opponents to tap for mana and take mana burn was something players tried to do.
Ahh yes, Power Surge. I hate that card so much when I run into it in Shandalar.
A very minor change that sadly killed one of my deck was the "token ownership change".
Back then, the owner of the tokens was determined by the person whose effect created the tokens. In most case, that was also the controller, but for some cards like the Hunted cycle from Ravnica ou Forbidden Orchard, the owner and controller would end up being different players.
That meant, effects with "gain control of all permanents you own" (such as the very bad rare card Brand from Urza) would let you get back those tokens.
I had a deck that could go "Hunted Horror" into "Brand" realtively early. That was a 7/7 trample and two 3/3 with Problack on the board for 3 mana.
Nowadays, the owner of the token is just the player who got the token first.
This is the most obscure one for sure and am sad the video didn't know about it.
this video is amazing! what a cool way to present a lesson. thanks for making it.
Glad you liked it!
10:17 Correction! Lifelink actually does still save you from death in combat, because losing/winning is a state-based action
Correction correction. Lifelink used to work with a trigger. Thus two instances of lifelink stacked on the same creature ; I used to play a fun deck with creatures where I stacked multiple lifelink instances on them. I think they changed it at the same time they removed damage from the stack. So there was a period where 0 life killed you at a state based action but lifelink effects still used the stack.
@Bren that's not the point tho, lol
@@ohno_22 It is. Non keyworded lifelink still uses the stack and thus cannot save you from lethal damage during the same combat, as you'd gain the life after you're already dead. Only keyworded lifelink can save you, because it doesn't have to use the stack for the ability to function. Stuff like Armadillo Cloak still doesn't save you. Keywording enables/causes changes to how an ability can function.
@@qwormuli77 oh okay thanks
A perfect example of the difference between lifelink and it's old-school equivalent ith the cards "Lifelink" and "Spirit Link." Unlike Spirit Link, Lifelink won't benefit you if you enchant it on an opponent's creature. And unlike Lifelink, Spirint Link uses the stack so if your damaged at or below 0 while it's on the stack you'll die first. Of course there wouldn't be much of a difference if we only died at the end of phases.
I honestly don't miss damage on the stack. Dealing with any creature able to bounce itself back to hand was such a pain because of that.
100% this. I had a UW deck and blinking spirits were a powerhouse.
Edit to say: it felt like cheating.
This was the worst. It really was awful. For me, combat damage is pure. I don't get how you can tap, bounce, sac, reanimate, fling, untap, etc. and get 10 damage from a 1/1 (being sarcastic of course)
Losing damage on the stack made combat boring and garbage. Made tons of good cards instantly bad, not just creatures, but also spells. Assigning combat damage, Flicker. Made that spell (and related spells) good for not just abusing Come Into Play effects and dodging removal.
@@joseph1150 You can still flicker after declaring a blocker. You can still flicker after attacking and having a pseudo-vigilance that way. There are a lot of interactions that flickering and bouncing can bring to the table, but assigning combat damage without suffering the consequences of being in combat was not a fun one, nor one that made any sense in the first place. This was a needlessly frustraring and convoluted interaction, and the game is better with it gone.
@@bouboulroz I completely disagree. That change is 100 percent the straw that broke the camels back in why I quit competitive magic and only casually play a couple times a year at best. It needlessly took a ton of fun and interesting interactions away from the game and reduced complexity. Being able to save a creature fully committed to combat with a giant growth was good, the opponent couldn't counter with a pump spell because damage was already assigned. Being able to get two for ones with strong value creatures is good. Blinking spirit was great at combat, assign damage, go back to hand. None of these interactions are unfair compared to some of the BS printed these days in terms of raw power creep.
Another recent change was that Chandra, Torch of Defiance used to be able to hit Planeswalkers with her Impulse +1 ability with the old redirection rules. Now that that rule no longer exists, she can't ping PW's for 2 anymore. Big sad. :(
I think that was a big rules change, but the more impactful interaction was Leyline of Sanctity no longer protecting planeswalkers
@@TheMCGamer2012 That's a big one too. I remember when that Leyline shot up in price, then started tumbling down after the rule change. And then the reprint happened. XD
Also stuff like 7 mana Teysa and No Mercy no longer protecting the walkers in super friends EDH decks.
