I just want to draw attention to Wandering Ones & the flavor text: "I saw them once, when I was a child. They led me to my parents' arms when I was lost. Why have they abandoned me now? Why won't they take me home again?" -Unnamed beggar I think it is powerfully evocative. Moreso when you consider the beggar only saw them once & the card has never been reprinted. We only saw them once, too.
This video made me realize that bushido flavorfully mixes well with ninjitsu. Bushido creatures were understatted, and the ability makes blocking them bad, so they were likely to just go unblocked, making them perfect for ninjitsu-ing out a ninja. pretty neat. Too bad it seems like samurai are mostly white/red and ninja are mostly blue/black.
@@ricardobarsch4117 What if they printed a transform card? Like: By-Night Ninja 1+1Black+1White 2/2 First Strike, Deathtouch, Ninjistsu 3(Same as casting cost) After By-Night Ninja deals combat damage to a player, transform it. Daylight Samurai 3/3, Vigilance, First Strike, Bushido 3. Its lore wise a ninja by night and samurai by day.
Bushido was so overcosted as an ability. A 2 mana 2/2 could easily have bushido 2 without being overpowered. Its a keyword that is more control oriented and can handle aggro, opposed to being aggro.
Note on sweep: sweep isn't a keyword, like the video says, but a ability word, as seen by the fact it's in italic(all italic text is flavor text). Keywords are specific words with defined rules effects, ability words are words in italic that serve to thematically tie together cards with similar effects, but unlike keywords, ability words don't have rules significance. a more common example than sweep is landfall, which denotes abilities that trigger when lands enter under your control. If landfall was a keyword, cards could say "Landfall: gain 1 life.", but it isn't, so such a card would read "Landfall- Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, gain 1 life.".
Is there any rhyme or reason to why they make *some* words, again like landfall, an ability word despite the fact that mechanically they *could* be keywords with no changes?
@@tinfoilslacks3750 in principle they could add common triggers like landfall, ETBs and LTBs to the rules, which would allow for the shortening of card text, which is the whole reason that keywords exist, but for whatever reason wizards has simply chosen to make triggers that can have different effects not be spelled out. this is as opposed to say, prowess or madness, both of which are triggered keyword abilities, because they always have the same effect, where landfall, ETB and LTB can do anything.
@@dragohammer6937 With the release of bloomburrow, they changed "When CARDNAME enters the battlefield" to "When CARDNAME enters". Let's also not forget "Dies", which replaced "Is put into the graveyard from the Battlefield" about ten years ago.
The fact that the two universally best cards from kamigawa (sensei's divining top & umezawas jitte) were two mirrodin-like artifacts is so funny to me lol
Sweep should have been on green if anywhere. Bouncing lands back to your hand is good if you can drop 3 back onto the field a turn. Pay 3, bounce 3 to +1/+1 for each bounce, play land for turn and two more bonus, landfall triggers, call it a day.
@@Paddyvertex I’m aware, doesn’t change that it’s a very green mechanical concept and would have aged very well if they just made even a single green card of it.
Bushido technically came back in Neo Kami in the form of Jukai Trainee, a common draft chaff that didn't even receive the dignity of having the mechanic keyworded.
Thank you for making this. I started playing around 8th Edition but didn't have money for cards until Kamigawa, and it has been my favourite set ever since. Unlike a lot of "kamigawa bad" videos, you've acknowledged the context of the game state before it came out, and you've also explored the relationship between the different mechanics and themes better than others. Kamigawa is jank, but it's my favourite jank. So many random unique effects, so many ways to eke out value over the course of 10, 000 turns, and a setting that set my imagination on fire all through my childhood.
Splice onto Arcane wasn't a bad mechanic, just painfully underused. It could easily have returned in a setting like Strixhaven and I do hope they check out that design space again. "Build your own spells" is an interesting idea.
sorry to reply to an old comment, but splice onto arcane was bad because it was too parasitic, and no amount of greater use would have fixed it short of making arcane evergreen. You *needed* arcane spells to splice onto, which inherently made it extremely limiting. it would've been so much better had it been like everdream where it targeted any instant or sorcery - that fixes the parasiticism. obv you'd have to balance it tighter then, but you'd have a lot more flexibility for deckbuilding and targets. keep in mind also that standard then was either mirrodin-kamigawa or kamigawa-ravnica, kamigawa was bookended by two sets with much higher power levels. the likelihood of an arcane spell actually making the cut in your deck was pretty low, which made splice onto arcane even worse because there were just so much fewer viable targets (and like the video said it was extremely unlikely most of the splice cards even fit into your deck strategy even if you did have an arcane spell). it was pretty much just a mechanic for kamigawa-only block decks.
Was disappointed when Neon Dynasty didn’t explore the “short term gain for long term loss” effects a lot of kamigawa was going for(moonfolk did this in I think a fun, non-sweep involved way) Honestly looking back at it outside of thematics, neon dynasty has basically 0 in common with the OG block
Ninjutsu's the biggest thing that came back from OG Kamigawa, likely because its the only mechanic that was any good. I do wish they at least printed some kind of fun play on One with Nothing or some other infamous card
Ninjutsu. The one well liked Kamigawa block mechanic. Bushido wasn't great either, in practice causing similar problems in limited that too many first strikers and deathtouch creatures causes.
So many memories. I remember getting my uncles old magic cards and making both a bushido and a spirit/splice deck about 10 years after the initial release. Completely dominated everyone in school. Might not have been good at the time, but people not knowing how a mechanic works can do wonders to how well the mechanic works. Don’t even get me started on spore…
I maintain that the biggest issue with the Kamigawa block was not its design, but its placement. ANY block would have looked worse if it had come out between Mirodin and Ravnica. I believe that this is why Kamigawa looks like a 2/10 block rather than, as I believe, a more respectable 3/10.
Honestly I think Sweep had some potential sauce, and might be nicer if it had more interaction with land and hand. Like more "whenever you play a land" or "number of cards in hand" type mechanics could be cute
Yeah I think if we had a couple of good Sweep cards in green, and paired them with Azusa-like effects that let you play extra lands every turn, the mechanic could suddenly become busted. Or at least playable.
This was the set where "number of cards in hand" was a major mechanic. That's also why the merfolk which returned your lands to your hand were in the set. The issue wasn't lack of support, the issue was that the mechanic is just a bad idea. For a sweep card to be good, you probably want to bounce all of your lands to enable it...which vastly restricts the design space for sweep cards.
I feel like a version of Sweep that doesn't scale linearly would be interesting, too. Like letting you remove X*X counters, or X/3 (round down) creatures. It means you have less incentive to sweep _all_ your lands (the fourth does less, but if you have six maybe it's worth the big investment). The problem with MTG is they have smart people that probably considered this and wisely dismissed it.
Good video in all, and deeply appreciate going into the background of the insanity of Mirrordin before it. Notably this is very much the same story that happened to Mercadian Masques back in the day, which was following up in the wake of URZA block. And yeah, honestly Mirrordin is up there alongside Urza block with 'yo this is nuts' It is also worth noting that for as weak as Kamigawa was, it really did a lot with lore outside the game, with tons of stories about various legendary creatures and a solid book trilogy. And most importantly, Kamigawa into Ravnica really set the stage for blocks being designed with both previous and future sets being taken in mind. This is why original Ravnica block had a lot of spirit creatures in it as well, and this lead to the creation of the Ghost Dad deck, often considered one of the greats in deck building, using the humble Tallowisp from Kamigawa as a powerful engine in a black/white tempo deck.
