Rarran is actually exactly right at 7:50 lol, he says "if the metagame has a lot of nonbasic lands, you can run Blood Moon and win a lot of games from it." This is perfectly correct, he just doesn't realize that *most* metagames have a lot of nonbasic lands.
But see, I played Magic during that era, and I didn't know that non-basic lands (that give you colored mana) were commonly played back then. I mostly just saw basic lands used for colored mana. There were the double lands like Tundra, but they were quite expensive and rare iirc. I only knew two people who had them.
I hope that these two keep this series going, climbing up through the decades (at least up until modern era). It may take a year to go through every main set, but that's the kind of content I'm looking for
It's worth mentioning that you can speed up the 7 turn Approach clock. Regular card draw speeds it up, as does self-mill. So does running more than one copy: sometimes one of your other Approaches is on top of your deck! Standard Approach decks didn't have to wait the full 7 turns very often. They had a lot of incidental card draw, they had a land that could mill them for 4, and they ran multiple Approaches. What kept the deck in check was that there was an absolutely insane red aggro deck in the format that warped everything around itself. Approach is nigh unbeatable for slow value decks but there were none to prey on. Approach is also worth mentioning as a the ringer win con for a lot of convoluted combos, even today. If you're going off and can cast and draw whatever card, it's a clean way to win that the opponent can do nothing about.
My favorite Approach of the Second Sun win in commander was when someone played Mesmeric Orb, which makes everyone mill a card every time they untap a permanent. I sacced one treasure and tapped exactly six lands for my first approach, untapped the following turn, milled six cards, and did it again. I felt about as smart as I’ve ever felt playing Magic.
In my group hug deck I can occasionally cast it twice on the same turn. Sometimes I just cast it to distract from my Triskaideckaphile. And sometimes when those get dealt with I just hit everyone with a Crackle With Power.
To also follow up on the Blood Moon Discussion, something that was missed is in competitive best of three magic, you have sideboards. You don't have to commit Blood Moon to the deck until you know the opponent is rolling in nonbasics if you don't want to, which makes situational cards better
Although if you're running a deck with red and you have room for Blood Moon, you may as well mainboard Blood Moon. There are enough nonbasic lands in competitive Magic that odds are good Blood Moon will have relevance to your matchup -- you can always sideboard it out later. Fun fact: if you play Blood Moon while Urza's Saga is in play, Urza's Saga is immediately sacrificed! It's because, with Blood Moon active, Urza's Saga becomes an Enchantment Land -- Mountain Saga with no chapter abilities, and you sacrifice a Saga once the number of lore counters on it is equal to or greater than its number of chapter abilities, so a Saga with no chapter abilities will be immediately sacrificed. Urza's Saga is a common enough play in Modern that it almost justifies Blood Moon all by itself!
@@lachlanmcgowan5712 Yep! Really my comment was meant to highlight how much more powerful Silver Bullet cards are in MtG because you can sidebaord things in and out based on matchup
The ultimate killer for Frankenstein's Monster is that you have to pay the X. Would you pay 2 black mana for a 0/1 with no ability? How about a 3 mana for a 1/2? 4 mana for a 2/3? 5 mana for a 3/4? Hell, if you used the +2/+0 option from there it's only a 5/4 with no special ability when it costs the same amount as a Craw Wurm. And you're only allowed the PRIVILEGE of playing a behind-curve card with no special powers IF you have enough creatures to sac from your graveyard.
Already spotted 4 comments pointing out that ball lightning is a real thing, ignoring the fact that the explanation of it being a real thing is literally in the video during the segment.
well, yeah, you hear something stupid, wait 1-2 sentences if they clear it up and then you pause and type the comment. who tf checks for the segments or waits until the end of the video for the low chance of a correction
Summon creature as text makes way more sense to me because it kind a reinforces that creatures are spells as well which was really counterintuitive to me when I was learning magic
Ironically when Magic first released creature cards were "summons", and they only became creatures when on the field. It was changed to how it is now because people then were arguing it was unintuitive in exactly the opposite way.
@@tinfoilslacks3750in a similar vein, permanents are no longer spells when they stick around on the battlefield. Or else it'd be even harder to block emrakul
@@juliandacosta6841 You have cards in hand, graveyard, exile, commander zone, companion zone and ante zone. You have spells and abilities on the stack. You have permanents on the battlefield. Getting used to this is one of the first step to learning magic
18:45 God, thank you for including that wiki description there. I was very close to going "UM ACTUALLY ball lightning is a real phenomenon". But sidenote it's surprising you haven't encountered the term before this. I feel like a lot of games have used it as a name for different abilities and such.
@@maxydal3512 That's fair those are indeed more commonly used. But very popular games like Diablo IV and Path of Exile use it as ability names. I have definitely heard the term first in some other game though and then learned that it's actually something that occurs in real life.
@@gamerbear84 Ok? Most people wouldn't know the difference based on the word alone. And when a card game literally called "Magic" uses it, most people would just see it as a "Ball of Lightning" spell.
Season Of The Witch is also known as a rulings nightmare, because the rules of magic don't actually define what counts as "could have attacked". Nobody knows how it's supposed to interact with Silent Arbiter, which allows you to only attack with one creature at a time.
Basically every attack-limiting card with Season of Witch is immediate grounds for a judge call. Ghostly Prison, Propaganda, even Laviathan. it’s a massive headache. In order to attack you pay mana for Propaganda, but when SotW checks if a creature can attack does it take it into account if you’re out of mana? Does it do the check at the moment, seeing if there are any restrictions on creatures attacking at the end of turn, or is it a continuous check to see if at any point it could have attacked? Even though this card isn’t good, every locals and commander pod would have this card on a community ban list because no one wants to deal with it.