Turning planeswalkers into legendary permanents made Honor-Worn Shaku a pretty cool card. A friend of mine saw the rules change and immediately bought the maximum amount of these at an online store that hadn't updated their prices yet, getting him 8 of those in foil for I belive less than two euro's or something.
This is so much fun to watch, would love to see hazoret, the fervent used to be able to use her ability to damage planeswalker (pw redirect damage rule) featured in this kind of video.
Love this
Love the content you guys have been putting out lately!
@cardmarket - magic
Fun video! While I played a lot in the early days (revised-4th ed and onslaught block), I now regularly play with many of these cards in the premodern format and often encounter other cards that seem outdated with rules changes.
One such card is “interdict,” though I don’t know how good it actually was at the time. I’d imagine there’s a whole slew of interrupts that lost playability…
I nailed them all! That was a fun video and a nice throwback to bygone era’s.
I remember one Legend Rule Variant with double dragons in Kamigawa. Play 2 Kokusho, they both die, triggers, you die!
Some more rule changes:
Everything was weird before there was a real stack (when everything was resolved at once when both players passed priority)
Interrupts, Mana Sources and their timing
Weird damage prevention and regeneration "window"
The weird short time when "in between turns" was a thing for Time Vault and abused with Wall of Roots
Tapped blocking creatures did not deal combat damage
Drawing the first card in the draw step used the stack (was changes when Stifle was printed, to prevent Isochrone Scepter + Stifle)
the inbetween turn is my favorite weird ruling thing in magic
I remember abusing this with Waylay!
It's amazing how elegant of a solution The Stack is compared to batches that came before it. I don't think anyone was unhappy when the stack was introduced. It made things a lot more intuitive.
For those unaware, before the stack, effects came in "batches." Players couldn't add cards to the batch unless they had an effect that was faster. So if you cast a sorcery, and your opponent responds by casting an instant, you couldn't respond unless you cast an interrupt. Then your opponent couldn't cast anything other than interrupts or a mana source. Once someone used a mana source, you couldn't cast anymore interrupts. Once players had done everything they could, the batch was resolved with its own complicated set of rules and triggers.
Then R&D went "This is fucking stupid" and created the stack, which did pretty much the same thing as batches, without worry about 194 different card types or what triggers happened where.
Abeyance. At the time, EVERYTHING was an activation cost, including tapping a land for mana or tapping a creature to attack. Abeyance was almost a white Time Walk, allowing your opponent to draw and play a land and nothing more. Then, if I recall correctly, they changed the rules and severely limited what was considered an "activation cost."
What's curious is that in the same block you have Cursed Totem, which DOES turn off creature mana abilities, and in the same set even Null Rod, which is a famous hate card for artifact mana (used in Vintage prison decks in the past and cEDH decks now). They didn't change the rules; they post-changed the text of Abeyance with errata. Aside from power level, there's really no reason why Abeyance should NOT turn off mana abilities. WotC has a "no power level errata" policy but clearly they made an exception for Abeyance, as you say, as printed it's a Time Walk.
Braid of fire became much more powerful once mana burn was removed. Having to use the mana during upkeep is still a rather large drawback...
Kumano loves it.
Braid of Fire (and Pulse of the Forge, from the video) were printed after mana burn was removed from the game. Now, Eldamri's Vineyard...
I feel like being made to use the mana only during your upkeep is going to confuse a lot of new players that don't get why they can't play their creature spells with it.
Feather loves it.
nope, braid was printed before
mana burn stopped being a thing in 2010
braid released in coldsnap 2006@@CB-ke7eq
The shift from damage-on-stack to damage-not-on-stack was such a huge one! I couldn't wrap my head around it for, like, a year.
A very interesting that got buffed is the red enchantment card called Braid of Fire.
Which reads "Cumulative upkeep-Add red mana"
This was during mana burn but at current rules as written, it's an enchantment that gives you mana at upkeep to play around with without the burn.
Literally my 1st thought while clicking this video. Skipped right over anything that got a nerf and went right to braid of fire.
