@Luke Steiner So you can control the damage. If i attack with a trample banded with a 1/1 body, i can assign deathtouchers and other nasty blocking damage to the 1/1 and keep the trample or other things safe. It's all about the options.
Imagine some cursed Enchantment that lets you take a stack of mutated creatures and attack with them separately, but they all gain banding and all band together for that attack.
@@wolfdwarf BUT: They are also all regenerated. Which must both happen before they phase out or after they phase in since treated-as-non-existent creatures can't fight each other ...
I still remember during the mirrodin prerelease seeing A LOT of people equipping stuff to their opponents creatures. I am guilty of doing it atleast once.
Some of these mechanics are more confusing/unintuitive for other reasons that you didn't go into. Phasing used to trigger leave play abilities but not enter play abilities. Exile effects used to be "removed from the game" where it would be legal to wish for cards there. Mutate uses the copy effects layer which gets overridden with p/t defining layers. Banding actually works differently when blocking than when attacking.
Was thinking the same thing as these. Especially Remove from game -> exile, that would confuse old players with Wishes. Remind me: What’s the difference when blocking with banding?
When blocking with a band, only one of the banded creatures needs to have the banding mechanic (as opposed to all but one when attacking). Also, all creatures in the blocking band must individually be legally able to block the attacking creature in question.
Whenever I explain protection, I remind the player about DEBT Damage Equip/enchant Blocking Targeting This usually covers most aspects about it. However, I have had to explain to a progenitus player that protection from everything does not mean protection from boardwipes.
Protection From Everything. From From Players. Protection From Being Touched. Protection From Being Played. Protection From Being Printed. Protection From Existing.
Actually, in MTGA the reminder text from Fight specifies that the creatures deal noncombat damage to each other, so it's not that confusing as usually it is. A nice touch from the developers
I remeber always having the most arguments with friends about regeneration and protection. No one was ever on the same page when it came to those mechanics.
Now that you mention it I'm surprised regenerate didn't make the list, due to the flavor it's extremely unintuitive that you need to regenerate something before it's destroyed. The mechanic itself isn't complex so if they just called it "Barrier" or something it probably wouldn't confuse anyone, but they didn't so it does.
@@TheSquareOnes was also the fact regeneration caused the creature to tap and be removed from combat, or that regeneration did not save the creature if an effect would bring its toughness down to 0.
@@Sweetguy1821 well in the latter case, if it _did_ save the creature from dying due to 0 toughness, you've prevent the death and the creature would stay on the board ... and then immediately die again, because it has 0 toughness for it to actually be able to do anything about 0 toughness, it'd need to have some form of interaction with stat-changing effects. which would just add _loads_ more complexity to it, especially since unless you made it, say, flicker the creature, you'd run into the exact same issue with -1/-1 counters unless you decided to also make it so that regenerating a creature removed those and not only would all of this add more complexity, but it'd boost the power of the mechanic significantly. it's one of those things where mechanics come together in such a way that one mechanic essentially ends up checkmating the other
Regeneration has two parts: First, when a creature regenerates, it gains a "shield" until end of turn. If that creature were to be destroyed while it has a "shield" you tap it and remove it from combat (if necessary) instead. It a creature would be destroyed multiple times, it will need that may "shields." Indestructible is similar only it is simply "if this creature would be destroyed, it isn't." It doesn't matter how many times it is destroyed. Note: When I say "destroy," I mean the MTG definition of destroy (cards that use the actual word DESTROY, lethal damage, and deathtouch.) Sacrifice, exile, 0 or less power are not destroy.
Man...I miss regeneration. That was the good ole days. I'd say its on the same level as 'fight'. Really the only issue with regeneration was weather -x/-x was used or not in killing it...or weather it was damage used in killing...and the order if both were used as to weather it survived after being activated or not. Also, you used to be able to activate it AFTER damage was on the 'stack' instead of it being a dumb 'shield' (which doesn't make sense).
I got back into magic recently after MANY years, and I was definitely confused about wish effects and exile, since exile has replaced "remove from the game" effects.
I think it's really dumb that wishes don't hit exile. In fact I think it would be a really cool idea to have your sideboard begin the game facedown in exile. Not only would it streamline a mechanic normally completely outside the rules of play, your sideboard, back into it, it would increase the viability of both wish spells, and the incredibly niche cards that return a card from exile. I don't think either is so powerful that the two things blending together would be a detriment to the game, and it removes awkward moment where you shift focus away from the game to find your deck box and look through your sideboard mid game by streamlining it into the board state. Ultimately I don't think it would change much about how the game is played, but I do think it would be a quality of life improvement for the game, and would help introduce new best of one players to the idea of having a sideboard by making it less of this nebulous other thing you bring to change your deck on the fly into an actual element of laying out the board.
Hellhole3927 It’s fairly complicated for experienced players. If someone who knows the ins-and-outs of the game really think about it, they can figure out how different scenarios play out with mutate, but it takes some reading and re-reading to really get the idea. But for less-knowledgeable players, yeah, it’s extremely complicated.
When I first read split seconds oracle text a long time ago I did not have a grasp of the concept of the stack. So I substituted the next best thing: the library because it is a physical stack of cards. Can you imagine my confusion when sat there like: As long as this card is in your library, players can't cast spells or activate abilities ... What?
@@zanderpxl581 In retroperspective: Yes. Very. Luckily, I only ever encountered it on magiccards.info so I did not build decks that "forbid myself from playing magic" XD
The easiest way to explain Banding is, "he who controls the band controls the damage to the band." If you control the banded creatures, you decide how the damage is received to those creatures, not the damage's owner.
Originally, Wishes DID let you get cards from exile, as it was "removed from the game". They only changed that after a while because a) it gave them more power and b) it was not how they were meant to work. So they clarified that "removed from the game" was, in fact not outside the game, but instead another game zone. Changing its name to Exile during the M10 changes was quite the blessing for clarity, but older players may still be used to wishes grabbing things from Exile. The Fact that Karn tGC actually HAS that text makes it even more confusing.
I started playing during RTR, and even though I also bought a decent amount of M13, one of the most confusing mechanics for my group was regenerate. It was so confusing, and not explained often enough, that we just took it literally for what it meant- pay the cost for a creature in the graveyard, and BAM! They’re back in play. As you can imagine, many kitchen games in my early years were played with an abundance of trolls, skeletons, and zombies until the revelation that regenerate wasn’t really that busted. Anyway, that’s why I would put it on my most confusing list👍🏻
I love that you pronounced Taniwha correctly. I didn't know that was the right way to say it for *years*, and only learned it after watching an episode of Destination Truth. For those wondering, it's an actual mythological creature in Maori culture, so it has a definite, real-world pronunciation.
Well, that and banding only existed in an era where reminder text wasn't really a common thing at all. IIRC, none of the abilities introduced in Alpha were actually given reminder text until years after banding went extinct in Weatherlight.
other complicated mechanics are Regenerate and madness. Regenerate was replaced with temporary indestructible and for some good reasons. Regenerate says that you tap it and remove all damage from it and remove it from combat. It gets more complicated though since abilities like wither and infect replace damage with -1/-1 counters which we see regenerate in both blocks with those mechanics. So confusion can happen. Madness is a bit of an odd ability and seems intuitive enough. but how it functions is strange. When you discard a card with madness you put it into exile and decide if you want to pay for its madness cost. If you do it goes onto the stack from exile not from your hand. So if you wanted to cast your fiery temper on someone's Dranith Magistrate for its madness cost you couldn't because you're casting the spell from exile. This was put on reminder text later but it wasn't for either Torment or time spiral.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I have seen a ton of MTG top lists that mention banding being a complicated mechanic, but this is the first time any of them actually explained wtf it does.
Now that I am enlightened I'd like to see this put on some contemporary cards to see how it would work in comparison. I mean cycling when it first came out was just "pay X amount of Mana & loot", now days we have alternative cycling costs, basicland cycling & built in synergies like Shark Typhoon. Given the power creep, & that a most cards have multiple abilities, it could be a rly cool feature.
Out of curiosity, how would this work w/ a creature banding w/ a creature that has a different evergreen word, like a Benalish Hero banding w/ a Lord of the Pit? Would the entire band be treated as if it had both flying & trample?
@@bstachutheuneatable1727 imagine it like a video game. If I'm in a party with someone (or a band) and my friend has a cool sword (or a keyword) I can't use the sword because he has it not me. He can use it because he has it. If creatures attack in a band each one is still different permanent and have their own sererate abilities.