Current official rulings state that any of your creatures that could have attacked at the start of your combat phase, but then couldn't due to an effect like Silent Arbiter, are still destroyed. (EDIT: This is an older ruling, that has been changed Again, and now it is once again unclear.) If, however, those creatures cannot attack, and then you grant them the ability to do so by paying the cost for a Propaganda type effect, then the creatures you paid the cost for can attack, and the rest are safe. But it's entirely optional, as you're not forced to tap your lands.
@@calemr Where is this ruling? There's nothing on Gatherer for Season of the Witch that explains a situation other than situations where you have an option to enable additional creatures to attack (such as a way to give Haste to a creature that just entered). It doesn't explain a Silent Arbiter type situation.
@@rajamicitrenti1374 Alright, maybe it got changed Again. Y'know, just when you think you finally understand this card, they go and alter the wording again... But as of a couple years ago, it had "Every creature that could have been declared as an attacker during that turn’s Declare Attackers Step but wasn’t will be destroyed." And having checked just now, it no longer does, you're right.
Approach of the second sun is to me, one of the coolest flavor wise cards. This idea that you play the card, and you can see the second sun slowly approaching from the sky for the win is cool to me.
@@juliandacosta6841 In a sense, yes, but then you'd have to run 2 or more approaches in your deck, which are dead cards most of the time. In control, since you already have many situational cards, you don't want to weigh down your decks with even more dead draws (for a while, control decks had as their only wincon lands that could become creatures for a turn, the idea being that as long as the board is kept clear you can just hit them every turn eventually). There are also many ways to take cards off the top of your deck. I believe 2 sets later, for example, a card called Search for Azcanta was printed, which was a card that after a little sidequest became a land that allowed to look at the top 4 cards and get a noncreature nonland, putting the other 3 on the bottom The card was already good for a control deck (it helped filter your draws towards what you needed at that moment, helping your consistency) and it made it so your approach would only take a couple of turns to come back. There are many other ways to combo it, there's the classic Approach-Remand-Approach for example Remand is a counterspell that puts the countered spell back in its caster's hand. Approach only cares if you CAST the spell once this game, rather than if the spell actually resolved. So what you do is, Approach, then Remand your own approach, and then next turn you can approach again.
@@juliandacosta6841 Approach of the Second Sun is the wincon for blue/white control that loop extra-turn spells. If you can loop extra-turn spells you've basically already won, and this is the easiest way to close the game.
@@juliandacosta6841 There was a silly card that was in Standard at the same time as Approach called Lich's Mastery, which has an effect where when you gain life you draw that many cards. So when you play an Approach with it out, you get to immediately draw 7 after placing Approach into your deck, meaning it ends up right back in your hand and if you have enough mana you can play it again. Mastery also prevented you from losing the game, and was difficult to remove due to hexproof, so you could play an esper control deck and pretty reasonably cast the same Approach twice in one turn, winning you the game.
Judgment was the first booster pack i bought at the card store (i know not super old), Onslaught was the set i started playing with my friends a lot when i was 11!
Fun fact, there are rules for multiplayer on how “you win the game” works. Basically, it gets changed to “every opponent you can interact with loses the game”; this is why you see things like “your opponent can’t win the game and you can’t lose the game”. This rule is mostly for larger games where it really isn’t feasible to have like 8 people trying to influence board state.
The "your opponents can't win and you can't lose" wording is required because it doesn't get changed to "each opponent loses the game". There are rules that I believe work similar to that, but they only apply if you are playing with the limited range of influence rules. 801.14: If an effect states that a player wins the game, all of that player's opponents within that player's range of influence lose the game instead.
Ah blood moon, my rules nemesis, we meet again. This judge respects your ability to create the weirdest scenarios and force people to look up layers rules, but despises how often they come up in a tournament setting.
One thing I love about these videos is seeing the old art which often had somewhat clashing styles: Anson Maddocks, Kaja Foglio, Rebecca Guay, Richard Kane Fergusson. The really distinctive stuff from early Magic. I haven’t played MtG in decades, but I miss that. The variety of styles was interesting, and I feel like card games tend to smooth the edges off these days.
A big Thank You to the editor for the sneaky display of the wikipedia entry to Ball Lightning, an existing concept from the real world, as these two make fun of the name of the card. I was going slightly insane
I'm so glad this has Maze of Ith in it. To me that's the most memorable and iconic card from this set and one of my all time favorite cards. I played it in every commander deck by default. I loved playing it in legacy with Tabernacle and Pendrel Vale, Rishadan Port, and Wasteland. Approach of the Second Sun reminds me very much of the brand new Hearthstone card Wheel of Death!!! which turned out playable
You want a magic finance theory? It's a stock market/gambling central that also has no regulations at all and as such is prime target for every kind of BS economic scheme and market manipulation there is, fueled by the fact that for some reason people think 50+ bucks for a card just because it sees heavy play is reasonable, or they want to compete and are forced into the ridiclous prices because getting them from the real life gacha that are boosters is even worse
Fun fact: Frankensteins Monster recently got an indirect buff. With the change to the ruling on Proliferate so it now copies each different counter on a card, rather than just One counter, you could play him for 5 with a +2/+0, +1/+1, and +0/+2, and then each proliferate gives him +3/+3. ... Which is still terrible in the modern day, thats 5 mana for a 3/4. That proliferates into being a 6/7. But it's better than it was!
Approach is one of my favourite cards in Magic, and is almost surely the wincon I use in a lot of my infinite mana OTKs. The tempo loss isn't really a tempo loss if you're comboing off that turn with it, after all! =P One cool thing about it that many people who haven't had a lot of experience with it may not realise, is that the first copy doesn't have to resolve - it just has to get cast. A play back at release was to Remand it back to your hand (1U, return target spell to its owners hand + draw a card), then cast it again the next turn. Now that we have Reprieve (1W, same effect), that's a bit more common. As part of the wincon of my combo decks I typically counter it with Sublime Epiphany while creating a token of something like Eternal Witness, then get it back with the Witness token to cast it again.