Power Sink is another great card to use in this video format. I doubt most people know why it was so much better before! You can also maybe use like Shahrazad which was destroyed by a rule change.
"Everyone knows tolarian"
Me a new person to the game: "are you sure about that"
Really great video guys!
Entertaining and super useful, full of nostalgia about old card interactions... 😎
Magic has changed rules lots of times and every time it was a bit of a strange period until we adapted.
Remember the "Interrupts"? 🙂 Then around year 2000, damage went on the stack and we abused it to the max... Remember "Prophecy" set? Its mechanics were based so much on the concept of mana burn. There are cards from that set almost useless now, just because they got rid of mana burn.. Ah, fun times! Keep these vids comin' guys 👌
Thoralf = Bester Mann! Tolles Format, gerne mehr davon ;-)
My favorite rules change was the way split cards use to be selected by either half and then if you got to cast it for free you could choose either one (or some times both if it was a fuse card). Examples of this was you could put Research/Development under isochron because you were imprinting research and then activation you could choose either one. Similarly if you played a expertise you could use both halves of a fuse card example: Kari zev's expertise and play a breaking and entering.
Yes, this was destroyed 2017, when split cards stopped answering two values when asked for their mana value (back then called "converted mana cost") and started answering with the sum of the two values. But why is this your favorite change? I hated this when I found out in 2020 that my "IsoSplit" deck (Isochron Scepter and Copy Artifact, with numerous split cards including Research // Development) doesn't work anymore!
I enjoyed this! Also I would really love to see another video of playing with ai generated cards like the first ai generated cards video you did. Those cards were so silly, I remember one of them was an enchantment that just said "creatures with flying."
We are recording one soon! Those videos just take an insane amount of work! But we should have it out in a few weeks. Keep watching out feed ;)
@@CardmarketMagic glad to hear
I had a deck in the old days that leaned heavily on Mana Burn to other players. Back in 1994-1995, multiplayer games with normal 60 decks rules were common (later Type 1 and now Vintage). One of my decks was designed around combinations with Power Surge. Power Surge would do one damage at the end of the turn of every untapped land. Players would be forced to spend all of their mana or take damage. The deck would use some cards (Nova Pentacle was the most funky choice), to reduce the controller's damage, and would also try to directly out players on low life totals. Without mana burn, Power Surge is mostly useless on it's own since players can tap all of their lands to get around it.
The deck's use of Power Surge would still function now, but it would be a much weaker. In addition to 4 Power Surges, the deck had 4 Mana Barbs. Mana Barbs deals one damage when you tap a land for mana. Part of the deck's goal was to force players to take damage for every land. The difference in the deck is that the Power Surge won't do anything until a Mana Barbs is in place, and if there's no benefit to having more Power Surges in play than Mana Barbs.
Damage on the stack made Morphling great.
The mana burn change ruined Power Surge.
Lazav Dimir Mastermind became really good as a Commander when they changed the replacement death rules for commanders, since he can now trigger when an opponents commander is destoryed and returned to the command zone to become a copy of it. I think he's very overlooked nowadays bearing that change in mind ^^ Thieving your opponents strategies and cards in Dimir has long been a staple, but copying your opponents commanders and then using their own cards against them with other Dimir strategies is really flavourful for Lazav and I love it :D
Ah... I remember most of these rules. I do still think about mana burn and damage on stack.
A huge rule that I always forget until I go back to playing the old PC Magic Shandalar affected a lot of cards back before the rule was changed:
Tapped defending creatures didn't deal combat damage.
Any instant speed effect that tapped creatures (Icy, Mind Games, and most famously, Master of Arms) could be used after blocks and before combat damage assignment to double as miniature fogs. Master is especially hit by the change since its ability does virtually nothing otherwise.
Shandalar was an awesome game!
9:40
I remember there being cards that say you gain life when this creature does damage. It worked similar to lifelink, but in today's magic is an ability that goes on the stack. So if the game didn't check till the end of a phase to see if your dead I assume you didn't die if one of those creatures saved you?