I think the worst part of MtG as a whole was that Grizzly Bears with additional effects was considered a bad card. Grizzly Bear isn't an exciting card, but not having that as a baseline 'usable' in a set just shows how power crept the game was at the time (and frankly how it still is).
same now for 2/1 for just one mana with not only good creature types (like Soldier), but with also additional positive only ability/abilities. **And it's still not enough** ! WHAT
An important thing to remember about MtG powercreep is that for a long time (like 2000-2016, soexcluding the recent power creep starting in 2019 they've explicitly stated they're implementing) *some* things got dramatically stronger and some things got much weaker. Creatures are subject to a lot of powercreep, but that's because in the first few years of the game creatures were just complete fucking dogshit. A lot of players want creatures and creature combat especially to be the focal point of the game, and it really wasn't, so WotC spent nearly 2 decades incrementally making creatures better and non-creatures worse. There's a reason grizzly bears and savannah lions got powercrept but bolt and swords to plowshares are still premium cards of their respective type. Most of the powercreep wasn't powercreep in all areas it was game rebalancing.
Bushido has one major flaw, it creates incentives to not attack, the one with the cards with bushido will wait for attacks bc this optimize the value of the ability, and those facing a card with bushido have no incentives to attack. Two players with equal cards endup in a situation where the wrong decision is attacking, bc the first to do it will lose the card in exchange for nothing.
Definitely needed more support but I could see some potential ways to make some interesting designs here. Like giving cards that had bushido in red attack triggers maybe give some white color creatures defender or such. Definitely was some space to play around with there.
@Joseph-ky3os Bushido would also have paired nicely with "on combat damage to player" triggers: force the opponent to fight a large creature or take some small damage but give up tempo. This would have thematically fit with the idea of it being dishonorable to avoid combat
I really wish they'd followed up on Arcane, spell subtypes are easily the biggest area of unexplored design space. The old 'wizards, instants and sorceries' tribal from a few years ago was neat, and much more interesting to build than a typical 'play this with other Elves' tribal deck. Imagine if they could do 'druids and nature tribal', or 'extra tokens from Necromancy spells'. Anything that broad would be a nightmare to introduce, though. Going back through the entire history of Magic and assigning a type to each spell no thank you. Not doing that and having Fireball not be a fire spell, also no. But they could have done it with Arcane. Instead of having it be specific to Kamigawa's spirits, have it be the primordial magic of ancient weirdos. Spirits, elder dragons, Eldrazi, Ravnica's Old Gods, and so forth. Let it be deciduous, coming up as often as it makes sense. Also, 'ancient primordial magic' would be a great mechanical identity for U/G, which is something they never really nailed.
When kamigawa came out and it turned out to be not very good, we essentially rule 0 them to be more powerful. For example, all soulshift cards that had soulshift lower than themselves had their number made to be bigger than themselves. Epic had you gain one more copy every turn, so that you would snowball in value after committing everything to it. And that sort of thing. Made the block like 10 times more fun.
bushido is one of my favorite mechanics in the game, and i really think it has ALOT of design space if they were to revisit it, make more effects on bushido cards, lower costs and add decent stats, the OG bushido seemed like it was meant to fail which is a shame cause it is a good mechanic imo that should really be thouroughly explored, i would love to see a isshin style effect for when a creature gets blocked and effect triggers or have cool effects on bushido or have decent stats like the frog with bushido from one of the modern horizons sets which i actually use in my bushido deck cause its decently statted. The high cost with low stats just killed a great mechanic for no reason, if they were reasonably statted and costed and then maybe had better lord effects and/or effects in general this could be a top tier mechanic
The caveat with the design in Kamigawa was that the limited environment was super deep until Betayers came out. In triple Champions there were still archetypes being discovered and played when the next set came out. Thete wre viabke aggro, control, and combo stategies, mill and 5 color decks were all thungs you could play. Unfortunately even if you get enough packs to get a draft together nowadays, the rules have changed that the balance between the deck types are likely no longer where they once were.
Kamigawa has always been one of my favorite blocks, so I do wish that it hadn't turned out as bad as it did. I started playing MTG much more seriously towards the end of the Mirrodin block. My buddies and I were rocking decks from those two blocks, so I was definitely on the receiving end of Umezawa's Jitte while I was desperately trying to make a Kamigawa deck work.
One of my toned down commander decks is a take on Tomer's Kalamax Arcanes deck and while the splice mechanic isn't super powerful it does create some nutty things since splicing the spell has unique interactions with copy effects. Kalamax checks to see the first instant that you cast so how it works is you cast then splice stuff onto the spell then Kalamax checks to see if the spell is the first instant giving you a copy of your entire spell. Another funny thing is that splice can turn spells that don't normally target into targeting spells so I could do something like Kodama's reach with a Psychic Puppertry spliced onto it targeting Zada and then Zada will copy the entire spell for each creature I own. Desperate Ritual also has some extremely funny, granted inconsistent, combos like Ritual, Through the Breach, and Rootha is infinite mana and ETBs or Ritual spliced onto any sorcery (like Lava Spike) and Izzet Guildmage is infinite of that sorcery or Ritual spliced onto any instant or sorcery that targets you and Mirror Sheen is also infinite of that spell. None of these combos will see anything in any competitive sense outside of the Guildmage one seeing some minor play in it's standard but in commander it is a blast to assemble.
In standard when we had kam/rav as the format, Splice had a weird roll as a way to burn out a Paladin En-Vec as it could essentially make nonred burn spells. En-Vec + Jitte kind of warped things that way.
I was almost going to suggest that the Sweep cards could've had Splice onto Arcane in order to make them a little stronger and synergize with the Wisdom mechanic, but as it turns out, the spell being spliced onto always has its effects apply first. Maybe they could've changed the rules for that interaction specifically, but it probably never crossed their minds.
@@channeling764 702.47b You can’t choose to use a splice ability if you can’t make the required choices (targets, etc.) for that card’s rules text. You can’t splice any one card onto the same spell more than once. If you’re splicing more than one card onto a spell, reveal them all at once and choose the order in which their effects will happen. *The effects of the main spell must happen first.*
I created a fun format where you played your cards face down as lands of all five types (just one of the rule changes) and the moonfolk and sweep cards are very useful in it and Gush is even more broken than in a regular game.
I saw many a commander landfall deck use the sweep mechanic to win consistently. The way they did it was through a two or so card combo only using a total of three cards including the card with sweep.
The only match I ever won against the old kci or full power affinity was a mono-white weenie deck that used umezawa's jitte as removal, and plow through reito as a finisher.
The best kamigawa block deck you could have made was either ninjas/rats or snakes/warriors. With marrow-gnawer doubling your rat tokens you will almost always have a target for ninjitsu and mono green snakes had all the ramp in the world behind Sachi, Daughter of seshiro making shamans into mana sources and heartbeat of spring doubling everyone's land mana. You also had sosuke, son of seshiro which was half of an anthem effect and granting warriors deathtouch, and seshiro the annointed being a double anthem and a card advantage engine.
Kamigawa cards have slowly found homes in eternal format decks (especially in commander) because they often have game-warping effects, they're just overcosted or didn't have enough support in Standard. Honestly though, I have long been of the opinion that very little would be looked upon favorably when sandwiched between the original Mirrodin and Ravnica blocks. Although I will call you out on splice, as Horobi's Whisper and Glacial Ray did both see some splices (Whisper's splice was incredibly easy and control decks running Ray also ran Peer Through Depths). Its real problem wasn't availability, it was efficiency. Splice spells in general were either kept weak (Psychic Puppetry) or had prohibitive splice costs (Hideous Laughter. And yes, it was on-rate at the time).
Actually bushido sounds like it would be very good on smaller creatures to make them more threatning in combat, making them harder to block without losing creatures, forcing your opponent to deal with them other ways Bushido would do great in a dexk that plays lots of small, cheap bushido creatures...
