The ZONE Podcast: Nerdy News and Reviews
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The ZONE Podcast: Nerdy News and Reviews
Magic the Gathering (Innistrad Remastered and Aetherdrift): New Meta, New Potential and a New Bracket System?!
This episode dives into the recent releases of Innistrad Remastered and Aether Drift, revealing their impact on gameplay and deck-building strategies. We explore key cards, mechanics, and player experiences, shedding light on the dual nature of excitement and challenge these sets present in the Magic: The Gathering community.
- Overview of Innistrad Remastered and Aetherdrift
- Key cards and themes highlighted in Innistrad Remastered
- Exploring Aetherdrift’s focus on tokens and energy mechanics
- Discussion of potential combos and interactions between new cards
- Insights on commander decks and their evolving strategies
- Reflections on community feedback regarding recent card changes
Text us for feedback and recommendations for future episodes!
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DISCLAIMER: The thoughts and opinions shared within are those of the speaker. We encourage everyone to do their own research and to experience the content mentioned at your own volition. We try not to reveal spoilers to those who are not up to speed, but in case some slips out, please be sure to check out the source material before you continue listening!
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- J.B.
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hey yo, it's been a while since we talked about magic, the gathering and we were going to talk about innistrad remaster back in january. But honestly, I wasn't really feeling innistrad remaster. I mean, it is kind of nice if you're like looking for reprints of some good cards that came from the previous innistrad um sets, but if you're like, at the same time, I think it mainly benefits the vampire players, you know, the edgar markov players, and there's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I'm just saying it's like yeah, it wasn't the set for me, ether drift. However, I had a feeling that ether drift was like the same way how I felt about bloomboro, to where I was like thinking, oh well, there probably ain't nothing for me, right, whatever?
Speaker 1:And then I was looking at the previews and the spoilers and I was like, well, hold on, what good they might be up to something with this, especially with the new, uh, goblin manador for crinko. So we're gonna be talking about a whole bunch of cars between the two sets. So consider this the episode where we're gonna to talk about Innistrad Remastered and Aether Drift. I don't know if the panel is going to have a whole lot to say about Innistrad Remastered, but we're going to go ahead and ask them.
Speaker 1:So Saitama Smash Tattooed Enigma. Welcome to the show. Tell me how y'all felt about Innistrad Remastered.
Speaker 3:Well, like you said, I think it was definitely a set that catered to bringing some attention back to the vampires, a little bit of support for the werewolves. They did have some nice reprints in it. We got a new poster art for Gitrog Monster, which is one of my personal favorite cards. I love the Gitrog Monster and all of his variations. But yeah, I think it was just a good reprint set, you know, hence the remastered. I think it was overall a decent set.
Speaker 1:Speaking of which, you just got a new Get Wrong Monster deck box design and whatnot, so check out Something Crafty Printy on Etsy. Something Crafty Print on Etsy. My bad, I was run on sentence, but yes, you got a new deck box available in your shop, so that's good, absolutely, and we'll have it in our shop soon too.
Speaker 3:I'm actually starting to paint it. Uh, hopefully tomorrow, given circumstances work out the way I want, I'm gonna start painting them and hopefully I'll have them ready to go and once I get him fully painted up and stuff, they'll go live everywhere that I can sell them. So that'll be a fun one to have. Um, but yeah, I think that the inner star remastered set it was, it was good, had a lot of good reprints. Um, of course, we got the first reprint of permit through it, which for a long time was a pretty pricey card. Now it's come down in price a little bit, which that's kind of nice. So, um, you know it, it helped some things, it it was a good, was a good in-between set, if you ask me.
Speaker 1:I do admit that I do appreciate that they brought back Ren and Seven in this set, because you know me having Ren and Six, and also Six thanks to you Tattoo, and I kind of need Ren and Seven and Ren and Realm Breaker for something going on. Because, of course, in case the listener isn't familiar with Ren and Seven, I'm going to read you the abilities. Essentially he is a mono green five drop. He's a planeswalker, starts off with five loyalty counters plus one. You reveal the top four cards of your library, put all land cards revealed this way into your hand and the rest into your graveyard. A zero ability where you put any number of land cards from your hand into the battlefield tap. So it's kind of like, uh, mana bond, but you have to bring it in tap and also you don't have to have that condition to where it has to be. Well, if with Bond the way it works is that at the end of your turn you reveal your hand, you put all the lands into your battlefield untapped, but that also implies that you got to throw away everything else in your hand. So it'd be best if you played everything and all you have is lands in your hands and that when you mana bond activates, bam, I just put my whole hand on the battlefield and just do that mana ramp that way. But what I like about Ren and Seven is that you don't have to go that far. It's more like just put all your lands onto the battlefield. Yeah, they're tapped, but you might have like some like wilderness reclamation and just they just come on tapped anyways.
Speaker 1:Negative three you create in this reclamation and just they just come untapped anyways. Ah, negative three you create a green three folk creature token with reach and its power and toughness is equal to the number of lands you control. So that's decent, uh, and it's negative. Eight is return all permanents to. Uh, you're from your graveyard to your hand and you get an ammo where you get no maximum hand size. So not bad for green. You're thinking like that's something blue will be Cooking up, but it's good that it's in green, like that's my main thing. But uh, oh, yeah, conjuror's Claw made a Reappearance where Essentially you're able to like blink One of your creatures, and that Does come in handy sometimes. You know, yeah for sure. Uh, y'all got anything one of your creatures and those come in handy sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure Y'all got anything, any cards that stuck out for you in any Trevor Master.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, of course, like I said, the Gitrog reprint. I liked all of the movie poster parts that they did. I liked all of the movie poster parts that they did. I think Snapcaster Mage, that was a good card. I think that was an excellent card and a good time for that one. Other than that, though, I mean we got a new cool Cultivator Colossus. We got a new cool art for the Meatloaf Massacre. I mean, a lot of this was just just just. We got a new cool art for the meat of massacre.