@@bstachutheuneatable1727 quick reference on how banding interacts with other keywords: Any evasion - ignore it unless all creatures in the band have the same evasion. Damage altering keywords - banding only affects attacking and/or blocking, the creatures deal damage separately, as normal by their rules text.
I remember having difficulty grasping Soulbond... but that's probably mostly due to the fact that I was just getting started playing MTG, and got the Blessed vs. Cursed duel decks to try the game out
Living weapon (0/0 germs?), manifest (especially for people that aren't already familiar with morph), and cycling (it's not casting, it is discarding, it is an activated ability).
This is what confuses me most of Split Cards: 708.4b The mana cost of a split card is the combined mana costs of its two halves. - Thats _doesn't_ count once on the stack. O_o. Also three in - I'm calling Banding (and bands with other) and Phasing.
Believe it or not, this is actually the simplified version of CMC for split cards. It used to be that the CMC of a split card when not on the stack was "both costs," which created a truly bizarre set of outcomes where if you cast a card that, say, caused your opponent to discard all cards with CMC 3, they'd discard a split card if either half had CMC of 3 (but NOT if the COMBINED CMC was 3), while if you cast a card that did damage to the opponent equal to the CMC of a split card, it WOULD see and damage them based on both combined costs (so if one half had a CMC of 2 and the other half had a CMC of 3, they'd take 5 damage). Needless to say, this caused a huge amount of confusion and judge calls.
When a spell is on the stack, it's CMC is what is being paid to cast the spell that is not an additional or optional cost (such as kicker.) This includes the cost of X which is 0 anywhere else. The CMC used to be each separate half, but there was a deck that used "Expertise" cards to cast split cards without paying their mana cost, but would choose the CMC half that was more than Expertise card's CMC or even both halves if it had fuse. The change was mostly due to those decks.
Wishes used to actually target what is now an in game zone labeled exile prior to M10 because cards were just considered removed from game and thus really outside the game
Ok two things about mutate: If a Gideon planeswalker becomes a creature for turn and you mutate on top of him, you get a planeswalker who can't be attacked or bolted to loose loyaltie. If you copy a mutated creature, you get all the text boxes as well. Intuitiv mechanics for the win 😎
Neoxym depends who you put on top. If you put the mutate card on top it would be a creature with all of Chandra’s planes walker abilities, if you put Chandra on top, end of turn she would change back into a planeswalker with the phoenixes text box which would be useless to a planeswalker.
@Neoxym also, if you mutate a creature with different stats than 4/4 she will still be a 4/4 because Sarkhan's ability defines those values until the end of the turn.
The reason morph cant use the stack is, that when the card is flipped the information becomes known to all players and if it were still its back side while you see the front side (until morph would be resolved) would be so much less intuitive.
Protection was best explained way back around 1995 on the old mtg listserv. Remember, protection prevents DEBT: -Damaging -Enchanting -Blocking -Targeting
As for the wishes... pre-Magic 2010 you could wish for exiled cards as they were "removed from the game". I suppose this adds more confusion when some of us still remember wake decks that could cunning wish with a mirari copy for a card and another cunning wish that had already been removed for pretty much infinite fogs or whatever else was required to win.
Oh god, regenerate. Played that one right in the beginning, then wrong for years. I see why they entered a "removes from combat" in that but the timing of that removal is basically rocket sience (seems difficult until you aquire the right frame of thinking, then you feel dumb for ever having made the mistake). XD
I loved playing my Mirari's Wake deck from Odyssey Block. Back then, you could wish for cards that we now call Exiled because the Exile Zone didn't exist. It was like most control decks in that it was fun to play, not so much fun to play against. When I came back to Magic after a long break from the game I remember being quite disappointed when I found out about that rules change. I still had that deck together some place and I wanted to give it a try against whatever current standard deck my friend had at that time. That deck doesn't work nearly as well if you can't abuse Cunning Wish though.
Honestly I wish they would change the oracle text on wish cards to work on exiled cards. It was part of how they originally functioned and now for commander players wish cards are pretty much useless.
Mutate should be way higher on that list. There are so, so many special cases. How mutate interacts with blinking, bouncing, cloning, removal one the mutate target is the easy stuff. There is also mutating commanders, mutate on undying creatures, mutating on vehicles, mutating on flip cards, mutated creatures becoming another card type, ... The command zone made a video in which they spend half an hour talking about how mutate works: ruclips.net/video/vHNqIjxMYhQ/видео.html (They got at least one interaction wrong. Creatures are only tokens, if the top creature is a token.)
About Phasing, in the beginning 'phase out' did trigger 'leave the battlefield' abilities ("leave play" abilities at the time). However, 'phase in' never triggered 'enter the battlefield' abilities (which was very unintuitive at old times...) That's why card s like "Ertai's Familiar" had original text like "When Ertai's leaves play, ...", and now have a text like "When Ertai's Familiar phases out or leaves the battlefield, ..." The rule was change after a few years so 'phase out' stop triggering 'leaves the battlefield' and cards like "Ertai's Familiar" that were created to interact with 'phase out' received an errata.
One slight correction about phasing. It actually used to do LTB effects but not ETB effects. This is because nothing really cared if something left the battlefield. That was until the set Torment had arrived years later in which we had a variety of nightmares with ETB and LTB effects. One of these was Wormfang Manta. It had an ETB effect of "Skip your next turn" and a LTB effect of "Take an extra turn after this one". So if you put something like a Vanishing on the manta and phased it out, you would always get extra turns, but you wouldn't lose extra turns except for the initial time you cast the Wormfang Manta if you couldn't pay an extra UUU for Vanishing. Wizards took notice of this and snipped the LTB from phasing. If you want to experience the best half of banding, the defensive half, get yourself a Defensive Formation card.
You didn't mention that people try to fetch exiled cards with the Wishes because they used to actually be able to do that. Before the they coined the term "Exile", it was just "removed from the game", which counted as "outside the game" at that point. The old Mirari's Wake decks would use Cunning Wish (or Burning Wish in some versions) with Mirari to copy it and fetch the card they wanted + another Wish they had already RFG'd to get effectively unlimited value. It definitely made me a little sad when they made that change.
Wish cards actually used to be able to get cards "exiled" from games before exile and the exile zone existed. That is because those cards did not move did at one point "Remove" the target from the game. When the term Exile and the exile zone were created and added this interactions ended, now exile zone is inside the game. Before things like Plow removed the card and you indeed could wish it back.
Another thing with mutate - flicker effects. It really doesn't seem intutive that a mutated creature gets separated by them. Also, mutate's interaction with legendary creatures.
This, but not only flicker effects, basically everything that makes it so that a Mutated creature leaves play but doesn't go to the intended area. Bounce effects bounce all the stack back to hand, OK, killing it kills all the stack, that's logical, now how about a creature with a Mask counter from Athreos, Veil-Shrouded? I had a freind of mine in hysterics trying to work out what the fuck was going on when he attacked with a board of 3 mutated creatures with mask counters and I cast Settle the Wreckage.
The fact that the command zone had to make an HOUR long video to explain all of the various interactions of mutate probably says enough to the difficulty of mutate. Phasing and most of the mechanics ahead of it in your list can be explained in 4 sentences or less.
Heck, even banding is mostly just "all your creatures attack/block together, your opponent can block if they can block any member of the band, BUT you control where all the damage goes" and the differences between how a band is formed on offense and defense and you've covered everything except mirror matches and corner cases.
I thought the same thing. I full expected it because of the reputation they have but I was still a bit annoyed to see that Protection and Banding, mechanics I was able to grasp just fine as a 7 year old back in the day, were ranked as more confusing than mutate. Mutate is easily in the top one or two most confusing mechanics. I think it is a combination of Nizzahon being primarily a limited player and the fact that most people haven’t been able to play mutate in paper due to the current situation. When non-rotating format players start playing it in paper people are going to start understanding how bad it is.
I remember playing Rampage as +X/+X when blocked with it growing with every additional creature blocking it, not realizing that the boost only starts after the first creature.
I think hideaway is an honorary mention because it's a single word that could never go without it's reminder text. A permanent with hideaway always enters the battlefield tapped for some reason.
The wish exile element is especially frustrating because exile wasn't really a thing then the wishes were first printed. Things were just 'removed from game' i.e. outside the game now. Then exile came in and straight up changed how the cards worked.
Soulbond is considered one the more complicated mechanics in MtG. Maro has said recently that this was mechanic that got the most questions when it was in Standard. (He was asked why Soulbond did not appear in Ikoria, as flavor-wise, it would have fit well with the humans bonding with monsters).