Kamigawa as a block also fumbled hard when it comes to world-building, something very evident when you read the flavour-text of *Plow through Reito.* As the creative director Dommermuth himself said in 2004: “most Westerners simply aren't familiar with the creatures and magic of Japanese lore.” His assumption about Magic’s audience was correct (at least in 2004). But thinking that they somehow get it right was less so.
From what it looks like to me is that wizards made a powerful set and they made it strong because it was the set that was going to be the new phyrexia. They had the oil in it the entire time and it was going to be that way. So because phyrexia was the main villain they made the plane and set strong as hell. Normally in the blocks they would have a weak set, a normal powered one, and a strong one. So because they not only needed a weak set and the set before was so strong it made kamigawa awful power wise but the mechanics of the set are about 50/50 in playability. The most frustrating thing is that there are a bunch of solid abilities that cards have and because the block is weak they look terrible even though they are either thematically good or are mechanically decent. I love bushido and people keep mentioning that it doesnt have tons of interaction but I think it's a super flavor win of how samurai are strong in combat but are weak when it comes to magic. The most frustrating part though is that alara had exalted and I remember that shit being not only really strong but mechanically like banding but also feeling like a busted bushido. I think mechanically bushido would work better if they added more equipment to the theme as well. The version of samurai we have now where they want to be altered with weapons and magic would have been great together. Soulshift was also really good in that it fit black green very well for the cycle of life and death and would give late game card advantage. The problem that most soulshift monsters don't also do more entering effects makes it kind of bad. Ninjutsu is one of the better mechanics for casual tabletop and fun in the game due to its thematics and how it fits into blue black. The main issue is they wanted to slow the game down and made the decks to have some of that happening. Which is why a they have cards that are based on not playing. Which everyone knows that the worst way to get people to play your game is by telling them not to.
I know Kamigawa was a really bad set but I still am a huge fan of it. I like the aesthetics of it, the story was nice and I even like all the mechanics. I have implemented almost all of them into a commander deck. Snake tribal was nice but boring with a commander to give them unblockable and a creature to permanently prevent one of your opponents to untap. My Mizzix Arcane deck suffered heavily from not having enough splice cards but it was funny to power out huge spells with tons of effects. I am still tinkering with a samurai tribal although I am now deviated towards neo dynasty since, you're right! Bushido sucks at hitting players... And finally sweep! God I love that mechanic and I still miss the green one since my Borborygmos Enraged uses the red one as a finisher to pick up my lands and throw them at my opponents. And I am still thinking about a landfall moonfolk deck with the patron as commander... It is always so tempting to complete the set.
Easy fix to Bushido: If the creature kills the blocker using only its Bushido value, it still gets to attack the player. You need to block the full bushido value to stop it slicing through and trampling
That doesn't change how awful the design is. The mechanic inherently makes combat bad, especially attacking. Since on attack opponent can just decide to not block, you're not gettting use out of your ability, so it's actually better to hold your bushido back to block. This leads to stalemates and made limited take much much longer than it should had. Then wotc made it even worse by giving bushido to already low statted creatures that if unblocked wouldn't deal much damage in the first place. So, inherently bad attacking design along with the bad numbers of creatures made bushido just terrible. There isn't much to save bushido.
@@tonysmith9905 Bushido, ultimately, is a situational attack buff. There are plenty of ways to use that creatively. Give some Bushido 'cant block' either period or with a conditional they can deal with. Give some Bushido effects when unblocked Give some Bushido Vigilance so they dont need to stay behind as a blocker, they can do both And attach Bushido to higher stat creatures.
@@ghosty918 None of that helps the inherent design flaws of the mechanic though. If your way to save bushido is to staple on other effects then it's not Bushido that is good, it's the other effects. Bushido is just gravy.
Kinda crazy that they made the sweep mechanic and didn't add it to blue and green. Blue at the time had a lot of cards that bounced lands to your hands and at least the soratami avatar could bring them back relatively fast and Green is the color with ways to generate mana, so its one of the few colors that could have actually made that mechanic work. I guess the idea was that hand size mattered in this block and they wanted to give white/red/black some ways to fill their hands again for synergy with other effects. The way they did it absolutely failed though.
Another big problem for Bushido was it having an overly-specific flavor. Mechanically, it works just fine, and could be used regularly. In terms of flavor, it is pretty much impossible to use outside of Kamigawa.
I love the fact that Kamigawa's worst mechanic didn't even make the list-Epic. Ftr, Kamigawa is my favorite block. It's super flavorful. It's also terrible.
I started with this block so the mirrodin block power level was something i learned much later (products were still in stores so a loxodon warhammer eventually became mine). I thought mono white samurais was busted and I had a jitte from the nezumi theme deck.. good times.
In early modern splicing through the breach or goryo’s onto a desperate ritual in the br instant reanimator. Now splice really only sees play in fringe belcher decks in modern to create loops of infinite mana to get around belcher hate.
It's interesting looking at todays "busted" meta compared to those days. They were still working off the old design view they had that balanced power creep by punishing efficiency on cards which means a very good card needs to have a drawback to stop it power creeping/taking over the game (hence the original push in Onslaught to make creatures bigger failed since a lot of the 'bigger' Beasts were costed too much to be of any use). And you can clearly see they were so scared that they broke it on Mirrodin block they over corrected on Kamigawa. It was basically Masques block vers.2. It's not until after Ravnica blocks that you see the design team finally give up this philosophy and start working on hyper efficiency to make creatures "fun" to play which eventually spread to the rest of the game
Sweep,This video gave me a strange use idea for Sweep. There's that Trisdadecaphile or how ever it's spelled, that wins the game if you have exactly 13 cards in hand. You could simply use sweep to bounce all your lands to get the 13 hand size.
Arcane as a concept introduces more "tribe" style subtypes to non-permanent spells, so there's always room for it to make a comeback. And even without it, Splice can work with plenty more things like "Splice onto Sorcery or Instant" like Splice onto Artifact or Splice onto Aura, if WotC wanted. I wouldn't say those designs "failed" as much as have gone unutilized since. Bushido, on the other hand, was pointless. If the "3" in the Mana cost of Takeno's Cavalry were errata'd away as a misprint, it'd still be a bad card.
I imagine Sweep could have worked if they made a card with Sweep, that then dd something, but had an additional effect that you could cast a spell with a converted mana cost equal or less then the number of lands you returned, for 0 mana.
I have a konda Lord of Eiganjo commander deck and I love it. yes it's quite underpowered but I can have a lot of fun with him even without a pure Tron deck, and he pops off with kusari gama and black blade reforged. It's just a late game deck
Before commander was really a supported archetype. NOBODY I knew played anything out of Kamigawa in standard or modern at the time. It was bad. The one big lgs near me didn't even bother with pre-release.
Personally I think Bushido could've worked as is (besides the bad mana costs) if they put it on creatures that had effects that forced creatures to attack. That way it could've been used as a way for creature removal similar to how Fight cards work. It probably wouldn't be great, but considering Kamigawa was a nerfed set anyways it would've at least been more useful.
Bushido I dont think was a bad mechanic, it was used really badly. Like if we had a 2 mana 2/2 bushido 2 that would have looked alright for the time. Sweep was stupid. Arcane was dumb, but "splice onto" is really cool when it didn't say "arcane" like we have seen for limited play modern masters
Splice onto Arcane is amazing the way it is. Add more targets to the effects, and print more cards to increase the synergy. The mistake was to just have 27 cards with splice out of the 93 Arcane cards. Plus no sorceries had splice either, which is weird. The tribalism of Arcane and limitations of it, is what makes it fun. There was a time when Maro used to say that “limitations breed creativity”. Where is that now? 😂. OTOH Splice onto instant or Sorcery is wack and too broken if ever been undercosted or having an alternate cost.
barrel down sokenzan is actually the best of the sweep cards, if only because you can use it w borborygmos enraged to throw all your lands to an opponent and thats funny as hell.