Right so the old ability was "whenever this creature deals damage you gain that much life" which was eventually turned into lifelink. So combat damage is all dealt at once, you take lethal and go to zero, lifelink triggers and you gain a couple life. Then at end of combat phase you're above zero so you don't lose.
Fun fact: lifelink originally used the original wording until people realized multiple instances of life link triggered independently. It was changed to "damage this creature deals also causes you to gain life"
@@dr.ickydoesstuff7743 thanks a lot
@@dr.ickydoesstuff7743 I remember when we could stack lifelink on a creature to gain life multiple times since it wasn't an evergreen ability.
@@cstaie85 Spirit Link (originally printed in Legends, reprinted in 4th. through 10th. Edition) still lets you gain life multiple times with lifelink or if you have multiple Spirit Links.
@@nekrataali it only works with cards that specifically do not say lifelink or that were eratta to lifelink. Otherwise it becomes the static ability and do not stack. But I see what you mean with the old ones as long as the cards still don't say it. But lifelink has an errata so it wouldn't stack anymore. After Magic 2010 was released they changed the rule.
4:50 I thought mana burn never resolved instantaneously, but after all the main phases?
This was the freshest most unique mtg video I've seen in a lonnnnggggggg time. Great work love the different angles and knowledge I didnt know myself. So cool great work
Much appreciated!
Fun video. I thought mana burn only hit at the end of a phase. So i'm having a little trouble figuring out Pulse of Forge. Player 1 at 4, Player 2 at 7. Deal 4 damage, P2 is at 3, you are at 4. Even if you had a floating mana, how would Pulse come back? The spell checks right after the damage, not in the graveyard. Or are you tapping 2 during the draw phase, to mana burn to 2, so that you can get Pulse back? But then in this scenario you need 8 mana for win.
Also when did damage on the stack go away? I'm still playing with that ruleset...
Reverse Damage could give you the life back if you played it at the end of the turn, no matter when you recieved the damage, so it was a much more powerful card.
Honestly I am still confused about whether any of the old prevent damage cards work today. If you have to regen something before it actually takes the damage, do you have to have a third eye to predict that a creature is going to take a lethal damage. Guardian angel, death ward, fog ( do you have to play that before ) hell, a sammite healer?
@@CruentusDK1 The rules have been adapted to make it all work. Regeneration creates a continuous effect that lasts until end of turn and prevents the creature from dying the next time it would. You know a creature is going to die in combat because you can cast spells and activate abilities during the declare blockers step (after blockers are declared, before damage is dealt), and you can cast/activate in response for non-combat damage.
Weird question... is there a website that has CUSTOM made up cards RANKED. So fan-made cards and people agreeing on "yeah that'd be awesome to be made into a card"
There's at least one subreddit that kind of does this
I miss mana burn. It was a cool rule that allowed for all sorts of things. I also miss damage on the stack...Bottle Gnomes was actually a good card at one point.
Yeah, it added depth to blue decks and encouraged them to play with creatures instead of just going turbo counterspell or turbo mill.
Reinforcements or...refreshments? I think that was the flavor text on at least one iteration of bottle gnomes. I love that card, so nostalgic.
@@dark_rit Yup. 8th Edition I think...
Foil Bottle Gnomes and some Super Secret Tech, you’ll be fine.
1:01 Now wait a minute. Damage on the stack was only in effect for a few years. Okay. Almost eleven years. But that still means that most of its existence the akward damage on the stack wasn't in effect. Not before and not after (now).
If you have never played with damage on on stack AND Morphling....
The best thing about the tapped artifacts not working and the workaround they did with errata, is that they printed a few cards that used the "As long as ~ is untapped" clause despite never being printed before 6th edition. The most popular one is probably Trinisphere.
I think there was an offhand reference to damage on the stack being removed in 6th edition but that's actually backwards. It was introduced in 6th edition to add more depth to combat. Before combat damage worked basically as it does now. It was reverted essentially in M10. Definitely still a long time ago though, more time has passed since its removal than its entire lifespan in the game.
I love using a super modern card Urza to explain the Winter Orb interaction when Icy Manupulator was "the card" for an old school lock down deck.
Damage no longer going on stack is the most upsetting rule change in all of MTG history.