When I saw mutate at number 7, I knew this would be good! On the other end of the spectrum, I wish they would bring Rampage back. It's super simple and would be a nice Core Set keyword.
Hell yeah, rampage was awesome, and also pretty straightforward, though you would probably need a second ability (like trample or creature cannot be blocked by creatures with power less than 2 or something) in order to make it useful (enter Craw Giant).
I had a wolf deck that included 4 copies of Timber Wolves, which have banding. It didn't often matter, but it was occasionally hilarious whenever I was able to use banding to screw over the opponent.
I didn't come into magic proper until Tarkir block and even then, I understood Banding better than other players in my playgroup and this made me build a Soraya EDH Banding Birds deck in an attempt to force other players to learn it, as it is one of my personal favourite keywords.
The most amount of rules fights I've seen is like new players trying to destroy Nevinyrral's Disk or Prodigal Sorcerer in response to the ability. Explaining that the ability exists independent of the permeant on the stack.
Well, got 5 out of the 10 predicted. I'd predicted Planeswalkers, Vehicles, Manifest, Sagas, and Convoke in those spots. Totally forgot about Phasing though, or I would have had that there instead of Convoke.
I've always though Banding was super confusing, but then I took a second to read that oracle text and really tried to understand it, instead of just continuing the "banding is confusing" meme, and honestly it's not that confusing. Conplex sure, but it's very straight to the point. It only does 2 things you need to worry about, as opposed to something like Mutate. I really love mutate though
I always tell new players to look at protection as D.E.B.T. Creatures with protection cant be Damaged, Enchanted, Blocked, or Targeted by that particular color. It usually helps them understand boardwipes.
I loved this video, magic is so crazy to me. I’ve played protection and banding cards since I first was introduced to mtg by my uncle when I was young so those aren’t complicated to me. I think another interesting one is stuff like nether shadow or other cards in the legacy format that actually make the order of the graveyard matter. It says something like as long as 3 creatures are above it in the graveyard you can return it to battlefield at upkeep but it’s just this complicated thing where when can you and can’t you decide what order things go into your graveyard. It’s probably simple to some people but I could not understand dredge when i was younger
Saw the title, and new it was inspired by mutate. Also, it took me reading banding about 10 times just to grasp what banding does, but I still didn't fully understand it for a few years after
The biggest concern and headache back in the day with Banding was if you banded with creatures with another evasion mechanic, like flying, or protection. If you blocked a member of a band without those abilities, you technically blocked the ones with flying and protection, which you normally wouldn't be able to do.
My take on a “fixed” way to a Banding type effect: Unite (apologies if this is already a keyword) - When this creature attacks or blocks, you may tap any number of untapped creatures you control to have this creature gain +X/+Y until end of battle, where X is the combined power of those creatures and Y is the combined toughness of those creatures. As you can see, it’s still fairly complicated with the whole two different variables thing but still far less confusing than banding lol. You can also throw in “if this creature’s power is over 6, it gains trample” effects for good measure.
Back when I played in the mid 90's and I started with the awful Fallen Empire set I used to cheese Banding. It's actually a cool mechanic and helps keep your creatures alive. Bring Banding back!
I think banding is more of a meme about being complex than it actually is. It took me a while to learn how Mutate works, and TIL that Morph doesn't stack. For some reason.
IIRC with Banding, there is the concept of "Bands with Others" which made Banding even more counter-intuitive. In fact Bands With Others is so messy it has an 11 on the 10 point Storm Scale.
Another counterintuitive part of bestow is that, unlike every other Aura spell, if the creature that's been targeted is removed and no longer there, the bestow spell doesn't fizzle. It instead comes in as just a normal creature, essentially changing its spell type mid-cast.
I think tribal as a mechanic is fine, but alot of people, including Maro, think its complecated. Which is why we havent seen it in a standard set since the original zendikar block with eldrazi conscription. It is a card type and should be printed more often, especially since mutate and companion have been printed, we we can makd those in standard, we can make tribal
The Untap symbol was considered confusing because a lot people did not realize that you couldn't just untap the card. By that same measure, when Madness first came out, many people did not realize that some external effect had to cause the discard to trigger Madness.
I think the key word for mutate is "into" not "onto." 1) Mutate "into" target creature. 2) If there is no creature to mutate into, Starrix resolves, but does not successfully mutate.
Similarely to being confused about what doesn't work with fighting I was confused about just how impossible it is to deal with non-targeted life loss. I started playing during Throne of Eldraine and Cualdron Familiar was the bane of my existence, blocking my awesome green creatures, getting sacrificed and then coming back for insane value. Tried everything to stop the bleeding: The Wanderer to prevent the damage (doesn't work because life loss is not damage, somehow) or Leyline of Sanctitiy to prevent it targeting me (doesn't work because it technically doesn't target, even if it only hits me). Finally Hushbringer did the trick in the most round-about way - by preventing the activation of the ETB trigger instead of its effects...
The silly thing about "fight" is the word "fight" itself. Before introducing the keyword, the mechanic existed as simply "these two creatures deal damage equal to the strength to each other." That was easy to understand, and I don't ever remember having to discuss it. Then the keyword came along and suddenly it looks similar to combat. For new players, it must be really confusing. My partner refers to combat as "fighting" regularly. They will be really confused when they actually see a fight card and I explain to them that it's not the same as combat!
While phasing does not trigger ETB and LTB, the phasing permanent gets to keep auras, equipments and counters on it. So it's a major upside voltron-type decks (if they can control when it phases out).
Yeah, like what happens when you band a creature without flying and a creature with flying and attack with the group. I think, from what I've gathered, your opponent can block the group with a creature without flying even though one of your creatures has flying. It's strange.
2:45, you forgot to mention how confusing converted mana cost is for split cards and how it interacts with cards like isochron scepter and how converted mana costs has had rule changes with split cards that some player have not heard of.
You missed one of the bigger confusing things with protection: It causes enchantments and equipment to "fall off." You can give your opponent's creatures protection from a color it is enchanted/equipped by as a combat trick. Side Note: Curse of the Fire Penguin is the most confusing card but it is Unhinged.
I was really confused by mutate because on the wiki explaining it, it had it classified as an activated ability so I was trying to wrap my head around that... I started building a deck with the companion that decreases the cost of activated abilities with a bunch of mutate cards and used a bunch of my wildcards on it then it wouldn’t let me use the companion with the deck lol...
another confusing thing about morph is when you cast a morph face down it counts as a colorless spell thus allowing you to cast it from the top of your library with mystic forge or spend less mana with shrine of the forsaken gods. niche but neat.
Regenerate is one I have to explain all the time when I run it, and I had to do some research on it myself when I first staryed playing. Now banding. I love banding, as it can actually be very strong (RIP trample). However, since there are essentially four forms of it (banding and 'bands with' function differently, and the whole mechanic functions differently on defense, in all cases changing how you band creatures together) I only use it as a meme so I don't have to explain it over and over again to people, lol.
Madness is one that I thought might make the list, though I understand why it didn't-- it's mostly fairly intuitive in actual game situations. But my god, the rules for it are an insane mess. First, there's a replacement effect which replaces putting the card in the graveyard with putting it in exile-- but it still counts as a discard. Then there's a second, wholly separate triggered ability that goes on the stack to move the card either to the stack-- if you pay the madness cost-- or BACK to the graveyard-- if you didn't. So, for instance, you can Tale's End a madness card by countering the triggered ability (which is already exceptionally unintuitive based on the original madness reminder text), but if you do that, the card ends up in exile. Huh? Oh, and then there's this gem: 702.34c After resolving a madness triggered ability, if the exiled card wasn’t cast and was moved to a public zone, effects referencing the discarded card can find that card. See rule 400.7i. I mean, put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, eh?
I'm gonna have no end of questions about mutate. Currently I been thinking about building Snapdax in commander, so what happens when I mutate all my creatures onto the scorpion god? Would they all return to my hand when they're sent to the graveyard?
YOU CANNOT HAVE Mutate and Bestow back to back Bestow literally is what it says in the card while mutate makes you think "WTF" when you first read its reminder text!