Something covert forgot to mention about second sun is that you don’t necessarily need to cast it seven turns later. Your most likely a control deck so you will be drawing/digging for this card and you might find another copy of the card before the original one. Or you might just have two in your hand and you cast them back to back
The part they didn't get to mention about Approach is that it's not so much about cheating the cast as following up with big draw effect to where you can basically cast it on your next turn (or same turn on rare occasions).
There used to be a game mode called prismatic, where each player played 1 colour, and they are arranged just like the back of the magic card. The players next to you are your "allies," and the players opposite you are your "enemies." The normal win con is the first person whose enemies are both eliminated. I'd imagine in a prismatic game, casting approach of the second sun might provoke the blue player to counter the spell. :P
Love these videos, love that you're going in order of set release, but also like the "ringers" to break things up a little. Hope this goes for a long time!
3:00 you also have to play season of the witch on your turn which means you are the first one effected by it and your opponent is the first one who profits from being able to chose how to block Also approach of the second sun control was the first deck I played a standard tournament with and it actually went pretty well. I think I played 4 store events with it and won 3 of them. The deck was mostly cheap counters and removal to stop your opponent from winning, a few boardwhipes for when they manage to build a board, some life gain in the side board to keep yourself alive against aggro and some efficent instant speed card draw to find your awnsers and win con faster. That was in many cases enough to win. Aggro was definetly the hardest match up since it reduced your time to find approch significantly. But it made me really fall in love with blue white control and sometime I still like to put it in my control commander decks for the nostalgia
This series and the Resleevables are my two favorite MTG shows right now, and they pair really well. There's lots of discussion about the same cards, one from two very knowledgeable and enfranchised professionals and the other bringing fresh eyes to these classic cards. It's always fun to see where the analyses differ, and where Rarran's game sense leads him to the same conclusions. Keep it up! Always happy to see the next one! (CGB, you should 100% be watching Resleevables if you aren't already. Rarran, don't watch it until you've done a video for the set with CGB, you'll get spoiled!!)
Dark Heart of the Wood (and the other two multi-color cards in The Dark) have the text about their colors because it was still a new mechanic. In Legends each pack had an insert card explaining new mechanics, including the fact that multi-color cards were all of their colors, but that was not the case for this set
Frankenstein's monster got a bump because the changes to proliferate. Those boosts have been errata to be counters, meaning each proliferate trigger can give it +3/+3. Not the best, but fun for a certain type of player.
It's kind of cute for Skullbriar, using something like Ozolith to transfer them over. Not necessary at all, but it is even more different counters that work great in multiples.
YESSSSS As a person who started magic not in the first gen, but still early back in '97 (pretty much at the release of 5th Edition) I love seeing content on the older expansions; again, despite not playing in these earliest days, I did have access to some of the leftover boosters of things like Chronicles, Fallen Empires and The Dark, as well as 4th Edition, and played the MTG computer game (and its expansion, Duels of the Planeswalkers) so I got a taste of the original magic style as well. I hope we get to the expansions that were the heart of the time I played most and most often (Weatherlight and the Rathe & Urza cycles)
7:04 "I'll have to really start undershooting... the next card's gonna be like 3 grand" *BLOODMOON* pops up on screen That timing was impeccable. If only it didn't have a dozen reprints that would be a 4 possibly 5 digit card
"If you play mana crypt just to go to your fun wacky combo it's not a problem" It literally puts you 2 whole turns ahead of the other players if they don't have it or don't draw it...
Maze of Ith quite literally won me a commaner game last night. I run it in Nine Fingers Keene gates. Managed to keep control and stick around until it was just me and one other player. I was on 9 gates with Maze's End on the battlefield and they only just had leathal damage with Maze of Ith, with Ith I managed to not die and win with gates the next turn. Double Maze baaaabbbby!
Funny that Rarran said Approach of the Second Sun might be playable in Hearthstone, considering its extremely similar to Wheel of Death. And Wheel had a similar review cycle, of coming out and being better than expected.
One of the first Magic decks I ever played against was my roommate’s lotus field combo deck that would cast omniscience, approach of the second sun, draw their whole deck, and play a second approach of the second sun all in one turn. That card was a bonkers introduction to Magic lol
18:49 ball lightning is a mysterious phenomenon in which lightning seems to form as a sphere. It is very rare, and nobody knows how it works, so it is pretty neat inspiration for a magic spell
I know the CGB collabs are a trip through Magic's past, but have the two of you talked about doing a set review together for the upcoming Outlaws of Thunder Junction set? Pick out a few cards, talk about them, talk about whether they're likely to see play. Perfect chance to get some wins under your belt if you predict a card will be good and CGB thinks it won't see play.
From wikipedia... "Ball lightning is a rare and unexplained phenomenon described as luminescent, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter. Though usually associated with thunderstorms,[1] the observed phenomenon is reported to last considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt, and is a phenomenon distinct from St. Elmo's fire. "
As a little child I ate that leviathan card my dad had. I don't know why but I guess It was delicious. I still think my father is mad about this but I assume it's just because he couldn't taste it himself.
Approach of the Second Sun is also one of the potential win conditions of Pioneer Lotus Field. You make enough mana to land Omniscience somehow or other, cast Approach, search for Approach again or draw enough cards to just get it, then cast it again and win the game. One turn combo, boom.
Instead of drawing/tutoring, another combo is to use a card like Unsubstantiate or Reprieve that returns a spell to hand without it resolving. Because it checks if you've Cast the spell twice, not Resolved it twice, so recasting it wins you the game, even though the first was countered.
What was not mention for Aproach of the Second Sun is, that you can still have 4 copies of it in your deck and you don't actualy have to wait seven turns to win. There was enough games where someone cast Aproach and next turn won by casting second copy.
10:00 I actually had a couple of Leviathans back in the day… I NEVER used it because I also had Killer Bees, Keldon Warlord, and a bunch of other creatures that were easy to make just as big without permanently impairing my mana generation. (I first got into the game around the time the Ice Age set came out)
I played MTG games with 16 different players. We called that game mode "assassin". At the start of the game, you picked an opponent at random. If that person died, you won the game. If you pulled your own name (you could), killing anyone would win you that match instead, so killstealing was very much a thing.