Fun vid. Yeah, back in the 90s, damage dealt from any creature during the combat phase was immediately reconciled during the exchange, which led to an instant death. BUT, any damage dealt during any non-combat phase was reconciled at end of turn. So, negative life totals were possible during any non-combat phase. Since burn happened at end of phase; Mirror decks were usually RGU direct damage-control decks. The general idea was: get Mirror out, protect it for a few turns, ouch and mana burn down a bit with City of Brass, then swap life totals for the win. Or, finish off with direct damage depending on the draw and tempo of the game. ... The thing with Mirror decks was that these were more of a combo deck than a lock deck and the mana curve was kinda of high. Other than that, it was a fun play.
Good example for legendary rule is Lin Sivvi where rebel mirrors were determined by who was able to play her first. it is interesting to know that every deck played an academy though, i did not know that. Also when i started playing around scars block i remember running phyrexian metamorph in sb's to kill Thrun and Gesit of Saint Traft
I once lost a game (or rather didn't win, so we drew the match) in Vintage because of the legendary rule with Tolarian Academy, back in 2006 (so legend rule #2). We were low on time and I cast a quick Necropotence; when I picked my 7 cards, I kept Tolarian Academy as my only land and my opponent played his the next turn. I had to play wrath of Academy but it left me short on mana that turn and since we were out of time, I wasn't able to finish my win and the game ended in turns without a winner. That non-win put me in 9th place at the SCG Event, meaning I walked home with packs of Saviors of Kamigawa or whatever instead of a Mox Pearl at the least.
I have an old precon where a creature (cave cockatrice or something similar) had the following effect : "Pay 1 Life: Return Cave Cockatrice to your hand" and the deck descrition was making it look important.
I actually contacted judges online to understand and that's when I learned of damage on stack
Cavern Harpy? That one is still pretty good because of the ETB of bouncing one of your creatures.
Very cool video. I played with mana burn, damage on the stack, and various iterations of the legend rule. Mono artifacts were before my time, sadly. Damage on the stack was a thing during onslaught block. I remember agonizing over the decision to either have goblins hit or sac them to clickslither
Original Text on Time Walk: "Opponent loses next turn".
There was an early Pro Tour game which caused the game's very first errata, because the person playing the card pointed out that the opponent LOSES next turn (i.e. loses the game next turn). That's the first indication that they had to be very careful with the cards' wording. And the birth of "take another turn after this one".
I’m glad the team didn’t cheap out and put tibalt’s trickery in the vid. Made watching it much more enjoyable!
Keep it up guys!
Before watching: The Legendary Dragons of Kamigawa have death triggers. Under the old rules of the time, when you cast a second, both would die. As a result, Kokusho would deal 10 and you would gain 10, probably after attacking for five and having done 5+ before casting the second, which is why casting the second was almost always game over, or the 10 life gain ensured you lived for another turn to deal the final damage.
The white one tapped 5 permanents that didn't Untap, so you would target 10 things, such as their lands, which was another way to seal a game.
While I was aware that mana burn died as a rule and expected it to show up in this quiz... my take on "Pulse of the Forge" was it now can hit Planeswalkers because it was printed before them.
that wouldn't ruin the card though, it would be a straight up buff. "lower health than your opponent? spam pulse on their planeswalkers"
If you want to look up the original ruling of Black Knight vs Wrath of God. The old black protection prevented white spells and effects, plus couldn't take any damage. It was a very 50/50 ruling on if black knight should die from Wrath because wrath doesn't target. Just imagine how the game would have changed if protection prevented Wrath of god from killing things.