In my opinion morph (and megamorph and manifest) and mutate are much more complex than banding. The big difference between these and banding is that with banding you are forced to learn everything immediately (how to build bands and how to assign damage), but then that's it; morph and mutate look simple at first sight, but then, as we say in Italy, "the Devil is in the details". The interactions are countless, while banding only interacts with blocking and combat damage assignment. I have been playing Magic since 1994 and I think that the overcomplexity of banding has become a sort of cliché, a kind of a myth that perpetrates only because nodoby knows how it worked and people are naming it as "the most complex mechanic ever" without ever having tried it because it was discontinued in 1997. I think the problem is that the ability was never explained really well, if not in an article on The Duelist n.2 (summer 1994) pag. 20 ("To Build a Better Band" by Beth Moursund) and the base rulebooks at the time were really badly written. If you didn't get the article, or you didn't have someone who explained you the details in the rules (as it was in my case) you had difficulties. Banding was never really pushed because they were afraid of its complexity, while in reality the problem with it (and with the old rules of Magic in general) was the very bad communication and explanation of Wizards of the Coast. The fact that was never pushed made it less and less used, especially in competitive playing, making it more and more "forgotten". MaRo said in an article that when he judged tournaments in 1995 one of the questions he got most was "how does banding work?". This is the result of their booklets poor quality. Personally, I have never had problems with banding. I have "judged" (despite not being a judge) a few local events (like Commander tournaments) in the last years and most of the questions that I got involved face-down cards in some way. This says a lot. But maybe that's just me...
I guess the meme is propagated also because banding is somewhat ineffective, at least from what I am seeing. The only real benefit of banding is that you can divide combat damage in such a way that no creatures or only those you do not need that much die. But it is pretty obvious what gives you an equivalent effect: Using bigger creatures and/or ways to pump your creatures. The same stats in one creature as compared to split over a band give you even a few points of damage more that can be absorbed before anything dies. Less cards invested to get an equal or even better effect. It's probably not that banding is too complex, it's too complex for the advantage you gain from it.
@@christiangreff5764 it's not true. Banding is extremely effective if used together with protection or regeneration: you throw all the damage where it is prevented or on the regenerating creature and none of your creatures dies.
For some reason, I seem to like most of these mechanics. Phasing was fun as hell ("My creature phases out...Wrath of God..hee hee...") and I'm loving Mutate as well.
Technically, you don't "block with a band" (as said at 11:56). It is just so that if one of your blocking creatures happen to have banding, then you get to assign the damage as you wish (if at least one creature with banding still lives when getting to the combat damage step). So actually, you can therefore only attack "as a band". So this just shows that the banding mechanic is indeed complex :)
Wishes used to get exiled cards during onslaught. It wasnt until they changed "removed from the game" to exile that they were within a zone in the game. Also, Banding rules
Part of the confusion surrounding wishing for exiled cards probably comes from the fact that you used to be able to do it. Back when "Exile" was "Removed From the Game" wishing for a card that had been removed from the game was both legal and a common tactic in decks that ran wishes (casting burning wish to re-buy Yawgmoth's Will for example).
Regarding Split Cards, I think one feature of the cards that exacerbates the confusion is the naming convention. Wouldn't a newcomer expect a card referred to as "Fire AND Ice" to permit the casting of both halves together. The only split cards that should use "and" in their names are the Fuse cards from Dragon's Maze. Aftermath cards use "to" and normal split cards should really use "or." "Or" would properly convey that players have a choice between Fire OR Ice, not the choice to cast Fire AND Ice.
@@kjmergen Using an example of a card that doesn't exist does not refute the point made. Basically what the OP meant is that the name given to those cards use the word "and" which confuses new players that then think they can play both sides of the card not just one.
@@kjmergen how, exactly, do you reach a point in life where you wake up, wash your face, look into the mirror, and say to yourself, "today feels like the perfect day to gaslight rosewater"
I'll be honest; since I started playing Magic just prior to Revised, i never found Banding that complicated. It seems relatively simple after playing it a bit. Certainly a bit less complex than Mutate.
It also was quite a powerful mechanic in the right hands, and I feel that the mechanic gets a bad rap on how GOOD it actually is. Theres a reason why Mishra's War Machine was such an expensive card to play and use. A 5/5 bander could deal a ton of individual damage while chumping all or most of the damage off to a 1/1 without losing the bander.
I would have put mutate higher on the list, while in standard and limited it is easy to get use to how it works when you look at how it interacts with other mechanics across magic history it is insanely complicated.
I used to own a bunch of banding cards and an old Ice Age rule book that actually made the mechanic clear. The problem was actually making the deck since I had the worst cards with Banding, so it just wasn’t worth it compared to basically any other deck that I could have made at the time.
wow, I never knew that morph doesn't use the stack. I was always confused by the fact that I couldn't explain it to my friends since showing them the text box would ruin the surprise element of the card. was so hard to play against noobs back in the Onslaught days when I 1st started
On the topic of wish spells something fun I was looking into is during a shahrazad game you are actually able to wish for cards from the original game as it is "Outside" the game. Of course the situation would never happen thankfully because shahrazad is banned in everything.
I have confusion on interactions of using setting effects on a creature with myriad before it attacks. Does that change what the copies will be? Or are the copies just copies of the card itself?
The only ones on this list I never had any issue with are Protection & Bestow. All the others certainly have tripped me up from time to time. Also, another small one I used to always forget, even when it was in Standard was Cypher (I think that's what it was). All I remember was it was some Dimir mechanic that drove me crazy whenever someone tried to use it once in a blue moon.
THE DAY HAS FINALLY COME WHERE I FIND OUT HOW BANDING WORKS
And then Mutate comes along and makes banding the basic version.
Banding?
Pft. All about *Bands With*.
Takes all the mechanics of banding, but then includes requirements for actual membership.
@@jonhu4127 Me too. I love banding. Not really that hard.
Almost.if you attack with a band of a flyer and a non-flier, the band can be blocked by creatures without flying or reach.
@Luke Steiner So you can control the damage. If i attack with a trample banded with a 1/1 body, i can assign deathtouchers and other nasty blocking damage to the 1/1 and keep the trample or other things safe. It's all about the options.
Imagine some cursed Enchantment that lets you take a stack of mutated creatures and attack with them separately, but they all gain banding and all band together for that attack.
*you are to dangerous to be keept alive*
And then they phase out.
@@imperium3556 And fight each other.
@@wolfdwarf BUT: They are also all regenerated. Which must both happen before they phase out or after they phase in since treated-as-non-existent creatures can't fight each other ...
@@imperium3556 Playing some Vanishing?
I still remember during the mirrodin prerelease seeing A LOT of people equipping stuff to their opponents creatures. I am guilty of doing it atleast once.
Some of these mechanics are more confusing/unintuitive for other reasons that you didn't go into. Phasing used to trigger leave play abilities but not enter play abilities. Exile effects used to be "removed from the game" where it would be legal to wish for cards there. Mutate uses the copy effects layer which gets overridden with p/t defining layers. Banding actually works differently when blocking than when attacking.
Was thinking the same thing as these. Especially Remove from game -> exile, that would confuse old players with Wishes.
Remind me: What’s the difference when blocking with banding?
Wait, you can no longer wish for exiled cards?!
Ok, wotc changed how wish works in 2010 but some newly printed wish cards also allows you to choose from cards in exile... very confusing
anywhere roam the Defending player assigns combat damage instead of the attacking player
When blocking with a band, only one of the banded creatures needs to have the banding mechanic (as opposed to all but one when attacking). Also, all creatures in the blocking band must individually be legally able to block the attacking creature in question.
Whenever I explain protection, I remind the player about DEBT
Damage
Equip/enchant
Blocking
Targeting
This usually covers most aspects about it. However, I have had to explain to a progenitus player that protection from everything does not mean protection from boardwipes.
... although it should have protection from *everything,* considering it is the soul of the world, after all.
Protection From Everything. From From Players. Protection From Being Touched. Protection From Being Played. Protection From Being Printed. Protection From Existing.
"Whenever I explain protection, I remind the player about debt"
Spoken like a true mob enforcer
But...Protection from everything doesn't means "Protection from boardwipes"? Its counterintuitive.
What Boardwipe is powerful enough to kill Progenitus? If I may ask.
Actually, in MTGA the reminder text from Fight specifies that the creatures deal noncombat damage to each other, so it's not that confusing as usually it is. A nice touch from the developers
Before watching, I’m guessing banding will be number one and protection will be somewhere in the list
Agreed
and he didnt even mention that back in the day it could be confusing to mix a creature with banding and some other ability (ie: trample) together.
I remeber always having the most arguments with friends about regeneration and protection. No one was ever on the same page when it came to those mechanics.
Now that you mention it I'm surprised regenerate didn't make the list, due to the flavor it's extremely unintuitive that you need to regenerate something before it's destroyed. The mechanic itself isn't complex so if they just called it "Barrier" or something it probably wouldn't confuse anyone, but they didn't so it does.