That kinda samurai would be pretty good for a mono white Voltron deck, built in protection, Bushido 5 and vigilance? Oh yeah that card slaps as a commander
If you’re gonna run a super expensive indestructible monowhite creature as a voltron commander, you’re better off running an actually good one like Zetalpa or Avacyn
I swear to god this is the third time I’ve found another of hirumared’s channels completely naturally I can’t tell if this is a voice actor and 3 different channels or 1 guy running all 3
Kamigawa isn't best true, but I don't like how everyone constantly dogpiles it. There are two legitimate ways to play Samurai, White/Black tempo control, or White/Red aggro. the first you stall long enough to get equipment or Takeno out, indomitable will and call to glory are heavy lifters here. for the second, Iizuka and Kentaro do the heavy lifting. Ronin war club becomes a go to instead of indomitable will. Spirits and arcane are probably the most busted mechanic when played right. Green black, that's it. It's a recursion strategy that can either A) devouring greed for stupid amounts B) lobotomy your opponents deck out of the game or C) stack the sacrifice triggers so often loss of life is actually a win con. All this in the same deck while ramping. It's busted. Kamigawa shines when you actually sit down with it and read the cards. There's some legitimately fun stupidity in the block.
Many of the mechanics were completely fine in limited and block formats. Additionally while the sets get a bad rap, there are WAY more still good and playable cards in the set than most others from the time period.
I dont think the timeline for Kamigawa being a reaction to Mirrodin holds water. Mirrodin was just a failed experiment with pushing power and they always planned to return to a more stardard power level for Kamigawa, it just accidentally ended up a bit underpowered which exaggerated the difference. Even if Mirrodin hadn't been intentionally pushed Kamigawa probably would have looked the same. They didn't have to make Kamigawa bad to "fix the game" they just had to make it normal.
I always thought Evermind was pretty cool. Clunky, but cool. An extra 2 mana on top of an arcane spell to draw a card felt like a bit of an ask, but was probably one of the more viable splicers. Being unable to cast normally gave it some janky charm. Everdream is a nod to this, though it can be cast normally and the splice cost being higher just makes it too much of an ask I think.
Soulshift would have been really cool if it didn't have a number, just "When this creature dies, return target spirit from your graveyard to your hand." like a tribal Raise Dead on a stick. I feel like whenever there is a number attached to a keyword I'm severely disappointed. Bushido could have been "Exalted" when blocking, like taking one for the team, standing up for your clan, the warriors final stand... that would have been cool.
Recurring decks were a problem in previous years. They wanted to avoid stuff like that. Soulshift would’ve been cool with the wording “another spirit with a different name and with mana value equal to this card or less”.
@@channeling764 That's even more restrictive than it is now. xD The best Soulshift cards are Elder Pine, He Who Hungers, and Center Tree, the first two have other decent effects. But Center Tree has the best Soulshift ability because it's potentially unrestricted, and it's still super bad because of that potential restriction. You cannot limit a "Raise Dead" when it's already a terrible card, and the creatures already have +1 cost adjusted for the added effect. Promised Kannushi almost gets it!
Bushido was absolutely fine, but yeah I'll give you Sweep. Soulshift and Splice were both so fun though. Blasphemy, imo. If we're talking about Kamigawa in the shadow of Mirrodin, you could imprint an arcane spell (eg Ethereal Haze) onto an Isochron Sceptor and then go to town with Splice. Hana Kami defined the Block Constructed! Looking back, with Ashes of the Fallen in block, any creature in the yard could be a spirit and soulshifted back. I believe if every set was like Kamigawa (low power level, no planeswalkers), we'd achieve world peace. And I'd start playing standard again.
You could play Samurai as more of a control type deck instead of aggro, that let's it do more work. You want to detour attacks or blocks, that's the main point of the keyword, it's just not meant for aggro. Although ya, it could be better if the base stats were up to par.
Man just said that Ixalan doesn't have a bad reputation when it was the set that pushed Treasures onto the poor game, and he's more right than he should be. At least Kamigawa actually helped lower the powerlevel to a fun Standard alongside OG Ravnica, Ixalan dropped us into Dominaria and WotS.
Maybe I'm just stupid, but what was the point of splice? The splice cost is the spell's mana cost anyway so what's the difference between splicing it or just casting it after one of your other spells resolves? I didn't play during this block so I'm sure I'm missing something painfully obvious.
Splicing doesn't use a card. Spliced card goes back to hand after the OG spell resolves. So you can use spells with "Splice onto arcane" multiple times.
Splice is weird because why would you pay the spice cost why you can just cast the spell itself for the same amount? You also risk having basically two cards being countered by one counter spell. There are some cases where splice might be interesting but I just don’t see any reason to use it.
Couldn't you float mana to use a card with Sweep AND Spiraling Embers though? Maybe Barrel Down Sokenzan to clear a huge threath and push for game with Embers and your creatures, just a niche use but it can be done
I just want to draw attention to Wandering Ones & the flavor text:
"I saw them once, when I was a child. They led me to my parents' arms when I was lost. Why have they abandoned me now? Why won't they take me home again?"
-Unnamed beggar
I think it is powerfully evocative. Moreso when you consider the beggar only saw them once & the card has never been reprinted. We only saw them once, too.
it may be one of the worst blocks ever but flavor-wise it will never be topped, in my humble opinion.
This video made me realize that bushido flavorfully mixes well with ninjitsu. Bushido creatures were understatted, and the ability makes blocking them bad, so they were likely to just go unblocked, making them perfect for ninjitsu-ing out a ninja. pretty neat. Too bad it seems like samurai are mostly white/red and ninja are mostly blue/black.
Orzhov, Izzet, Azhorius e Rakdos using bushido and ninjutsu together might be sick in low power commander
@@ricardobarsch4117 What if they printed a transform card?
Like:
By-Night Ninja
1+1Black+1White
2/2 First Strike, Deathtouch, Ninjistsu 3(Same as casting cost)
After By-Night Ninja deals combat damage to a player, transform it.
Daylight Samurai
3/3, Vigilance, First Strike, Bushido 3.
Its lore wise a ninja by night and samurai by day.
@@connortodd4538it would have been awesome if they had thought of it, but flip cards were extremely weird during kamigawa block.
Bushido was so overcosted as an ability. A 2 mana 2/2 could easily have bushido 2 without being overpowered. Its a keyword that is more control oriented and can handle aggro, opposed to being aggro.
Note on sweep: sweep isn't a keyword, like the video says, but a ability word, as seen by the fact it's in italic(all italic text is flavor text). Keywords are specific words with defined rules effects, ability words are words in italic that serve to thematically tie together cards with similar effects, but unlike keywords, ability words don't have rules significance.
a more common example than sweep is landfall, which denotes abilities that trigger when lands enter under your control. If landfall was a keyword, cards could say "Landfall: gain 1 life.", but it isn't, so such a card would read "Landfall- Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, gain 1 life.".
But isnt that kinda... dumb? Why have this distinction in the first place? Whats the gameplay upside of having ability words and keywords in the game?
Is there any rhyme or reason to why they make *some* words, again like landfall, an ability word despite the fact that mechanically they *could* be keywords with no changes?
@@tinfoilslacks3750 in principle they could add common triggers like landfall, ETBs and LTBs to the rules, which would allow for the shortening of card text, which is the whole reason that keywords exist, but for whatever reason wizards has simply chosen to make triggers that can have different effects not be spelled out.
this is as opposed to say, prowess or madness, both of which are triggered keyword abilities, because they always have the same effect, where landfall, ETB and LTB can do anything.