I started playing Magic in 1995 and still have issues with damage on the stack. I was expecting a regeneration type one in there somewhere (or is that too easy) as there were so many cards ruined by the regenerate rule change. Not just regenerate abilities but instants that regenerated creatures like death ward. I pulled an old blue squeeze deck on some friends a while back, not knowing about the rule change concerning "tapping an artifact doesn't turn off artifacts now" but I guess the Winter Orb and howling mine trick still work due to the wording change. I think that's great! Winter's Orb, the rack, black vise, mana short, psychic venoms, brain geyser, meek stone, stasis, icy manipulator, Ankh of Mishra Tap land take damage, play new land, take damage, summon new creatures stronger than power 2 and they won't untap, untap 1 land per upkeep, mana shorts to retap lands once they get close to having the mana to do anything, take damage for more than 4 cards or less than 3. Watch the hope dwindle as they realize they are in for a game of being able to do almost nothing. More people quit just seeing the squeeze get started. It was the first deck that my friends just asked to never have to play again. Life goes on, nearly 30 years later, Magic has so much power creep that 95% of the old cards have no real value minus my 15 duel lands from revised (3rd edition). Creatures are so fast, so cheap, so many abilities, and so huge in comparison to the classic 5 mana Sera Angels and Sengir Vampires 4/4s that ended duels in 6-8 turns. I mean most of the old cards didn't even have abilities. When is the last time anyone has seen a loss due to a milled library? Heck most 4 man commanders we play don't get to see 1/4 of the 100 card deck. Half the time we just exile the cards we saw from the last game, clear the board, draw a new 7 and commence another game. I gotta say that the coolest video you all did was that challenge where you had to play the cards immediately and trigger every ability, even if not beneficial to you. If not, you lost. What a great practice in game mechanics! Keep it up gents. Honestly I love the passion you both show just talking about the game, the history, and the rules.
One artifact interaction that I used to use when we had the tapped artifacts don't work rule was Sands of Time which skipped the untap phase as part of its text. Phasing happens during the untap phase. So I would combine this with Teferi's realm which would let me phase out all of one type of thing, then I could tap it to give myself an untap step and phase all my stuff in, meanwhile my opponents things would never phase back in.
You could do a video on some other cards that had their rules text changed, for better or worse, and have Aura of Silence and Laccolith Rig as two of them. Aura of Silence now works in multiplayer (and doesn't target the opponent when cast anymore) and Laccolith Rig is a huge one because if you cast it on an opponent's creature you could redirect their combat damage to a creature of your choice which was a bonkers oversight. Like Time Vault, they tried changing the rules of the cards to fix them - and then later decided outright that those kinds of errata were unfair and decided never to "nerf" cards by changing their rules text. Could be a fun video - not sure how many cards there are like that though.
Elenda, the Dusk Rose got better with the recent change in commanders actually dying now, instead of replacement effect! :) (thank god you didn't cut that out in the end! xDD)
As a new player who didn't heard of any of these rules except for the mana burn, this was very nice to watch ! Keep doing more !
I like how you were able to talk about this without the old man screeching I do whenever a rule change is brought up.
i love hearing about the old rules and seeing how or why they changed. i remember the mana burn days and when i returned to playing again it was such a different game with weird formats and new cards lol
This reminds me of how old I am. Although I didn't guess all of them, I am aware and have played in the era of these past rules where it affected these cards.
Damage on the stack made bounce effects really strong. You put damage on the stack and then bounce your creature back to your hand and saving the creature. I had a deck that took advantage of this.
I was initially sad that mana burn went away because I had a deck with Power Surge. Overall, I felt it was a good thing that mana burn is no longer part of the game.
I remember going through many legend/legendary rule changes. I think even before I started, there was a rule where you can only have one copy of legend in your deck.
I did play in the era where your life total was only checked at the end of a phase. I cannot recall if I played a game where someone had 0 life at one point. I think there may have been. I do recall the Mirror Universe trick, with mana burn. I think the person only went down to 1 life and then lightning bolt for the win.
The tapped artifact deactivation rule was used quite a bit. I have a Winter Orb deck and was happy to see they updated the card rule to make it not work when tapped.
One of my friends had a casual deck full of Citadel of Pain, Power Surge, and so on. Getting rid of mana burn made half of it useless... (It did also have Mana Barbs in, but makes the deck a lot worse). Of course, we can just reinstate mana burn for kitchen table play.
I also built a citadel deck. It was fun putting that 2nd or 3rd Citadel in play and seeing your opponent realize it was better for them to mana burn themselves rather than take double or triple that damage
The explanation on that mirror card finally makes the card simulacrum make a lot more sense to me. That's insane.