@@TheSquareOnes was also the fact regeneration caused the creature to tap and be removed from combat, or that regeneration did not save the creature if an effect would bring its toughness down to 0.
@@TheSquareOnes yeah, regenerate was so messed up they completely stopped using it.
@@Sweetguy1821 well in the latter case, if it _did_ save the creature from dying due to 0 toughness, you've prevent the death and the creature would stay on the board ... and then immediately die again, because it has 0 toughness
for it to actually be able to do anything about 0 toughness, it'd need to have some form of interaction with stat-changing effects. which would just add _loads_ more complexity to it, especially since unless you made it, say, flicker the creature, you'd run into the exact same issue with -1/-1 counters unless you decided to also make it so that regenerating a creature removed those
and not only would all of this add more complexity, but it'd boost the power of the mechanic significantly. it's one of those things where mechanics come together in such a way that one mechanic essentially ends up checkmating the other
Regeneration has two parts: First, when a creature regenerates, it gains a "shield" until end of turn. If that creature were to be destroyed while it has a "shield" you tap it and remove it from combat (if necessary) instead. It a creature would be destroyed multiple times, it will need that may "shields."
Indestructible is similar only it is simply "if this creature would be destroyed, it isn't." It doesn't matter how many times it is destroyed.
Note: When I say "destroy," I mean the MTG definition of destroy (cards that use the actual word DESTROY, lethal damage, and deathtouch.) Sacrifice, exile, 0 or less power are not destroy.
Regeneration should have been on the list, it was complex enough to be discontinued recently.
Man...I miss regeneration. That was the good ole days. I'd say its on the same level as 'fight'. Really the only issue with regeneration was weather -x/-x was used or not in killing it...or weather it was damage used in killing...and the order if both were used as to weather it survived after being activated or not. Also, you used to be able to activate it AFTER damage was on the 'stack' instead of it being a dumb 'shield' (which doesn't make sense).
Frankly I only found out how regenerate works last month... And I've been playing for 8 years!
I got back into magic recently after MANY years, and I was definitely confused about wish effects and exile, since exile has replaced "remove from the game" effects.
The problem with Exile now-a-days is that it is still considered IN the game. Where as previously remove from was just that.... gone.
ikr...its just another 'graveyard' zone now that has less cards that interact with it
I think it's really dumb that wishes don't hit exile. In fact I think it would be a really cool idea to have your sideboard begin the game facedown in exile. Not only would it streamline a mechanic normally completely outside the rules of play, your sideboard, back into it, it would increase the viability of both wish spells, and the incredibly niche cards that return a card from exile. I don't think either is so powerful that the two things blending together would be a detriment to the game, and it removes awkward moment where you shift focus away from the game to find your deck box and look through your sideboard mid game by streamlining it into the board state. Ultimately I don't think it would change much about how the game is played, but I do think it would be a quality of life improvement for the game, and would help introduce new best of one players to the idea of having a sideboard by making it less of this nebulous other thing you bring to change your deck on the fly into an actual element of laying out the board.
When mutate gets really weird is with flicker, bounce, or copy effects.
Is the stack of mutates just one big permanent that remembers what it mutated to when blinking?
@@danielwappner1035 no when they are flickered every creature in the mutate stack is put onto the battlefield seperately
Tbh, it's not that complicated...
Hellhole3927 It’s fairly complicated for experienced players. If someone who knows the ins-and-outs of the game really think about it, they can figure out how different scenarios play out with mutate, but it takes some reading and re-reading to really get the idea. But for less-knowledgeable players, yeah, it’s extremely complicated.
@@Crunchatize_Me_Senpai thanks god we have arena to calculate it instead of us
6:43 i just realized how strong Exalted Angel must have been in those days😮
Won Worlds.
correct. Exalted Angel was one of the most powerful creatures of her days.
Kind of suprised Split Second didn't make the list, lots of headaches and oracles came from cards with split second
I hated that mechanic. Especially playing blue against extirpate... 😡
When I first read split seconds oracle text a long time ago I did not have a grasp of the concept of the stack. So I substituted the next best thing: the library because it is a physical stack of cards. Can you imagine my confusion when sat there like: As long as this card is in your library, players can't cast spells or activate abilities ... What?
Split second in most cases just means "can't be countered"
@@zanderpxl581 In retroperspective: Yes. Very. Luckily, I only ever encountered it on magiccards.info so I did not build decks that "forbid myself from playing magic" XD
I dont see the difference between split second and “this card can’t be countered.” Can someone help?
I love that even after Oracle defined banding it still makes little to no sense
I explain banding as. "No"
The easiest way to explain Banding is, "he who controls the band controls the damage to the band."
If you control the banded creatures, you decide how the damage is received to those creatures, not the damage's owner.
Originally, Wishes DID let you get cards from exile, as it was "removed from the game". They only changed that after a while because a) it gave them more power and b) it was not how they were meant to work. So they clarified that "removed from the game" was, in fact not outside the game, but instead another game zone. Changing its name to Exile during the M10 changes was quite the blessing for clarity, but older players may still be used to wishes grabbing things from Exile. The Fact that Karn tGC actually HAS that text makes it even more confusing.
Me: Aight, I'm about to head to bed.
Nizzahon: *Uploads*
Me: Sleep is overrated anyway.
Every damn time.
i use these videos as background noise to go to sleep tbh
I started playing during RTR, and even though I also bought a decent amount of M13, one of the most confusing mechanics for my group was regenerate. It was so confusing, and not explained often enough, that we just took it literally for what it meant- pay the cost for a creature in the graveyard, and BAM! They’re back in play. As you can imagine, many kitchen games in my early years were played with an abundance of trolls, skeletons, and zombies until the revelation that regenerate wasn’t really that busted. Anyway, that’s why I would put it on my most confusing list👍🏻
I love that you pronounced Taniwha correctly. I didn't know that was the right way to say it for *years*, and only learned it after watching an episode of Destination Truth.
For those wondering, it's an actual mythological creature in Maori culture, so it has a definite, real-world pronunciation.
"Man, I really wonder why they didn't put reminder text on banding cards"
*sees reminder text*
"oh"
Well, that and banding only existed in an era where reminder text wasn't really a common thing at all. IIRC, none of the abilities introduced in Alpha were actually given reminder text until years after banding went extinct in Weatherlight.
Mutate can attach to creaturified planeswalkers, resulting in creatures with loyalty abilities... For that reason it should be top 5 on this list!
I've only been playing for 5 years, so I'm not exactly "new", and I learned some new things today.
This is very informative and much needed video
Really surprised not to see Haunt on this list!
other complicated mechanics are Regenerate and madness.
Regenerate was replaced with temporary indestructible and for some good reasons. Regenerate says that you tap it and remove all damage from it and remove it from combat. It gets more complicated though since abilities like wither and infect replace damage with -1/-1 counters which we see regenerate in both blocks with those mechanics. So confusion can happen.
Madness is a bit of an odd ability and seems intuitive enough. but how it functions is strange. When you discard a card with madness you put it into exile and decide if you want to pay for its madness cost. If you do it goes onto the stack from exile not from your hand. So if you wanted to cast your fiery temper on someone's Dranith Magistrate for its madness cost you couldn't because you're casting the spell from exile. This was put on reminder text later but it wasn't for either Torment or time spiral.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
I have seen a ton of MTG top lists that mention banding being a complicated mechanic, but this is the first time any of them actually explained wtf it does.
Now that I am enlightened I'd like to see this put on some contemporary cards to see how it would work in comparison. I mean cycling when it first came out was just "pay X amount of Mana & loot", now days we have alternative cycling costs, basicland cycling & built in synergies like Shark Typhoon. Given the power creep, & that a most cards have multiple abilities, it could be a rly cool feature.
Out of curiosity, how would this work w/ a creature banding w/ a creature that has a different evergreen word, like a Benalish Hero banding w/ a Lord of the Pit? Would the entire band be treated as if it had both flying & trample?
@@bstachutheuneatable1727 imagine it like a video game. If I'm in a party with someone (or a band) and my friend has a cool sword (or a keyword) I can't use the sword because he has it not me. He can use it because he has it. If creatures attack in a band each one is still different permanent and have their own sererate abilities.
@@bstachutheuneatable1727 quick reference on how banding interacts with other keywords:
Any evasion - ignore it unless all creatures in the band have the same evasion.
Damage altering keywords - banding only affects attacking and/or blocking, the creatures deal damage separately, as normal by their rules text.