It's wild to me to see someone say they didn't get Ball Lightning at first. I adored that card as a kid, because it was 6 damage for 3 mana. It won me so many games.
Rarran I would love to see you get into commander! I know you're still just learning mtg but precons are a pretty affordable way to have something ready out of the box. Plus you've got a ton of friends to play with now!
I have played in a 12 player ga,e. It was fun. We did multiplayer a lot before commander was even a concept. If someone played a win con like second sun what we usually did was say "you win, now who gets second" and just continued playing without them.
Me halfway through the video checking the video timeline: "Oh, wait, that last card looks like Approach of the Second Sun." "... wait why is Approach of the Second Sun here?"
Twinning Approach of the Second Sun should win the game on the stack as the copy will resolve first, making the one you cast from your hand second time you casted the spell fulfilling the win condition on the card. Outside of commander where this card is legal, you can also have four in your deck, you don't need to cast the specific card twice, just any card with the same name twice. Dark Heart of the Forest isn't a tap effect, you can sac all your forests for life at once with it. Which the mana from those forests could go into casting Earthquake and the life from Dark Heart keeps you alive while everything not flying, including your and your opponent, take tons of damage that you just out healed. Still hope Pestilence comes up in this series. Love that card.
Best play with Approach of the Second Sun in my experience is to wait until you have two of them in your hand (not in Commander, obviously) and cast them on successive turns. Or the same turn, if the game's gone on long enough you have fourteen mana to play with.
Season of the Witch triggers EOT so you can't get around it by playing it after combat. If your creatures didn't attack, they get destroyed first. So you can't really set it up in your advantage unless you were already winning the race.
My best friend has a copy of Leviathan and every time i see it in his collection i mess with him and am like oh man hiw are you playing this cars you have a sea monster deck this is perfect for it. The death glares are always perfect so i love his "why was printed" response 😂
Rarran is actually exactly right at 7:50 lol, he says "if the metagame has a lot of nonbasic lands, you can run Blood Moon and win a lot of games from it." This is perfectly correct, he just doesn't realize that *most* metagames have a lot of nonbasic lands.
Yup, modern decks that play 2+ colors just run 80-90% of their lands just off fetches, duals and triomes, not to mention 5 color/domain piles
Blood Moon allows Free Win Red deck to thrice. Where you just win by playing hate cards it's great
@@Hakokoro what
But see, I played Magic during that era, and I didn't know that non-basic lands (that give you colored mana) were commonly played back then.
I mostly just saw basic lands used for colored mana. There were the double lands like Tundra, but they were quite expensive and rare iirc.
I only knew two people who had them.
@@celeschan90 Depending on how early that was, "expensive" could have been like 30 dollars.
I hope that these two keep this series going, climbing up through the decades (at least up until modern era). It may take a year to go through every main set, but that's the kind of content I'm looking for
I need rarran to wtf at urza block 😂
@@davidb4935Wait til he gets to the Unsets!
I live for the editor slowly sliding the Ball Lightning wikipedia article out in the open
Literally 50% of viewers in the comments about to post what a ball lightning is when that pops up
@@error00001 it's a 6/1 for RRR with Trample and Haste. It's also one of my favorite cards in the game.
@@nvvv_card is based on a real thing, it's why the name is wierd
Thanks for pointing it out, I was listening to this video in the background and would’ve commented without knowing the editor was the MVP.
@@nvvv_they’re talking about a ball lightning irl, not the card.
It's worth mentioning that you can speed up the 7 turn Approach clock. Regular card draw speeds it up, as does self-mill. So does running more than one copy: sometimes one of your other Approaches is on top of your deck! Standard Approach decks didn't have to wait the full 7 turns very often. They had a lot of incidental card draw, they had a land that could mill them for 4, and they ran multiple Approaches. What kept the deck in check was that there was an absolutely insane red aggro deck in the format that warped everything around itself. Approach is nigh unbeatable for slow value decks but there were none to prey on.
Approach is also worth mentioning as a the ringer win con for a lot of convoluted combos, even today. If you're going off and can cast and draw whatever card, it's a clean way to win that the opponent can do nothing about.
My favorite Approach of the Second Sun win in commander was when someone played Mesmeric Orb, which makes everyone mill a card every time they untap a permanent. I sacced one treasure and tapped exactly six lands for my first approach, untapped the following turn, milled six cards, and did it again. I felt about as smart as I’ve ever felt playing Magic.
In my group hug deck I can occasionally cast it twice on the same turn.
Sometimes I just cast it to distract from my Triskaideckaphile.
And sometimes when those get dealt with I just hit everyone with a Crackle With Power.
To also follow up on the Blood Moon Discussion, something that was missed is in competitive best of three magic, you have sideboards. You don't have to commit Blood Moon to the deck until you know the opponent is rolling in nonbasics if you don't want to, which makes situational cards better
Although if you're running a deck with red and you have room for Blood Moon, you may as well mainboard Blood Moon. There are enough nonbasic lands in competitive Magic that odds are good Blood Moon will have relevance to your matchup -- you can always sideboard it out later.
Fun fact: if you play Blood Moon while Urza's Saga is in play, Urza's Saga is immediately sacrificed! It's because, with Blood Moon active, Urza's Saga becomes an Enchantment Land -- Mountain Saga with no chapter abilities, and you sacrifice a Saga once the number of lore counters on it is equal to or greater than its number of chapter abilities, so a Saga with no chapter abilities will be immediately sacrificed. Urza's Saga is a common enough play in Modern that it almost justifies Blood Moon all by itself!