@@dragohammer6937 With the release of bloomburrow, they changed "When CARDNAME enters the battlefield" to "When CARDNAME enters". Let's also not forget "Dies", which replaced "Is put into the graveyard from the Battlefield" about ten years ago.
@@Arrzarrina havent been keeping up with bloomburrow, good catch
The fact that the two universally best cards from kamigawa (sensei's divining top & umezawas jitte) were two mirrodin-like artifacts is so funny to me lol
20:50 EXCEPT the Betrayers of Kamigawa Black precon, which came wirh a guaranteed Umezawas Jitte.
Jitte and Top were so goddamn good
Sweep should have been on green if anywhere. Bouncing lands back to your hand is good if you can drop 3 back onto the field a turn. Pay 3, bounce 3 to +1/+1 for each bounce, play land for turn and two more bonus, landfall triggers, call it a day.
Landfall did not exist yet...
@@Paddyvertex I’m aware, doesn’t change that it’s a very green mechanical concept and would have aged very well if they just made even a single green card of it.
@@uginthespiritdragon That's completely correct ;-)
Agree, Azusa was around.
I imagine it'd be cool to have a mono green constructed Azusa sweep deck
Stumbling on this video feels like coming across hidden knowledge
are you a time traveler? this was posted today but the comment was from 3 days ago
@@neminem233he's become too powerful after learning the hidden knowledge
@@neminem233it most likely is a playlist thing. Videos can be on a playlist and can be viewed without technically being posted
@@darthplagueisthewise4560 Can confirm, this is exactly what happened lol
Because you are not a smart person. I’m sure the world is full of secret breakthroughs for you 🖕🏻🫵🏻
The guy in the artwork of dampen thought looks like he's rocking out and playing bad air guitar, not having his brain melted
Bushido technically came back in Neo Kami in the form of Jukai Trainee, a common draft chaff that didn't even receive the dignity of having the mechanic keyworded.
Thank you for making this. I started playing around 8th Edition but didn't have money for cards until Kamigawa, and it has been my favourite set ever since. Unlike a lot of "kamigawa bad" videos, you've acknowledged the context of the game state before it came out, and you've also explored the relationship between the different mechanics and themes better than others.
Kamigawa is jank, but it's my favourite jank. So many random unique effects, so many ways to eke out value over the course of 10, 000 turns, and a setting that set my imagination on fire all through my childhood.
Splice onto Arcane wasn't a bad mechanic, just painfully underused. It could easily have returned in a setting like Strixhaven and I do hope they check out that design space again. "Build your own spells" is an interesting idea.
True, it also helps that when you copie a spell that's has been spliced, the copies get every effect.
sorry to reply to an old comment, but splice onto arcane was bad because it was too parasitic, and no amount of greater use would have fixed it short of making arcane evergreen. You *needed* arcane spells to splice onto, which inherently made it extremely limiting. it would've been so much better had it been like everdream where it targeted any instant or sorcery - that fixes the parasiticism. obv you'd have to balance it tighter then, but you'd have a lot more flexibility for deckbuilding and targets.
keep in mind also that standard then was either mirrodin-kamigawa or kamigawa-ravnica, kamigawa was bookended by two sets with much higher power levels. the likelihood of an arcane spell actually making the cut in your deck was pretty low, which made splice onto arcane even worse because there were just so much fewer viable targets (and like the video said it was extremely unlikely most of the splice cards even fit into your deck strategy even if you did have an arcane spell). it was pretty much just a mechanic for kamigawa-only block decks.
Yugioh won the samurai battle. Six samurais were a great meta relevant archetype and had better artwork.
Duel Masters*
Yep. But mtg wins Ninja
Was disappointed when Neon Dynasty didn’t explore the “short term gain for long term loss” effects a lot of kamigawa was going for(moonfolk did this in I think a fun, non-sweep involved way)
Honestly looking back at it outside of thematics, neon dynasty has basically 0 in common with the OG block
I wish they'd kept Bushido as a Samurai ability, but made better cards with it.
Stuff with abilities if they're unblocked would be big.
Ninjutsu's the biggest thing that came back from OG Kamigawa, likely because its the only mechanic that was any good. I do wish they at least printed some kind of fun play on One with Nothing or some other infamous card
Ninjutsu.
The one well liked Kamigawa block mechanic. Bushido wasn't great either, in practice causing similar problems in limited that too many first strikers and deathtouch creatures causes.
Shrine cards. That is what I can think of.
So many memories. I remember getting my uncles old magic cards and making both a bushido and a spirit/splice deck about 10 years after the initial release. Completely dominated everyone in school. Might not have been good at the time, but people not knowing how a mechanic works can do wonders to how well the mechanic works. Don’t even get me started on spore…
I maintain that the biggest issue with the Kamigawa block was not its design, but its placement. ANY block would have looked worse if it had come out between Mirodin and Ravnica. I believe that this is why Kamigawa looks like a 2/10 block rather than, as I believe, a more respectable 3/10.
More respectable? That's cope
Literally the only good thing about Kamigawa was its lore and art design.
@@tonysmith9905 lore and card design was awesome I actually love this block if you don't allow any Gaijin(outsiders) it's funny game to play
Honestly I think Sweep had some potential sauce, and might be nicer if it had more interaction with land and hand. Like more "whenever you play a land" or "number of cards in hand" type mechanics could be cute
Yeah I think if we had a couple of good Sweep cards in green, and paired them with Azusa-like effects that let you play extra lands every turn, the mechanic could suddenly become busted. Or at least playable.
This was the set where "number of cards in hand" was a major mechanic. That's also why the merfolk which returned your lands to your hand were in the set.
The issue wasn't lack of support, the issue was that the mechanic is just a bad idea. For a sweep card to be good, you probably want to bounce all of your lands to enable it...which vastly restricts the design space for sweep cards.
I feel like a version of Sweep that doesn't scale linearly would be interesting, too. Like letting you remove X*X counters, or X/3 (round down) creatures. It means you have less incentive to sweep _all_ your lands (the fourth does less, but if you have six maybe it's worth the big investment).
The problem with MTG is they have smart people that probably considered this and wisely dismissed it.
Good video in all, and deeply appreciate going into the background of the insanity of Mirrordin before it. Notably this is very much the same story that happened to Mercadian Masques back in the day, which was following up in the wake of URZA block. And yeah, honestly Mirrordin is up there alongside Urza block with 'yo this is nuts'
It is also worth noting that for as weak as Kamigawa was, it really did a lot with lore outside the game, with tons of stories about various legendary creatures and a solid book trilogy. And most importantly, Kamigawa into Ravnica really set the stage for blocks being designed with both previous and future sets being taken in mind. This is why original Ravnica block had a lot of spirit creatures in it as well, and this lead to the creation of the Ghost Dad deck, often considered one of the greats in deck building, using the humble Tallowisp from Kamigawa as a powerful engine in a black/white tempo deck.
I think the worst part of MtG as a whole was that Grizzly Bears with additional effects was considered a bad card. Grizzly Bear isn't an exciting card, but not having that as a baseline 'usable' in a set just shows how power crept the game was at the time (and frankly how it still is).
“Was” or “is”?
@@Candyapplebone Both.
same now for 2/1 for just one mana with not only good creature types (like Soldier), but with also additional positive only ability/abilities. **And it's still not enough** !
WHAT
An important thing to remember about MtG powercreep is that for a long time (like 2000-2016, soexcluding the recent power creep starting in 2019 they've explicitly stated they're implementing) *some* things got dramatically stronger and some things got much weaker. Creatures are subject to a lot of powercreep, but that's because in the first few years of the game creatures were just complete fucking dogshit. A lot of players want creatures and creature combat especially to be the focal point of the game, and it really wasn't, so WotC spent nearly 2 decades incrementally making creatures better and non-creatures worse. There's a reason grizzly bears and savannah lions got powercrept but bolt and swords to plowshares are still premium cards of their respective type. Most of the powercreep wasn't powercreep in all areas it was game rebalancing.