I remember having difficulty grasping Soulbond... but that's probably mostly due to the fact that I was just getting started playing MTG, and got the Blessed vs. Cursed duel decks to try the game out
You used to be able to wish for cards in exile, back when exile was named removed from game zone.
That's before it was a zone. They changed the name to "exile" to denote it is in a zone that is a part of the game.
@@tylerhoppert5077 it was still a zone back before exile was a thing. It was named the "removed from game" zone.
Back in school in the 90s, tables were flipped and chairs were thrown over disagreements on how 'protection' worked.
Living weapon (0/0 germs?), manifest (especially for people that aren't already familiar with morph), and cycling (it's not casting, it is discarding, it is an activated ability).
If banding was not #1, I was fully prepared to spend my life trying to revoke Nizzahon's PhD.
This is what confuses me most of Split Cards: 708.4b The mana cost of a split card is the combined mana costs of its two halves. - Thats _doesn't_ count once on the stack. O_o. Also three in - I'm calling Banding (and bands with other) and Phasing.
Believe it or not, this is actually the simplified version of CMC for split cards. It used to be that the CMC of a split card when not on the stack was "both costs," which created a truly bizarre set of outcomes where if you cast a card that, say, caused your opponent to discard all cards with CMC 3, they'd discard a split card if either half had CMC of 3 (but NOT if the COMBINED CMC was 3), while if you cast a card that did damage to the opponent equal to the CMC of a split card, it WOULD see and damage them based on both combined costs (so if one half had a CMC of 2 and the other half had a CMC of 3, they'd take 5 damage).
Needless to say, this caused a huge amount of confusion and judge calls.
When a spell is on the stack, it's CMC is what is being paid to cast the spell that is not an additional or optional cost (such as kicker.) This includes the cost of X which is 0 anywhere else.
The CMC used to be each separate half, but there was a deck that used "Expertise" cards to cast split cards without paying their mana cost, but would choose the CMC half that was more than Expertise card's CMC or even both halves if it had fuse. The change was mostly due to those decks.
Wishes used to actually target what is now an in game zone labeled exile prior to M10 because cards were just considered removed from game and thus really outside the game
Ok two things about mutate:
If a Gideon planeswalker becomes a creature for turn and you mutate on top of him, you get a planeswalker who can't be attacked or bolted to loose loyaltie.
If you copy a mutated creature, you get all the text boxes as well.
Intuitiv mechanics for the win 😎
Isn't Gideon a human so you wouldn't be able to mutate onto him?
True, so...:
If you activate sarkhan to make all planeswalkers into creatures, then mutate on one on top you get it 😁
Neoxym depends who you put on top. If you put the mutate card on top it would be a creature with all of Chandra’s planes walker abilities, if you put Chandra on top, end of turn she would change back into a planeswalker with the phoenixes text box which would be useless to a planeswalker.
@Neoxym also, if you mutate a creature with different stats than 4/4 she will still be a 4/4 because Sarkhan's ability defines those values until the end of the turn.
The reason morph cant use the stack is, that when the card is flipped the information becomes known to all players and if it were still its back side while you see the front side (until morph would be resolved) would be so much less intuitive.
Protection was best explained way back around 1995 on the old mtg listserv. Remember, protection prevents DEBT:
-Damaging
-Enchanting
-Blocking
-Targeting
As for the wishes... pre-Magic 2010 you could wish for exiled cards as they were "removed from the game". I suppose this adds more confusion when some of us still remember wake decks that could cunning wish with a mirari copy for a card and another cunning wish that had already been removed for pretty much infinite fogs or whatever else was required to win.
Pretty nice list. I probably would have moved Mutate up to 4 myself. Also I probably would have put Regenerate at 9 or so.
Oh god, regenerate. Played that one right in the beginning, then wrong for years. I see why they entered a "removes from combat" in that but the timing of that removal is basically rocket sience (seems difficult until you aquire the right frame of thinking, then you feel dumb for ever having made the mistake). XD
I honestly think mutate is not that bad, 7th might be a little generous, maybe 6th. Regenerate is arguably worse.
I loved playing my Mirari's Wake deck from Odyssey Block. Back then, you could wish for cards that we now call Exiled because the Exile Zone didn't exist. It was like most control decks in that it was fun to play, not so much fun to play against. When I came back to Magic after a long break from the game I remember being quite disappointed when I found out about that rules change. I still had that deck together some place and I wanted to give it a try against whatever current standard deck my friend had at that time. That deck doesn't work nearly as well if you can't abuse Cunning Wish though.
Honestly I wish they would change the oracle text on wish cards to work on exiled cards. It was part of how they originally functioned and now for commander players wish cards are pretty much useless.
Mutate should be way higher on that list. There are so, so many special cases. How mutate interacts with blinking, bouncing, cloning, removal one the mutate target is the easy stuff. There is also mutating commanders, mutate on undying creatures, mutating on vehicles, mutating on flip cards, mutated creatures becoming another card type, ...
The command zone made a video in which they spend half an hour talking about how mutate works: ruclips.net/video/vHNqIjxMYhQ/видео.html (They got at least one interaction wrong. Creatures are only tokens, if the top creature is a token.)
About Phasing, in the beginning 'phase out' did trigger 'leave the battlefield' abilities ("leave play" abilities at the time).
However, 'phase in' never triggered 'enter the battlefield' abilities (which was very unintuitive at old times...)
That's why card s like "Ertai's Familiar" had original text like
"When Ertai's leaves play, ...", and now have a text like "When Ertai's Familiar phases out or leaves the battlefield, ..."
The rule was change after a few years so 'phase out' stop triggering 'leaves the battlefield' and cards like "Ertai's Familiar" that were created to interact with 'phase out' received an errata.
One slight correction about phasing. It actually used to do LTB effects but not ETB effects. This is because nothing really cared if something left the battlefield. That was until the set Torment had arrived years later in which we had a variety of nightmares with ETB and LTB effects. One of these was Wormfang Manta. It had an ETB effect of "Skip your next turn" and a LTB effect of "Take an extra turn after this one". So if you put something like a Vanishing on the manta and phased it out, you would always get extra turns, but you wouldn't lose extra turns except for the initial time you cast the Wormfang Manta if you couldn't pay an extra UUU for Vanishing. Wizards took notice of this and snipped the LTB from phasing.
If you want to experience the best half of banding, the defensive half, get yourself a Defensive Formation card.
Great work on the Taniwha pronunciation!
Lots of people corrected me on another video haha
You didn't mention that people try to fetch exiled cards with the Wishes because they used to actually be able to do that. Before the they coined the term "Exile", it was just "removed from the game", which counted as "outside the game" at that point. The old Mirari's Wake decks would use Cunning Wish (or Burning Wish in some versions) with Mirari to copy it and fetch the card they wanted + another Wish they had already RFG'd to get effectively unlimited value. It definitely made me a little sad when they made that change.
Wish cards actually used to be able to get cards "exiled" from games before exile and the exile zone existed. That is because those cards did not move did at one point "Remove" the target from the game. When the term Exile and the exile zone were created and added this interactions ended, now exile zone is inside the game. Before things like Plow removed the card and you indeed could wish it back.
Another thing with mutate - flicker effects. It really doesn't seem intutive that a mutated creature gets separated by them. Also, mutate's interaction with legendary creatures.
This, but not only flicker effects, basically everything that makes it so that a Mutated creature leaves play but doesn't go to the intended area. Bounce effects bounce all the stack back to hand, OK, killing it kills all the stack, that's logical, now how about a creature with a Mask counter from Athreos, Veil-Shrouded?
I had a freind of mine in hysterics trying to work out what the fuck was going on when he attacked with a board of 3 mutated creatures with mask counters and I cast Settle the Wreckage.
It'd still be unintuitive for me it came back as the same big creature.
What's the ruling with legendaries?
The fact that the command zone had to make an HOUR long video to explain all of the various interactions of mutate probably says enough to the difficulty of mutate. Phasing and most of the mechanics ahead of it in your list can be explained in 4 sentences or less.
Mutate is definately number 1 by far here. And there is questions no one asked yet about it.
Heck, even banding is mostly just "all your creatures attack/block together, your opponent can block if they can block any member of the band, BUT you control where all the damage goes" and the differences between how a band is formed on offense and defense and you've covered everything except mirror matches and corner cases.