@@lachlanmcgowan5712 Yep! Really my comment was meant to highlight how much more powerful Silver Bullet cards are in MtG because you can sidebaord things in and out based on matchup
The ultimate killer for Frankenstein's Monster is that you have to pay the X. Would you pay 2 black mana for a 0/1 with no ability? How about a 3 mana for a 1/2? 4 mana for a 2/3? 5 mana for a 3/4? Hell, if you used the +2/+0 option from there it's only a 5/4 with no special ability when it costs the same amount as a Craw Wurm. And you're only allowed the PRIVILEGE of playing a behind-curve card with no special powers IF you have enough creatures to sac from your graveyard.
Already spotted 4 comments pointing out that ball lightning is a real thing, ignoring the fact that the explanation of it being a real thing is literally in the video during the segment.
Ya well youtube commenters arent the smartest people to be fair
well, yeah, you hear something stupid, wait 1-2 sentences if they clear it up and then you pause and type the comment. who tf checks for the segments or waits until the end of the video for the low chance of a correction
@@drask1988 Because the earth would simply stop spinning if we didn't point out things that don't matter, right?
@@eewweeppkk true, our comments are prove enough that it must be so.
@@drask1988 Patient people. Which, to be fair, is not generally what the internet is comprised of.
CONGRATULATIONS Rarran!! You just achieved level 2 of being a magic player by discovering llanowar elves
I so want there to be actual levels to being a magic player!
@@briankelly1240 there are 415 levels.
Summon creature as text makes way more sense to me because it kind a reinforces that creatures are spells as well which was really counterintuitive to me when I was learning magic
Ironically when Magic first released creature cards were "summons", and they only became creatures when on the field. It was changed to how it is now because people then were arguing it was unintuitive in exactly the opposite way.
@@tinfoilslacks3750in a similar vein, permanents are no longer spells when they stick around on the battlefield. Or else it'd be even harder to block emrakul
@@juliandacosta6841 You have cards in hand, graveyard, exile, commander zone, companion zone and ante zone. You have spells and abilities on the stack. You have permanents on the battlefield.
Getting used to this is one of the first step to learning magic
18:45 God, thank you for including that wiki description there. I was very close to going "UM ACTUALLY ball lightning is a real phenomenon". But sidenote it's surprising you haven't encountered the term before this. I feel like a lot of games have used it as a name for different abilities and such.
Most games use names like "Lightning Ball" or "Ball of Lightning" instead of that. I'd only heard of Ball Lightning maybe once before this video.
@@maxydal3512 That's fair those are indeed more commonly used. But very popular games like Diablo IV and Path of Exile use it as ability names. I have definitely heard the term first in some other game though and then learned that it's actually something that occurs in real life.
@@maxydal3512 This is an actual natural phenomenon from real life though instead of electricity molded into a spherical form.
@@gamerbear84 Ok? Most people wouldn't know the difference based on the word alone. And when a card game literally called "Magic" uses it, most people would just see it as a "Ball of Lightning" spell.
@@maxydal3512 Well, not my fault if "most people" are uneducated.
Approach of the Second Sun is basically the Wheel of Death we have now. Except, you know, with a significantly more metal name.
Season Of The Witch is also known as a rulings nightmare, because the rules of magic don't actually define what counts as "could have attacked". Nobody knows how it's supposed to interact with Silent Arbiter, which allows you to only attack with one creature at a time.
Basically every attack-limiting card with Season of Witch is immediate grounds for a judge call. Ghostly Prison, Propaganda, even Laviathan. it’s a massive headache. In order to attack you pay mana for Propaganda, but when SotW checks if a creature can attack does it take it into account if you’re out of mana? Does it do the check at the moment, seeing if there are any restrictions on creatures attacking at the end of turn, or is it a continuous check to see if at any point it could have attacked?
Even though this card isn’t good, every locals and commander pod would have this card on a community ban list because no one wants to deal with it.
Current official rulings state that any of your creatures that could have attacked at the start of your combat phase, but then couldn't due to an effect like Silent Arbiter, are still destroyed. (EDIT: This is an older ruling, that has been changed Again, and now it is once again unclear.)
If, however, those creatures cannot attack, and then you grant them the ability to do so by paying the cost for a Propaganda type effect, then the creatures you paid the cost for can attack, and the rest are safe. But it's entirely optional, as you're not forced to tap your lands.
@@calemr Where is this ruling? There's nothing on Gatherer for Season of the Witch that explains a situation other than situations where you have an option to enable additional creatures to attack (such as a way to give Haste to a creature that just entered). It doesn't explain a Silent Arbiter type situation.
@@rajamicitrenti1374 Alright, maybe it got changed Again.
Y'know, just when you think you finally understand this card, they go and alter the wording again...
But as of a couple years ago, it had "Every creature that could have been declared as an attacker during that turn’s Declare Attackers Step but wasn’t will be destroyed."
And having checked just now, it no longer does, you're right.
It's ok it doesn't effect me I'm Non-Binary(I'm not actually it's just for the joke)
Approach of the second sun is to me, one of the coolest flavor wise cards. This idea that you play the card, and you can see the second sun slowly approaching from the sky for the win is cool to me.
Outside of commander, it seems way easier to just cast a second sun that wasn't shuffled into the deck.
@@juliandacosta6841 In a sense, yes, but then you'd have to run 2 or more approaches in your deck, which are dead cards most of the time. In control, since you already have many situational cards, you don't want to weigh down your decks with even more dead draws (for a while, control decks had as their only wincon lands that could become creatures for a turn, the idea being that as long as the board is kept clear you can just hit them every turn eventually).
There are also many ways to take cards off the top of your deck. I believe 2 sets later, for example, a card called Search for Azcanta was printed, which was a card that after a little sidequest became a land that allowed to look at the top 4 cards and get a noncreature nonland, putting the other 3 on the bottom
The card was already good for a control deck (it helped filter your draws towards what you needed at that moment, helping your consistency) and it made it so your approach would only take a couple of turns to come back.