Great idea for a vid, fun to see how seemingly small rule changes can have such a big impact on some cards.
Glad you enjoyed it!
About checking health at the end of the phase - Back then, I recall being at negative health on my main phase, then using demonic tutor to go through my deck to see if I could get back up, finding something like Healing salve, that brought me back to "ok" status before phase ended. Normal procedure for the time.
Also, Winter orb / howling mine with Icy manipulator was pretty default tech for everyone...
In that example used for Pulse of the Forge, Manadrain went the complete opposite way of Pulse. It went from nearly unplayable to becoming the best 2-mana counter spell ever.
There were a couple of cards (Thawing Glaciers and Waylay) which had to be errata'd to have an effect happen during the cleanup step, rather than at end of turn (beginning of the end step). One could use Thawing Glaciers in two consecutive turns by making the first activation during the end step, and Waylay's tokens could otherwise stick around to attack the next turn.
this video was wonderful! i'd love to see more like it, this is the first one i've seen from your channel and i've already subscribed. i love your enthusiasm.
Thanks for subbing!
Braid of Fire, which has "Cumulative Upkeep: Add R to your mana pool" seems like a pretty obvious candidate for cards changed by rules text. That upkeep cost once was technically a cost if you couldn't immediately use the mana.
Phil Foglio shows up in so much old art that you almost instantly recognize his style. He did Shahrazad and Greed too, among others.
I always loved his Master Decoy.
I'm only at 4:52. I would have personally used Eladamri's Vineyard to explain the mana burn rule. I remember when tempest was new and this was essentially a green burn spell in some matchups. A control player trying to play draw go would often not have a lot to do with GG in the first few turns of the game.
Lin Sivvi would also have been a great example of that legend rule, where games sometimes raced to which rebel deck got her out first won.
One of the nastiest misprints ever was Bloodlust.
The card read "Target creatures gain +4/-4 until end of turn."
So on turn 0 you could play a mountain and a handful of Kobolds of Kher Keep, Crookshank Kobolds, Crimson Kobolds and Ornithopters. Next turn you play a land, swing with 4+ creatures and cast Bloodlust, hitting for 16+ damage, often before your opponent's second turn.
That damage on the stack one... yeah, I felt that one. There was also 'damage on the stack, bounce your creature to save it.'
OG Omnath is my favourite example.Here's the timeline:
- Mid-2008 to early-2009: Mana burn still exists. Omnath is being originally designed as a cool tightrope walk of mana/life totals; you can make Omnath big by floating your mana, but then you lose life yourself to mana burn.
- July 19th 2009: Magic 2010 is released, and with it the rules changes which makes mana burn obsolete.
- February 5th 2010: Worldwake is released and Omnath is just a super-good bomb with no downside at all, where even the mana-saving aspect is pure upside now.
Probably the only card that benefited from a rules change that came about between its design and release! I've had this discussion before and people often say "Yeah, but they designed Omnath knowing they were gonna remove mana burn; it was always just meant to be a good bomb!", but that's not true - Maro has previously explained it was indeed designed as a tightrope walk (much like Death's Shadow), and while the mana burn removal did make it better, that wasn't the original plan when it was first being designed. They even debated adding another downside to make up for the original downside of it causing lifeloss to you not working anymore, but decided to keep it as-is because it was still a cool, contained-to-mana design and adding an extra unrelated-to-green-mana downside ability (or simply adding mana burn back onto one card's ruletext so soon after it was taken away from the game in general) would have made it a worse-designed card.
A more recent change, Chandra Torch of Defiance used to be able to beat up on opposing Planeswalkers and was changed while she was still in standard by the Planeswalker damage redirect rule being changed.
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There is one little example (kind of a obscure one, because it's related to a "bad" card) that I would have liked to see mentioned.
The card *Master of Arms* (likely depicting Weatherlight crew member Gerrard) was a 2/2 first striker tha had an activated ability that allowed it to tap any blocker for 1W. The twist is that tapped blockers didn't dealt combat damage by the time the card was printed. Nowadays, the ability is almost useless.
That same rule change buffed cards that can use a tap ability now to help them in combat, allowing Mishra factory to block as a 3/3, for example.