I thought the same thing. I full expected it because of the reputation they have but I was still a bit annoyed to see that Protection and Banding, mechanics I was able to grasp just fine as a 7 year old back in the day, were ranked as more confusing than mutate. Mutate is easily in the top one or two most confusing mechanics. I think it is a combination of Nizzahon being primarily a limited player and the fact that most people haven’t been able to play mutate in paper due to the current situation. When non-rotating format players start playing it in paper people are going to start understanding how bad it is.
I remember playing Rampage as +X/+X when blocked with it growing with every additional creature blocking it, not realizing that the boost only starts after the first creature.
I think hideaway is an honorary mention because it's a single word that could never go without it's reminder text. A permanent with hideaway always enters the battlefield tapped for some reason.
To remember what protection does I use the word DEBT: Damage, Enchant/Equip, Block, Target. I read this trick on a wiki and I found it very helpful.
The wish exile element is especially frustrating because exile wasn't really a thing then the wishes were first printed.
Things were just 'removed from game' i.e. outside the game now. Then exile came in and straight up changed how the cards worked.
Soulbond is considered one the more complicated mechanics in MtG. Maro has said recently that this was mechanic that got the most questions when it was in Standard. (He was asked why Soulbond did not appear in Ikoria, as flavor-wise, it would have fit well with the humans bonding with monsters).
When I saw mutate at number 7, I knew this would be good!
On the other end of the spectrum, I wish they would bring Rampage back. It's super simple and would be a nice Core Set keyword.
Hell yeah, rampage was awesome, and also pretty straightforward, though you would probably need a second ability (like trample or creature cannot be blocked by creatures with power less than 2 or something) in order to make it useful (enter Craw Giant).
@@SliderFury1 Menace with Rampage would be scary
I had a wolf deck that included 4 copies of Timber Wolves, which have banding. It didn't often matter, but it was occasionally hilarious whenever I was able to use banding to screw over the opponent.
I didn't come into magic proper until Tarkir block and even then, I understood Banding better than other players in my playgroup and this made me build a Soraya EDH Banding Birds deck in an attempt to force other players to learn it, as it is one of my personal favourite keywords.
Now try explaining how Mutate interacts with Morph and Transform
The most amount of rules fights I've seen is like new players trying to destroy Nevinyrral's Disk or Prodigal Sorcerer in response to the ability. Explaining that the ability exists independent of the permeant on the stack.
"I activate Nevinyrral's Disk."
"I destroy your disk in response."
"I... activate the disk in response to your response..."
"I... Oh... I see..."
Well, got 5 out of the 10 predicted. I'd predicted Planeswalkers, Vehicles, Manifest, Sagas, and Convoke in those spots. Totally forgot about Phasing though, or I would have had that there instead of Convoke.
I've always though Banding was super confusing, but then I took a second to read that oracle text and really tried to understand it, instead of just continuing the "banding is confusing" meme, and honestly it's not that confusing. Conplex sure, but it's very straight to the point. It only does 2 things you need to worry about, as opposed to something like Mutate.
I really love mutate though
It's very confusing, especially once you start mixing in other keywords.
And then you get to bands with others and that's even more confusing.
@@Ninjamanhammer no it is not. Other keywords don't change how banding works in the slightly and vise versa.
Mutate should be #1... due to how clones and such interact and how all layers are effected like the top.
I always tell new players to look at protection as D.E.B.T. Creatures with protection cant be Damaged, Enchanted, Blocked, or Targeted by that particular color. It usually helps them understand boardwipes.
I loved this video, magic is so crazy to me. I’ve played protection and banding cards since I first was introduced to mtg by my uncle when I was young so those aren’t complicated to me. I think another interesting one is stuff like nether shadow or other cards in the legacy format that actually make the order of the graveyard matter. It says something like as long as 3 creatures are above it in the graveyard you can return it to battlefield at upkeep but it’s just this complicated thing where when can you and can’t you decide what order things go into your graveyard. It’s probably simple to some people but I could not understand dredge when i was younger
Saw the title, and new it was inspired by mutate. Also, it took me reading banding about 10 times just to grasp what banding does, but I still didn't fully understand it for a few years after
The biggest concern and headache back in the day with Banding was if you banded with creatures with another evasion mechanic, like flying, or protection. If you blocked a member of a band without those abilities, you technically blocked the ones with flying and protection, which you normally wouldn't be able to do.
My take on a “fixed” way to a Banding type effect:
Unite (apologies if this is already a keyword) - When this creature attacks or blocks, you may tap any number of untapped creatures you control to have this creature gain +X/+Y until end of battle, where X is the combined power of those creatures and Y is the combined toughness of those creatures.
As you can see, it’s still fairly complicated with the whole two different variables thing but still far less confusing than banding lol. You can also throw in “if this creature’s power is over 6, it gains trample” effects for good measure.
Your take is nether complicated nor as good as banding.
Back when I played in the mid 90's and I started with the awful Fallen Empire set I used to cheese Banding. It's actually a cool mechanic and helps keep your creatures alive. Bring Banding back!
cloudparter every time I tweet Maro I end it with some variation of "bring banding back"
I think banding is more of a meme about being complex than it actually is. It took me a while to learn how Mutate works, and TIL that Morph doesn't stack. For some reason.
IIRC with Banding, there is the concept of "Bands with Others" which made Banding even more counter-intuitive. In fact Bands With Others is so messy it has an 11 on the 10 point Storm Scale.
Another counterintuitive part of bestow is that, unlike every other Aura spell, if the creature that's been targeted is removed and no longer there, the bestow spell doesn't fizzle. It instead comes in as just a normal creature, essentially changing its spell type mid-cast.
I think tribal as a mechanic is fine, but alot of people, including Maro, think its complecated. Which is why we havent seen it in a standard set since the original zendikar block with eldrazi conscription. It is a card type and should be printed more often, especially since mutate and companion have been printed, we we can makd those in standard, we can make tribal
I haven't seen Maro say it isn't used because it is complicated. I have seen him say it was just difficult to make it work in most sets.
I'm glad you said something about bestow, I was just thinking about how I used to play it wrong.
The Untap symbol was considered confusing because a lot people did not realize that you couldn't just untap the card. By that same measure, when Madness first came out, many people did not realize that some external effect had to cause the discard to trigger Madness.
I think the key word for mutate is "into" not "onto."
1) Mutate "into" target creature. 2) If there is no creature to mutate into, Starrix resolves, but does not successfully mutate.
Similarely to being confused about what doesn't work with fighting I was confused about just how impossible it is to deal with non-targeted life loss.
I started playing during Throne of Eldraine and Cualdron Familiar was the bane of my existence, blocking my awesome green creatures, getting sacrificed and then coming back for insane value. Tried everything to stop the bleeding: The Wanderer to prevent the damage (doesn't work because life loss is not damage, somehow) or Leyline of Sanctitiy to prevent it targeting me (doesn't work because it technically doesn't target, even if it only hits me).
Finally Hushbringer did the trick in the most round-about way - by preventing the activation of the ETB trigger instead of its effects...
The silly thing about "fight" is the word "fight" itself. Before introducing the keyword, the mechanic existed as simply "these two creatures deal damage equal to the strength to each other." That was easy to understand, and I don't ever remember having to discuss it. Then the keyword came along and suddenly it looks similar to combat. For new players, it must be really confusing. My partner refers to combat as "fighting" regularly. They will be really confused when they actually see a fight card and I explain to them that it's not the same as combat!
While phasing does not trigger ETB and LTB, the phasing permanent gets to keep auras, equipments and counters on it. So it's a major upside voltron-type decks (if they can control when it phases out).
Banding gets even worse when you start mixing in keyword abilities and other niche situations.
Yeah, like what happens when you band a creature without flying and a creature with flying and attack with the group. I think, from what I've gathered, your opponent can block the group with a creature without flying even though one of your creatures has flying. It's strange.
No, it doesn't. The rules explain it perfectly, people just get confused because they want to feel smart and ask questions that doesn't matter.
@@psy_p People ask questions to play the game correctly, not to sound smart...
Props for getting the pronunciation of Taniwha correct. Heard some interesting variations over the years
2:45, you forgot to mention how confusing converted mana cost is for split cards and how it interacts with cards like isochron scepter and how converted mana costs has had rule changes with split cards that some player have not heard of.
You missed one of the bigger confusing things with protection: It causes enchantments and equipment to "fall off." You can give your opponent's creatures protection from a color it is enchanted/equipped by as a combat trick.
Side Note: Curse of the Fire Penguin is the most confusing card but it is Unhinged.