There are many other ways to combo it, there's the classic Approach-Remand-Approach for example
Remand is a counterspell that puts the countered spell back in its caster's hand. Approach only cares if you CAST the spell once this game, rather than if the spell actually resolved. So what you do is, Approach, then Remand your own approach, and then next turn you can approach again.
@@juliandacosta6841 Well the second sun was justa little closer than expected.
@@juliandacosta6841 Approach of the Second Sun is the wincon for blue/white control that loop extra-turn spells. If you can loop extra-turn spells you've basically already won, and this is the easiest way to close the game.
@@juliandacosta6841 There was a silly card that was in Standard at the same time as Approach called Lich's Mastery, which has an effect where when you gain life you draw that many cards. So when you play an Approach with it out, you get to immediately draw 7 after placing Approach into your deck, meaning it ends up right back in your hand and if you have enough mana you can play it again.
Mastery also prevented you from losing the game, and was difficult to remove due to hexproof, so you could play an esper control deck and pretty reasonably cast the same Approach twice in one turn, winning you the game.
The Dark is the oldest booster pack I have ever opened. Yours?
I’m just getting into the game! Murders at Karlov Manor is a really special set to me, and that’s the first set I’ve opened!! :D
Judgment was the first booster pack i bought at the card store (i know not super old), Onslaught was the set i started playing with my friends a lot when i was 11!
Well unfortunately in my country it is not so popular
My dad still has 2 sealed boxes of it, at some point it's going to help pay for my college
Fallen Empires draft in 2007. I started playing for the first time in mercadian masques.
Fun fact, there are rules for multiplayer on how “you win the game” works. Basically, it gets changed to “every opponent you can interact with loses the game”; this is why you see things like “your opponent can’t win the game and you can’t lose the game”. This rule is mostly for larger games where it really isn’t feasible to have like 8 people trying to influence board state.
The "your opponents can't win and you can't lose" wording is required because it doesn't get changed to "each opponent loses the game".
There are rules that I believe work similar to that, but they only apply if you are playing with the limited range of influence rules.
801.14: If an effect states that a player wins the game, all of that player's opponents within that player's range of influence lose the game instead.
Ah blood moon, my rules nemesis, we meet again. This judge respects your ability to create the weirdest scenarios and force people to look up layers rules, but despises how often they come up in a tournament setting.
Blood Moon vs Urza's Saga, who wins?
(Blood Moon wins, Urza's Saga is sacrificed as soon as Blood Moon activates)
Especially when creature lands come up. "Does my activated inkmoth nexus still have infect under blood moon?"
“if I ever play Commander,” he says. LOL. Someone tell Kibler to invite him to Commander At Home with Ben Brode xD
This
That would be incredible if they both were invited for a game. 😂
One thing I love about these videos is seeing the old art which often had somewhat clashing styles: Anson Maddocks, Kaja Foglio, Rebecca Guay, Richard Kane Fergusson. The really distinctive stuff from early Magic. I haven’t played MtG in decades, but I miss that. The variety of styles was interesting, and I feel like card games tend to smooth the edges off these days.
A big Thank You to the editor for the sneaky display of the wikipedia entry to Ball Lightning, an existing concept from the real world, as these two make fun of the name of the card. I was going slightly insane
I'm so glad this has Maze of Ith in it. To me that's the most memorable and iconic card from this set and one of my all time favorite cards. I played it in every commander deck by default. I loved playing it in legacy with Tabernacle and Pendrel Vale, Rishadan Port, and Wasteland.
Approach of the Second Sun reminds me very much of the brand new Hearthstone card Wheel of Death!!! which turned out playable
Would have loved Sorrow's Path as well since it was rare compared to Maze's uncommon but so much worse.
" I loved playing it in legacy with Tabernacle and Pendrel Vale, Rishadan Port, and Wasteland."
Woah, slow down Satan.
Can't wait for Rarran to show up on shuffle up and play with his approach combo deck
You want a magic finance theory? It's a stock market/gambling central that also has no regulations at all and as such is prime target for every kind of BS economic scheme and market manipulation there is, fueled by the fact that for some reason people think 50+ bucks for a card just because it sees heavy play is reasonable, or they want to compete and are forced into the ridiclous prices because getting them from the real life gacha that are boosters is even worse
Idk have you seen what people pay for stamps
Meanwhile I'm over here printing proxies because I don't do official events
Fun fact: Frankensteins Monster recently got an indirect buff.
With the change to the ruling on Proliferate so it now copies each different counter on a card, rather than just One counter, you could play him for 5 with a +2/+0, +1/+1, and +0/+2, and then each proliferate gives him +3/+3.
... Which is still terrible in the modern day, thats 5 mana for a 3/4. That proliferates into being a 6/7.
But it's better than it was!
Approach is one of my favourite cards in Magic, and is almost surely the wincon I use in a lot of my infinite mana OTKs. The tempo loss isn't really a tempo loss if you're comboing off that turn with it, after all! =P
One cool thing about it that many people who haven't had a lot of experience with it may not realise, is that the first copy doesn't have to resolve - it just has to get cast. A play back at release was to Remand it back to your hand (1U, return target spell to its owners hand + draw a card), then cast it again the next turn. Now that we have Reprieve (1W, same effect), that's a bit more common. As part of the wincon of my combo decks I typically counter it with Sublime Epiphany while creating a token of something like Eternal Witness, then get it back with the Witness token to cast it again.
Something covert forgot to mention about second sun is that you don’t necessarily need to cast it seven turns later. Your most likely a control deck so you will be drawing/digging for this card and you might find another copy of the card before the original one. Or you might just have two in your hand and you cast them back to back
The part they didn't get to mention about Approach is that it's not so much about cheating the cast as following up with big draw effect to where you can basically cast it on your next turn (or same turn on rare occasions).
There used to be a game mode called prismatic, where each player played 1 colour, and they are arranged just like the back of the magic card. The players next to you are your "allies," and the players opposite you are your "enemies."
The normal win con is the first person whose enemies are both eliminated.