@CajunCatguy what about a 4/4 Racoon that can smash a GIANT?
Bushido has one major flaw, it creates incentives to not attack, the one with the cards with bushido will wait for attacks bc this optimize the value of the ability, and those facing a card with bushido have no incentives to attack. Two players with equal cards endup in a situation where the wrong decision is attacking, bc the first to do it will lose the card in exchange for nothing.
Definitely needed more support but I could see some potential ways to make some interesting designs here. Like giving cards that had bushido in red attack triggers maybe give some white color creatures defender or such. Definitely was some space to play around with there.
@Joseph-ky3os Bushido would also have paired nicely with "on combat damage to player" triggers: force the opponent to fight a large creature or take some small damage but give up tempo. This would have thematically fit with the idea of it being dishonorable to avoid combat
Having played in both Mirrodin and Kamigawa block, things were crazy, and yes I played Affinity, and no I am not proud of it.
soulshift has so much potential to be broken, but it was never given the chance to do it
I really wish they'd followed up on Arcane, spell subtypes are easily the biggest area of unexplored design space. The old 'wizards, instants and sorceries' tribal from a few years ago was neat, and much more interesting to build than a typical 'play this with other Elves' tribal deck. Imagine if they could do 'druids and nature tribal', or 'extra tokens from Necromancy spells'.
Anything that broad would be a nightmare to introduce, though. Going back through the entire history of Magic and assigning a type to each spell no thank you. Not doing that and having Fireball not be a fire spell, also no. But they could have done it with Arcane. Instead of having it be specific to Kamigawa's spirits, have it be the primordial magic of ancient weirdos. Spirits, elder dragons, Eldrazi, Ravnica's Old Gods, and so forth. Let it be deciduous, coming up as often as it makes sense.
Also, 'ancient primordial magic' would be a great mechanical identity for U/G, which is something they never really nailed.
When kamigawa came out and it turned out to be not very good, we essentially rule 0 them to be more powerful.
For example, all soulshift cards that had soulshift lower than themselves had their number made to be bigger than themselves.
Epic had you gain one more copy every turn, so that you would snowball in value after committing everything to it.
And that sort of thing. Made the block like 10 times more fun.
You should do a video or two on failed designs from future sight or maybe just all the designs from the set in general
A truly unfortunate set but at least it had some cool bits of favor
bushido is one of my favorite mechanics in the game, and i really think it has ALOT of design space if they were to revisit it, make more effects on bushido cards, lower costs and add decent stats, the OG bushido seemed like it was meant to fail which is a shame cause it is a good mechanic imo that should really be thouroughly explored, i would love to see a isshin style effect for when a creature gets blocked and effect triggers or have cool effects on bushido or have decent stats like the frog with bushido from one of the modern horizons sets which i actually use in my bushido deck cause its decently statted. The high cost with low stats just killed a great mechanic for no reason, if they were reasonably statted and costed and then maybe had better lord effects and/or effects in general this could be a top tier mechanic
I was so hyped to see Samurai’s. And so disappointed when I couldn’t ramp them up like other tribes :c
The caveat with the design in Kamigawa was that the limited environment was super deep until Betayers came out. In triple Champions there were still archetypes being discovered and played when the next set came out. Thete wre viabke aggro, control, and combo stategies, mill and 5 color decks were all thungs you could play. Unfortunately even if you get enough packs to get a draft together nowadays, the rules have changed that the balance between the deck types are likely no longer where they once were.
Kamigawa has always been one of my favorite blocks, so I do wish that it hadn't turned out as bad as it did.
I started playing MTG much more seriously towards the end of the Mirrodin block. My buddies and I were rocking decks from those two blocks, so I was definitely on the receiving end of Umezawa's Jitte while I was desperately trying to make a Kamigawa deck work.
One of my toned down commander decks is a take on Tomer's Kalamax Arcanes deck and while the splice mechanic isn't super powerful it does create some nutty things since splicing the spell has unique interactions with copy effects.
Kalamax checks to see the first instant that you cast so how it works is you cast then splice stuff onto the spell then Kalamax checks to see if the spell is the first instant giving you a copy of your entire spell. Another funny thing is that splice can turn spells that don't normally target into targeting spells so I could do something like Kodama's reach with a Psychic Puppertry spliced onto it targeting Zada and then Zada will copy the entire spell for each creature I own.
Desperate Ritual also has some extremely funny, granted inconsistent, combos like Ritual, Through the Breach, and Rootha is infinite mana and ETBs or Ritual spliced onto any sorcery (like Lava Spike) and Izzet Guildmage is infinite of that sorcery or Ritual spliced onto any instant or sorcery that targets you and Mirror Sheen is also infinite of that spell.
None of these combos will see anything in any competitive sense outside of the Guildmage one seeing some minor play in it's standard but in commander it is a blast to assemble.
With how much a slower format like Commander is I could totally see something like Splice, even onto Arcane, return is a Commander Legends set.
In standard when we had kam/rav as the format, Splice had a weird roll as a way to burn out a Paladin En-Vec as it could essentially make nonred burn spells.
En-Vec + Jitte kind of warped things that way.
I was almost going to suggest that the Sweep cards could've had Splice onto Arcane in order to make them a little stronger and synergize with the Wisdom mechanic, but as it turns out, the spell being spliced onto always has its effects apply first. Maybe they could've changed the rules for that interaction specifically, but it probably never crossed their minds.
Nope. Spells which have been spliced onto can be reordered as you wish. It’s in the rules.
@@channeling764 702.47b You can’t choose to use a splice ability if you can’t make the required choices (targets, etc.) for that card’s rules text. You can’t splice any one card onto the same spell more than once. If you’re splicing more than one card onto a spell, reveal them all at once and choose the order in which their effects will happen. *The effects of the main spell must happen first.*
Loved the art of the set.
I just learned that i was misplaying boshidp wrong, which made it stronger. I thought it triggered based on number of blockers. 😅
I created a fun format where you played your cards face down as lands of all five types (just one of the rule changes) and the moonfolk and sweep cards are very useful in it and Gush is even more broken than in a regular game.
I saw many a commander landfall deck use the sweep mechanic to win consistently. The way they did it was through a two or so card combo only using a total of three cards including the card with sweep.
The only match I ever won against the old kci or full power affinity was a mono-white weenie deck that used umezawa's jitte as removal, and plow through reito as a finisher.
The best kamigawa block deck you could have made was either ninjas/rats or snakes/warriors.
With marrow-gnawer doubling your rat tokens you will almost always have a target for ninjitsu and mono green snakes had all the ramp in the world behind Sachi, Daughter of seshiro making shamans into mana sources and heartbeat of spring doubling everyone's land mana. You also had sosuke, son of seshiro which was half of an anthem effect and granting warriors deathtouch, and seshiro the annointed being a double anthem and a card advantage engine.
Kamigawa cards have slowly found homes in eternal format decks (especially in commander) because they often have game-warping effects, they're just overcosted or didn't have enough support in Standard. Honestly though, I have long been of the opinion that very little would be looked upon favorably when sandwiched between the original Mirrodin and Ravnica blocks.
Although I will call you out on splice, as Horobi's Whisper and Glacial Ray did both see some splices (Whisper's splice was incredibly easy and control decks running Ray also ran Peer Through Depths). Its real problem wasn't availability, it was efficiency. Splice spells in general were either kept weak (Psychic Puppetry) or had prohibitive splice costs (Hideous Laughter. And yes, it was on-rate at the time).
Actually bushido sounds like it would be very good on smaller creatures to make them more threatning in combat, making them harder to block without losing creatures, forcing your opponent to deal with them other ways
Bushido would do great in a dexk that plays lots of small, cheap bushido creatures...