I was really confused by mutate because on the wiki explaining it, it had it classified as an activated ability so I was trying to wrap my head around that... I started building a deck with the companion that decreases the cost of activated abilities with a bunch of mutate cards and used a bunch of my wildcards on it then it wouldn’t let me use the companion with the deck lol...
another confusing thing about morph is when you cast a morph face down it counts as a colorless spell thus allowing you to cast it from the top of your library with mystic forge or spend less mana with shrine of the forsaken gods. niche but neat.
Even Mark Rosewater, when discussing phasing on a podcast, got the mechanic wrong, thinking the cards changed zones.
Regenerate is one I have to explain all the time when I run it, and I had to do some research on it myself when I first staryed playing.
Now banding. I love banding, as it can actually be very strong (RIP trample). However, since there are essentially four forms of it (banding and 'bands with' function differently, and the whole mechanic functions differently on defense, in all cases changing how you band creatures together) I only use it as a meme so I don't have to explain it over and over again to people, lol.
If I may recommend for your memeing purposes, get a copy of Defensive Formation. its the defending half of banding.
Madness is one that I thought might make the list, though I understand why it didn't-- it's mostly fairly intuitive in actual game situations. But my god, the rules for it are an insane mess. First, there's a replacement effect which replaces putting the card in the graveyard with putting it in exile-- but it still counts as a discard. Then there's a second, wholly separate triggered ability that goes on the stack to move the card either to the stack-- if you pay the madness cost-- or BACK to the graveyard-- if you didn't. So, for instance, you can Tale's End a madness card by countering the triggered ability (which is already exceptionally unintuitive based on the original madness reminder text), but if you do that, the card ends up in exile. Huh?
Oh, and then there's this gem:
702.34c After resolving a madness triggered ability, if the exiled card wasn’t cast and was moved to a public zone, effects referencing the discarded card can find that card. See rule 400.7i.
I mean, put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, eh?
I'm gonna have no end of questions about mutate. Currently I been thinking about building Snapdax in commander, so what happens when I mutate all my creatures onto the scorpion god? Would they all return to my hand when they're sent to the graveyard?
Yes, all cards come back to your hand in the next end step cause the God's ability is a delayed trigger.
YOU CANNOT HAVE Mutate and Bestow back to back Bestow literally is what it says in the card while mutate makes you think "WTF" when you first read its reminder text!
In my opinion morph (and megamorph and manifest) and mutate are much more complex than banding.
The big difference between these and banding is that with banding you are forced to learn everything immediately (how to build bands and how to assign damage), but then that's it; morph and mutate look simple at first sight, but then, as we say in Italy, "the Devil is in the details". The interactions are countless, while banding only interacts with blocking and combat damage assignment.
I have been playing Magic since 1994 and I think that the overcomplexity of banding has become a sort of cliché, a kind of a myth that perpetrates only because nodoby knows how it worked and people are naming it as "the most complex mechanic ever" without ever having tried it because it was discontinued in 1997. I think the problem is that the ability was never explained really well, if not in an article on The Duelist n.2 (summer 1994) pag. 20 ("To Build a Better Band" by Beth Moursund) and the base rulebooks at the time were really badly written. If you didn't get the article, or you didn't have someone who explained you the details in the rules (as it was in my case) you had difficulties. Banding was never really pushed because they were afraid of its complexity, while in reality the problem with it (and with the old rules of Magic in general) was the very bad communication and explanation of Wizards of the Coast. The fact that was never pushed made it less and less used, especially in competitive playing, making it more and more "forgotten". MaRo said in an article that when he judged tournaments in 1995 one of the questions he got most was "how does banding work?". This is the result of their booklets poor quality.
Personally, I have never had problems with banding. I have "judged" (despite not being a judge) a few local events (like Commander tournaments) in the last years and most of the questions that I got involved face-down cards in some way. This says a lot.
But maybe that's just me...
I guess the meme is propagated also because banding is somewhat ineffective, at least from what I am seeing. The only real benefit of banding is that you can divide combat damage in such a way that no creatures or only those you do not need that much die. But it is pretty obvious what gives you an equivalent effect: Using bigger creatures and/or ways to pump your creatures. The same stats in one creature as compared to split over a band give you even a few points of damage more that can be absorbed before anything dies. Less cards invested to get an equal or even better effect. It's probably not that banding is too complex, it's too complex for the advantage you gain from it.
@@christiangreff5764 it's not true. Banding is extremely effective if used together with protection or regeneration: you throw all the damage where it is prevented or on the regenerating creature and none of your creatures dies.
For some reason, I seem to like most of these mechanics. Phasing was fun as hell ("My creature phases out...Wrath of God..hee hee...") and I'm loving Mutate as well.
Technically, you don't "block with a band" (as said at 11:56). It is just so that if one of your blocking creatures happen to have banding, then you get to assign the damage as you wish (if at least one creature with banding still lives when getting to the combat damage step). So actually, you can therefore only attack "as a band". So this just shows that the banding mechanic is indeed complex :)
Wow, I had NO idea that Morph didn't use the stack! And I've playing MtG for over 15 years!
Just the action of paying the morph cost don't use stack. Abilities triggered by turning the creature up use it normally.
Wishes used to get exiled cards during onslaught. It wasnt until they changed "removed from the game" to exile that they were within a zone in the game. Also, Banding rules
Thanks man for the upload. Atm I'm sick and drained and tired of the world and these videos always bring a smile to my face and calm me.
Glad to help!
Part of the confusion surrounding wishing for exiled cards probably comes from the fact that you used to be able to do it. Back when "Exile" was "Removed From the Game" wishing for a card that had been removed from the game was both legal and a common tactic in decks that ran wishes (casting burning wish to re-buy Yawgmoth's Will for example).
Regarding Split Cards, I think one feature of the cards that exacerbates the confusion is the naming convention. Wouldn't a newcomer expect a card referred to as "Fire AND Ice" to permit the casting of both halves together. The only split cards that should use "and" in their names are the Fuse cards from Dragon's Maze. Aftermath cards use "to" and normal split cards should really use "or." "Or" would properly convey that players have a choice between Fire OR Ice, not the choice to cast Fire AND Ice.
There is literally no card named 'Fire And Ice'. Try again.
@@kjmergen Using an example of a card that doesn't exist does not refute the point made. Basically what the OP meant is that the name given to those cards use the word "and" which confuses new players that then think they can play both sides of the card not just one.
@@kjmergen how, exactly, do you reach a point in life where you wake up, wash your face, look into the mirror, and say to yourself,
"today feels like the perfect day to gaslight rosewater"
New players don't even know about namong conventions, many experienced don't do either.
I'll be honest; since I started playing Magic just prior to Revised, i never found Banding that complicated. It seems relatively simple after playing it a bit. Certainly a bit less complex than Mutate.
It also was quite a powerful mechanic in the right hands, and I feel that the mechanic gets a bad rap on how GOOD it actually is. Theres a reason why Mishra's War Machine was such an expensive card to play and use. A 5/5 bander could deal a ton of individual damage while chumping all or most of the damage off to a 1/1 without losing the bander.
Banding might be underrated, but Mishra's War Machine is not a good example of that. It is one of the worst creatures ever.
@@NizzahonMagic lol...you're not wrong. It's horrendous. I suppose I was trying to explain why the developers felt it had to be so expensive.
I would have put mutate higher on the list, while in standard and limited it is easy to get use to how it works when you look at how it interacts with other mechanics across magic history it is insanely complicated.
I used to own a bunch of banding cards and an old Ice Age rule book that actually made the mechanic clear. The problem was actually making the deck since I had the worst cards with Banding, so it just wasn’t worth it compared to basically any other deck that I could have made at the time.
wow, I never knew that morph doesn't use the stack. I was always confused by the fact that I couldn't explain it to my friends since showing them the text box would ruin the surprise element of the card. was so hard to play against noobs back in the Onslaught days when I 1st started
On the topic of wish spells something fun I was looking into is during a shahrazad game you are actually able to wish for cards from the original game as it is "Outside" the game. Of course the situation would never happen thankfully because shahrazad is banned in everything.
I have confusion on interactions of using setting effects on a creature with myriad before it attacks. Does that change what the copies will be? Or are the copies just copies of the card itself?
The only ones on this list I never had any issue with are Protection & Bestow. All the others certainly have tripped me up from time to time.
Also, another small one I used to always forget, even when it was in Standard was Cypher (I think that's what it was). All I remember was it was some Dimir mechanic that drove me crazy whenever someone tried to use it once in a blue moon.
Another confusing one from a ravnica block was Haunt. I mean I understand it (basically grants a death trigger) but it’s really weird