I'd imagine in a prismatic game, casting approach of the second sun might provoke the blue player to counter the spell. :P
Love these videos, love that you're going in order of set release, but also like the "ringers" to break things up a little. Hope this goes for a long time!
I don't play neither mtg or hearthstone and I'm loving these collabs!
The dynamic between you two is great
😂
3:00 you also have to play season of the witch on your turn which means you are the first one effected by it and your opponent is the first one who profits from being able to chose how to block
Also approach of the second sun control was the first deck I played a standard tournament with and it actually went pretty well. I think I played 4 store events with it and won 3 of them. The deck was mostly cheap counters and removal to stop your opponent from winning, a few boardwhipes for when they manage to build a board, some life gain in the side board to keep yourself alive against aggro and some efficent instant speed card draw to find your awnsers and win con faster. That was in many cases enough to win. Aggro was definetly the hardest match up since it reduced your time to find approch significantly. But it made me really fall in love with blue white control and sometime I still like to put it in my control commander decks for the nostalgia
I'm so glad I suggested Approach of the Second Sun.
We got that card really wrong at first
This series and the Resleevables are my two favorite MTG shows right now, and they pair really well. There's lots of discussion about the same cards, one from two very knowledgeable and enfranchised professionals and the other bringing fresh eyes to these classic cards. It's always fun to see where the analyses differ, and where Rarran's game sense leads him to the same conclusions. Keep it up! Always happy to see the next one!
(CGB, you should 100% be watching Resleevables if you aren't already. Rarran, don't watch it until you've done a video for the set with CGB, you'll get spoiled!!)
Honestly love this series with you and cgb one of my favorites on youtube right now
+11
You and CGB work so well together
Dark Heart of the Wood (and the other two multi-color cards in The Dark) have the text about their colors because it was still a new mechanic. In Legends each pack had an insert card explaining new mechanics, including the fact that multi-color cards were all of their colors, but that was not the case for this set
17:19 MTG finance for The Dark makes perfect sense, it's either half or double what Rarran thinks it is.
Frankenstein's monster got a bump because the changes to proliferate.
Those boosts have been errata to be counters, meaning each proliferate trigger can give it +3/+3.
Not the best, but fun for a certain type of player.
Oh yeah, proliferate gives one more counter of every counter on the permanent
It's kind of cute for Skullbriar, using something like Ozolith to transfer them over. Not necessary at all, but it is even more different counters that work great in multiples.
Was just gonna say "that doesn't work" but I checked the oracle text. They changed it from a permanent boost (meaning no counters) to counters.
YESSSSS
As a person who started magic not in the first gen, but still early back in '97 (pretty much at the release of 5th Edition) I love seeing content on the older expansions; again, despite not playing in these earliest days, I did have access to some of the leftover boosters of things like Chronicles, Fallen Empires and The Dark, as well as 4th Edition, and played the MTG computer game (and its expansion, Duels of the Planeswalkers) so I got a taste of the original magic style as well.
I hope we get to the expansions that were the heart of the time I played most and most often (Weatherlight and the Rathe & Urza cycles)
7:04 "I'll have to really start undershooting... the next card's gonna be like 3 grand"
*BLOODMOON* pops up on screen
That timing was impeccable. If only it didn't have a dozen reprints that would be a 4 possibly 5 digit card
You guys make some great collabs, always so entertaining
+2
You two make such a great duo. Would love to see more of these videos.
Yeah, I remember running Approach in my azorius prison deck. Nine Lives and Solemnity, that kind of stuff.
"If you play mana crypt just to go to your fun wacky combo it's not a problem"
It literally puts you 2 whole turns ahead of the other players if they don't have it or don't draw it...
Ball lightning? You mean LEEEEEROOOY JEEENKIIINS!
I played elves of deep shadows in decks that did't even use black mana back in the days.
Even a collorles mana was worth taking ping dmg for.
Maze of Ith quite literally won me a commaner game last night. I run it in Nine Fingers Keene gates. Managed to keep control and stick around until it was just me and one other player. I was on 9 gates with Maze's End on the battlefield and they only just had leathal damage with Maze of Ith, with Ith I managed to not die and win with gates the next turn. Double Maze baaaabbbby!
I don't even play hearthstone but I still watch every card rating video 😝anyone else?
Funny that Rarran said Approach of the Second Sun might be playable in Hearthstone, considering its extremely similar to Wheel of Death. And Wheel had a similar review cycle, of coming out and being better than expected.
I don’t follow any hearthstone content but this is by far my favorite mtg review content. I love this is a regular thing and please keep it coming!!!
Keep up this series. It’s been such a blast
I love these videos with CGB, I haven’t played magic but I love getting a kinda history lesson on magic as well as a really funny video
One of the first Magic decks I ever played against was my roommate’s lotus field combo deck that would cast omniscience, approach of the second sun, draw their whole deck, and play a second approach of the second sun all in one turn. That card was a bonkers introduction to Magic lol
Love your collabs with cgb!
18:49 ball lightning is a mysterious phenomenon in which lightning seems to form as a sphere. It is very rare, and nobody knows how it works, so it is pretty neat inspiration for a magic spell
I know the CGB collabs are a trip through Magic's past, but have the two of you talked about doing a set review together for the upcoming Outlaws of Thunder Junction set? Pick out a few cards, talk about them, talk about whether they're likely to see play.
Perfect chance to get some wins under your belt if you predict a card will be good and CGB thinks it won't see play.
I love the Elves of Deep Shadow card art.
I can't wait for the Fallen Empires and Homelands episodes
Rarran will love Horsemanship
Same for me! I got into things between fallen empires and Ice Age, but I found some Dark packs left over at a video game and hobby store. Good times.
From wikipedia...
"Ball lightning is a rare and unexplained phenomenon described as luminescent, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter. Though usually associated with thunderstorms,[1] the observed phenomenon is reported to last considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt, and is a phenomenon distinct from St. Elmo's fire. "
I remember losing to Approach back when I first started playing at my LGS after returning to the game. What a nice welcome back. :P
CGB: ball lightning
Rarran: I've seen enough Leroy to see were this is going.