Kamigawa as a block also fumbled hard when it comes to world-building, something very evident when you read the flavour-text of *Plow through Reito.*
As the creative director Dommermuth himself said in 2004: “most Westerners simply aren't familiar with the creatures and magic of Japanese lore.”
His assumption about Magic’s audience was correct (at least in 2004). But thinking that they somehow get it right was less so.
What’s the issue with the flavor text of Plow Through Reito?
funny how golden tail samurai is the card that made me want to became a artist. So it was useful!
I loved Kamigawa almost as much as Lorwyn
From what it looks like to me is that wizards made a powerful set and they made it strong because it was the set that was going to be the new phyrexia. They had the oil in it the entire time and it was going to be that way. So because phyrexia was the main villain they made the plane and set strong as hell. Normally in the blocks they would have a weak set, a normal powered one, and a strong one. So because they not only needed a weak set and the set before was so strong it made kamigawa awful power wise but the mechanics of the set are about 50/50 in playability.
The most frustrating thing is that there are a bunch of solid abilities that cards have and because the block is weak they look terrible even though they are either thematically good or are mechanically decent.
I love bushido and people keep mentioning that it doesnt have tons of interaction but I think it's a super flavor win of how samurai are strong in combat but are weak when it comes to magic. The most frustrating part though is that alara had exalted and I remember that shit being not only really strong but mechanically like banding but also feeling like a busted bushido. I think mechanically bushido would work better if they added more equipment to the theme as well. The version of samurai we have now where they want to be altered with weapons and magic would have been great together.
Soulshift was also really good in that it fit black green very well for the cycle of life and death and would give late game card advantage. The problem that most soulshift monsters don't also do more entering effects makes it kind of bad.
Ninjutsu is one of the better mechanics for casual tabletop and fun in the game due to its thematics and how it fits into blue black.
The main issue is they wanted to slow the game down and made the decks to have some of that happening. Which is why a they have cards that are based on not playing. Which everyone knows that the worst way to get people to play your game is by telling them not to.
I know Kamigawa was a really bad set but I still am a huge fan of it. I like the aesthetics of it, the story was nice and I even like all the mechanics. I have implemented almost all of them into a commander deck.
Snake tribal was nice but boring with a commander to give them unblockable and a creature to permanently prevent one of your opponents to untap.
My Mizzix Arcane deck suffered heavily from not having enough splice cards but it was funny to power out huge spells with tons of effects.
I am still tinkering with a samurai tribal although I am now deviated towards neo dynasty since, you're right! Bushido sucks at hitting players...
And finally sweep! God I love that mechanic and I still miss the green one since my Borborygmos Enraged uses the red one as a finisher to pick up my lands and throw them at my opponents.
And I am still thinking about a landfall moonfolk deck with the patron as commander... It is always so tempting to complete the set.
Splice has seen some EDH love with how good the mechanic pairs with Stella Lee, Wild Card.
I loved the splice deck I built, but it much like my other decks, never got off the ground in my hands.
Easy fix to Bushido:
If the creature kills the blocker using only its Bushido value, it still gets to attack the player. You need to block the full bushido value to stop it slicing through and trampling
That doesn't change how awful the design is. The mechanic inherently makes combat bad, especially attacking. Since on attack opponent can just decide to not block, you're not gettting use out of your ability, so it's actually better to hold your bushido back to block. This leads to stalemates and made limited take much much longer than it should had.
Then wotc made it even worse by giving bushido to already low statted creatures that if unblocked wouldn't deal much damage in the first place.
So, inherently bad attacking design along with the bad numbers of creatures made bushido just terrible. There isn't much to save bushido.
@@tonysmith9905
Bushido, ultimately, is a situational attack buff. There are plenty of ways to use that creatively.
Give some Bushido 'cant block' either period or with a conditional they can deal with.
Give some Bushido effects when unblocked
Give some Bushido Vigilance so they dont need to stay behind as a blocker, they can do both
And attach Bushido to higher stat creatures.
@@ghosty918
None of that helps the inherent design flaws of the mechanic though. If your way to save bushido is to staple on other effects then it's not Bushido that is good, it's the other effects. Bushido is just gravy.
Kinda crazy that they made the sweep mechanic and didn't add it to blue and green. Blue at the time had a lot of cards that bounced lands to your hands and at least the soratami avatar could bring them back relatively fast and Green is the color with ways to generate mana, so its one of the few colors that could have actually made that mechanic work.
I guess the idea was that hand size mattered in this block and they wanted to give white/red/black some ways to fill their hands again for synergy with other effects. The way they did it absolutely failed though.
God, Mirrodin's aesthetic was beyond fucking cool. I miss it.
Another big problem for Bushido was it having an overly-specific flavor. Mechanically, it works just fine, and could be used regularly. In terms of flavor, it is pretty much impossible to use outside of Kamigawa.
I love the fact that Kamigawa's worst mechanic didn't even make the list-Epic.
Ftr, Kamigawa is my favorite block. It's super flavorful. It's also terrible.
Once Ravnica came out with the Izzet guild, splice had a mild combo that went infinite.... it was just way overshadowed by much faster decks sadly.
I started with this block so the mirrodin block power level was something i learned much later (products were still in stores so a loxodon warhammer eventually became mine). I thought mono white samurais was busted and I had a jitte from the nezumi theme deck.. good times.
“The technology wasn’t there yet”
Is that a jab at Hearthstone? 😆
There is a Twiddle Storm in modern that uses Splice onto arcane as it's primary mechanic. It is not tier 1 and pretty niche. But it's a thing.
In early modern splicing through the breach or goryo’s onto a desperate ritual in the br instant reanimator. Now splice really only sees play in fringe belcher decks in modern to create loops of infinite mana to get around belcher hate.
It's interesting looking at todays "busted" meta compared to those days. They were still working off the old design view they had that balanced power creep by punishing efficiency on cards which means a very good card needs to have a drawback to stop it power creeping/taking over the game (hence the original push in Onslaught to make creatures bigger failed since a lot of the 'bigger' Beasts were costed too much to be of any use).
And you can clearly see they were so scared that they broke it on Mirrodin block they over corrected on Kamigawa. It was basically Masques block vers.2. It's not until after Ravnica blocks that you see the design team finally give up this philosophy and start working on hyper efficiency to make creatures "fun" to play which eventually spread to the rest of the game
Sweep,This video gave me a strange use idea for Sweep. There's that Trisdadecaphile or how ever it's spelled, that wins the game if you have exactly 13 cards in hand. You could simply use sweep to bounce all your lands to get the 13 hand size.
Arcane as a concept introduces more "tribe" style subtypes to non-permanent spells, so there's always room for it to make a comeback. And even without it, Splice can work with plenty more things like "Splice onto Sorcery or Instant" like Splice onto Artifact or Splice onto Aura, if WotC wanted. I wouldn't say those designs "failed" as much as have gone unutilized since.
Bushido, on the other hand, was pointless. If the "3" in the Mana cost of Takeno's Cavalry were errata'd away as a misprint, it'd still be a bad card.
I imagine Sweep could have worked if they made a card with Sweep, that then dd something, but had an additional effect that you could cast a spell with a converted mana cost equal or less then the number of lands you returned, for 0 mana.
I have a konda Lord of Eiganjo commander deck and I love it. yes it's quite underpowered but I can have a lot of fun with him even without a pure Tron deck, and he pops off with kusari gama and black blade reforged. It's just a late game deck
Don't let Ben Wheeler hear about this!
it would be terrible to have him; he can't be here
Before commander was really a supported archetype. NOBODY I knew played anything out of Kamigawa in standard or modern at the time. It was bad. The one big lgs near me didn't even bother with pre-release.
I do like reconfigure, i like equipment creatures
To be clear Kamigawa was a failure for constructed formats. Draft, Sealed, and block were very fun
Personally I think Bushido could've worked as is (besides the bad mana costs) if they put it on creatures that had effects that forced creatures to attack. That way it could've been used as a way for creature removal similar to how Fight cards work. It probably wouldn't be great, but considering Kamigawa was a nerfed set anyways it would've at least been more useful.
I wish Lava Spike had Splice.
Bushido I dont think was a bad mechanic, it was used really badly. Like if we had a 2 mana 2/2 bushido 2 that would have looked alright for the time. Sweep was stupid. Arcane was dumb, but "splice onto" is really cool when it didn't say "arcane" like we have seen for limited play modern masters
Also, Samurai weren't working all together quite at all. I don't mean to be a carbon-copy of Slivers, but a bit of inner synergy could have helped.
Splice onto Arcane is amazing the way it is. Add more targets to the effects, and print more cards to increase the synergy. The mistake was to just have 27 cards with splice out of the 93 Arcane cards. Plus no sorceries had splice either, which is weird.
The tribalism of Arcane and limitations of it, is what makes it fun. There was a time when Maro used to say that “limitations breed creativity”. Where is that now? 😂. OTOH Splice onto instant or Sorcery is wack and too broken if ever been undercosted or having an alternate cost.
barrel down sokenzan is actually the best of the sweep cards, if only because you can use it w borborygmos enraged to throw all your lands to an opponent and thats funny as hell.
That kinda samurai would be pretty good for a mono white Voltron deck, built in protection, Bushido 5 and vigilance? Oh yeah that card slaps as a commander
If you’re gonna run a super expensive indestructible monowhite creature as a voltron commander, you’re better off running an actually good one like Zetalpa or Avacyn
I swear to god this is the third time I’ve found another of hirumared’s channels completely naturally I can’t tell if this is a voice actor and 3 different channels or 1 guy running all 3
Kamigawa isn't best true, but I don't like how everyone constantly dogpiles it. There are two legitimate ways to play Samurai, White/Black tempo control, or White/Red aggro. the first you stall long enough to get equipment or Takeno out, indomitable will and call to glory are heavy lifters here. for the second, Iizuka and Kentaro do the heavy lifting. Ronin war club becomes a go to instead of indomitable will. Spirits and arcane are probably the most busted mechanic when played right. Green black, that's it. It's a recursion strategy that can either A) devouring greed for stupid amounts B) lobotomy your opponents deck out of the game or C) stack the sacrifice triggers so often loss of life is actually a win con. All this in the same deck while ramping. It's busted. Kamigawa shines when you actually sit down with it and read the cards. There's some legitimately fun stupidity in the block.
Splice onto arcana is like wild magic sorcerer in dungeons and dragons.
Many of the mechanics were completely fine in limited and block formats. Additionally while the sets get a bad rap, there are WAY more still good and playable cards in the set than most others from the time period.
1UR instant draw 2 splice onto instant/sorc: discard 2, U/R hybrid - balanced enough?
I dont think the timeline for Kamigawa being a reaction to Mirrodin holds water. Mirrodin was just a failed experiment with pushing power and they always planned to return to a more stardard power level for Kamigawa, it just accidentally ended up a bit underpowered which exaggerated the difference. Even if Mirrodin hadn't been intentionally pushed Kamigawa probably would have looked the same. They didn't have to make Kamigawa bad to "fix the game" they just had to make it normal.
Growing pains? Oof made me feel old, but also this set came out 11 years after Alpha.
I like a lot of the cards from kamigawa. I just wish Sekki, seasons guide was a 4 mana, 4 counters, sac 4 spirits instead of 8.
I always thought Evermind was pretty cool. Clunky, but cool.
An extra 2 mana on top of an arcane spell to draw a card felt like a bit of an ask, but was probably one of the more viable splicers. Being unable to cast normally gave it some janky charm.
Everdream is a nod to this, though it can be cast normally and the splice cost being higher just makes it too much of an ask I think.
Looking at a lot of Kicker cards, 2 mana extra for an additional draw seems to have been the going rate for a while.
I love Kamigawa. It was super refreshingly weak after the nightmare of Mirrodin.
Kamigawa was current when I was first getting into MTG. I thought Kondo was insane.
I did have a home for barrel down sokenzan. Used it in borborygmos for a while
Sweep would be neat if it had a threshold to activate a greater version or if they were in green to help fuel landfall
Is this frickin power point!?
Soulshift would have been really cool if it didn't have a number, just "When this creature dies, return target spirit from your graveyard to your hand." like a tribal Raise Dead on a stick.
I feel like whenever there is a number attached to a keyword I'm severely disappointed.
Bushido could have been "Exalted" when blocking, like taking one for the team, standing up for your clan, the warriors final stand... that would have been cool.
Recurring decks were a problem in previous years. They wanted to avoid stuff like that. Soulshift would’ve been cool with the wording “another spirit with a different name and with mana value equal to this card or less”.
@@channeling764 That's even more restrictive than it is now. xD
The best Soulshift cards are Elder Pine, He Who Hungers, and Center Tree, the first two have other decent effects. But Center Tree has the best Soulshift ability because it's potentially unrestricted, and it's still super bad because of that potential restriction.
You cannot limit a "Raise Dead" when it's already a terrible card, and the creatures already have +1 cost adjusted for the added effect. Promised Kannushi almost gets it!
Bushido was absolutely fine, but yeah I'll give you Sweep.
Soulshift and Splice were both so fun though. Blasphemy, imo. If we're talking about Kamigawa in the shadow of Mirrodin, you could imprint an arcane spell (eg Ethereal Haze) onto an Isochron Sceptor and then go to town with Splice. Hana Kami defined the Block Constructed! Looking back, with Ashes of the Fallen in block, any creature in the yard could be a spirit and soulshifted back.
I believe if every set was like Kamigawa (low power level, no planeswalkers), we'd achieve world peace. And I'd start playing standard again.
I hope kamigawa comes back again, it’s my favorite set of sets lol
You could play Samurai as more of a control type deck instead of aggro, that let's it do more work. You want to detour attacks or blocks, that's the main point of the keyword, it's just not meant for aggro. Although ya, it could be better if the base stats were up to par.
Splice not returning in return to kamigawa is a sin
Man just said that Ixalan doesn't have a bad reputation when it was the set that pushed Treasures onto the poor game, and he's more right than he should be. At least Kamigawa actually helped lower the powerlevel to a fun Standard alongside OG Ravnica, Ixalan dropped us into Dominaria and WotS.
Deadass bro, treasures made me stop playing Commander
Maybe I'm just stupid, but what was the point of splice? The splice cost is the spell's mana cost anyway so what's the difference between splicing it or just casting it after one of your other spells resolves? I didn't play during this block so I'm sure I'm missing something painfully obvious.
Splicing doesn't use a card. Spliced card goes back to hand after the OG spell resolves. So you can use spells with "Splice onto arcane" multiple times.
I had the prebuild black and red sweep deck and my friend had a mech deck with affinity for artifacts... Didn't feel good.
Favorite video series YES!
Konda is only playable with trample but you could literally pay 7 for that creature without having to be blocked
Splice is weird because why would you pay the spice cost why you can just cast the spell itself for the same amount? You also risk having basically two cards being countered by one counter spell. There are some cases where splice might be interesting but I just don’t see any reason to use it.
Couldn't you float mana to use a card with Sweep AND Spiraling Embers though?
Maybe Barrel Down Sokenzan to clear a huge threath and push for game with Embers and your creatures, just a niche use but it can be done
I took my samurai deck to my first tournament ever and my opponent had a dredge deck