As a little child I ate that leviathan card my dad had. I don't know why but I guess It was delicious. I still think my father is mad about this but I assume it's just because he couldn't taste it himself.
🤓"30 comments before me are correcting them about Ball Lightning? Better add another to the pile!"
Bringing up Season of the Witch without it's partner Silent Arbiter. SADGE
These cards bring me joy. 😢 I don't remember when I started playing but we are getting to the old stuff that I love
Rarran and CGB talking about interesting Magic cards is my favourite MTG content right now.
Huge fan of the CovertGoBlue collabs!
Perfect excuse for me to start slacking off near the end of my shift.
I’m glad they’re continuing this, it’s really interesting
Approach of the Second Sun is my 2nd favorite "Win the Game" card after Laboratory Maniac (Simic Omniscience is one of my favorite decks ever).
Approach of the Second Sun is also one of the potential win conditions of Pioneer Lotus Field.
You make enough mana to land Omniscience somehow or other, cast Approach, search for Approach again or draw enough cards to just get it, then cast it again and win the game. One turn combo, boom.
Instead of drawing/tutoring, another combo is to use a card like Unsubstantiate or Reprieve that returns a spell to hand without it resolving.
Because it checks if you've Cast the spell twice, not Resolved it twice, so recasting it wins you the game, even though the first was countered.
@@calemr If you copy it, due to FILO the one you cast from your hand resolves second, but does the copy count as being cast?
@@laytonjr6601 No.
Rule 707.10 states "a copy of a spell isn’t cast and a copy of an activated ability isn’t activated."
@@calemr I get it, it's just like a creature coming onto the battlefield tapped and attacking doesn't attack
@@laytonjr6601 Precisely!
What was not mention for Aproach of the Second Sun is, that you can still have 4 copies of it in your deck and you don't actualy have to wait seven turns to win. There was enough games where someone cast Aproach and next turn won by casting second copy.
That sneaky wiki article of Ball Lightning...well done, editor :D
Maze of ith can be used on your own attacker if you’re attacking with multiple creatures and one gets an unfavorable block.
10:00 I actually had a couple of Leviathans back in the day… I NEVER used it because I also had Killer Bees, Keldon Warlord, and a bunch of other creatures that were easy to make just as big without permanently impairing my mana generation. (I first got into the game around the time the Ice Age set came out)
Thank you for not blaming me for thinking Leviathan was great. It was my first rare pull and I thought I'd hit the jackpot
I played MTG games with 16 different players.
We called that game mode "assassin". At the start of the game, you picked an opponent at random. If that person died, you won the game. If you pulled your own name (you could), killing anyone would win you that match instead, so killstealing was very much a thing.
It's wild to me to see someone say they didn't get Ball Lightning at first. I adored that card as a kid, because it was 6 damage for 3 mana. It won me so many games.
I love ball lightning and every red creature like it, theyre so fun to play with because you dont have to care what happens to it at all haha
Rarran I would love to see you get into commander! I know you're still just learning mtg but precons are a pretty affordable way to have something ready out of the box. Plus you've got a ton of friends to play with now!
I have played in a 12 player ga,e. It was fun. We did multiplayer a lot before commander was even a concept. If someone played a win con like second sun what we usually did was say "you win, now who gets second" and just continued playing without them.
Really enjoyed the vid. Growing slightly addicted to these.
I'd love to see reviews of cards from modern periods, seeing Rarran rate 2015 eldrazi cards would be fun
I love how Raran reacts to hearing about the IRL loot boxes from the 90's.
I remember when I thought Leviathan and Polar Kraken were the best cards in the game
'ball lightening' is a natural phenomena... the card is called that because it's name after a thing that happens irl
I was looking away from my screen when Rarran said “Blood Moon!” and I physically winced as if someone played it against me.
Me halfway through the video checking the video timeline:
"Oh, wait, that last card looks like Approach of the Second Sun."
"... wait why is Approach of the Second Sun here?"
Twinning Approach of the Second Sun should win the game on the stack as the copy will resolve first, making the one you cast from your hand second time you casted the spell fulfilling the win condition on the card. Outside of commander where this card is legal, you can also have four in your deck, you don't need to cast the specific card twice, just any card with the same name twice.
Dark Heart of the Forest isn't a tap effect, you can sac all your forests for life at once with it. Which the mana from those forests could go into casting Earthquake and the life from Dark Heart keeps you alive while everything not flying, including your and your opponent, take tons of damage that you just out healed.
Still hope Pestilence comes up in this series. Love that card.
Best play with Approach of the Second Sun in my experience is to wait until you have two of them in your hand (not in Commander, obviously) and cast them on successive turns. Or the same turn, if the game's gone on long enough you have fourteen mana to play with.
27:00 Man I love this card :D Every Bolas is great, but this one is special :)
Zuran Orb intensifies during Rarran's assessment of Dark Heart of the Wood.
Rarran slowly getting ready for his commander debut
"I play Approach for the second time." "I flash out Platinum Angel" :D
Dark Heart of the Wood has such an awesome flavour and I think that contributes to it being played a lot.
3:50 ok now I NEED to see rarran play “guess whether this card is on the reserved list”
Season of the Witch triggers EOT so you can't get around it by playing it after combat. If your creatures didn't attack, they get destroyed first. So you can't really set it up in your advantage unless you were already winning the race.
My best friend has a copy of Leviathan and every time i see it in his collection i mess with him and am like oh man hiw are you playing this cars you have a sea monster deck this is perfect for it. The death glares are always perfect so i love his "why was printed" response 😂
Can't wait to watch this video! Spooky old cards. Lol
I’ve got a Kynaios and Tiro group hug deck that wins by playing mana doublers and card draw to cast approach twice in one turn. It’s a very fun deck