Speaker 1:I mean, a lot of this was just just oh yeah, our Creator hoop behemoth also made a reappearance in this one. It's one of those cards where okay, ted is uh, if you got whole lot creatures in your battlefield already, just pop out on creator who behemoth, and essentially you just get a already. You just pop out on creator group behemoth and essentially you just get a big power boost based on how many creatures you already have on the field, and you also get trampled.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, that's definitely a card that, uh, you play it with the intention of winning because if you don't, the crack back is unreal.
Speaker 1:So you got to be ready for the crack back If you're not able to pull the Victory out, for sure, honestly, that's really all I had to say About Industry, remastered Like Mehoop Master, like you said On Tattoo, like it's nice, especially like the sequel to it, but that's in a different set. But yeah, that's pretty much it. Sycoma, you got anything you want to add on?
Speaker 2:uh plenty. Yeah, I'm actually uh excited with the uh and it's our remastered, the fact that, um, some angels are coming back and making the field a lot strong with angels and spirits. I'm seeing the return of like voice of the blessed, amazing, amazing card. Cost for two, gain life, buff it, gain more life. It hits like mad crazy On cards like wedding announcement Is good because it's a classical card that a lot of decks Will be using for token decks and for buffing those tokens and or all creatures Already on the battlefield. So zombies too. I love that, love zombies. Uh, some of you don't know, I have a wilhelm deck and, as you may know, wilhelm black and blue love zombies, especially with the color combination of dimmer oh, especially if you have rooftop storm on the field.
Speaker 1:You know that enchantment where you pay zero rather than the mana cost for zombies on creatures.
Speaker 2:So it's like bam, bam, bam, fire, x, x and Alter have that zombie that costs for one, sacrifice it, bring it back over and over, just bring it back over and over, over and over. And if you have Rooftop Storm, infinite mana, um, in some cases infinite life, infinite creatures, um, and you just nuts over and over, over and over. Also, for people who like to like blink certain cards out with blue, um, eth, essence flux is also coming back. I, like you guys said, created who behemoths. I need that for my deck, um, because I have big creatures and I need to make them bigger and hit harder with trample hall breaker. Come on, everybody loves hall breaker, horror the point.
Speaker 2:The foil that came out with the full art is is amazing because you get a better look at how disgustingly feisty this thing is oh yeah, I actually I got really lucky and I pulled a foil full art of it and I pulled a retro frame.
Speaker 3:So I have a really nice retro frame and I have that foil full art and as soon as I pulled it, dude, I stopped everything immediately. I was just I. I stared in that car for like 10 minutes because it's like the original art is cool, but that new art, oh my God, dude, chef's kiss.
Speaker 1:You were like buddy from Parks and Rec was like it's beautiful.
Speaker 3:I stared at it for five hours. Exactly, exactly. Dude, I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe it. I was like man this card is so awesome. Flabbergasted, I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1:I was like man, this card is so awesome, but uh, so tell me, yeah, anything else you want to add on to Innisfree.
Speaker 2:Evermaster, yes, and I'm also seeing a couple new cards I've never seen before, at least that's me. Um, imprisoned in the Moon is an enchantment aura.
Speaker 3:I love that card. I'm sorry, that is a great card. I love that card.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry that is a great card. I love that card. Oh, oh, what? What? Creature land or planes Walker is a colorless land with ad colorless Dude.
Speaker 3:So so blue has imprisoned in the moon Right, and I love in prison in the moon. I don't remember how I came across that card, but I found it and I was like there's no way, this is like a legit thing. And so I was like this card has to be like. It can't be legal in all the formats. And I looked it up and I was like holy hell, it is legal and it's awesome. I love that card. Black has a card that, um, I think it should have been um, well, I don't want to say it should have been, but I think it would have been a good uh for, uh, this set. But it's called oubliette. Um, have you ever heard of the oubliette card?
Speaker 3:I have not oh, my god, okay, hold on, I gotta. I gotta find this real quick because it's just as me. Um, so ugliet. It says um, it's one black black enchantment. When ugliet enters the battlefield, target creature phases out. Until ugliet leaves the battlefield, tap that creature as it phases in this way. Oh, that's so fucking. You play Oubliette and you're like, hey, your commander's just gone, and then when it comes back it comes in. So you know, wow, it's not as harsh as Imprisoned in the Move, but I mean like it's still. It's still just, it's good man, so imprisoned in the mood, but I mean like it's still it's still just, it's good man.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I was really happy to see that card come. Hey, uh, slide into the group chat so I can take a look at it all right, yeah, I'll send it to you.
Speaker 2:That's so nasty, that's so fucking nasty, that shouldn't, that shouldn't be allowed dude, I'm telling you, man, it's, it's fun, it's a fun card.
Speaker 3:I have one of them somewhere and I keep trying to find somewhere to put it in a deck. And I just like, every time I put it in a deck as I start building it, I'm like, ah man, I don't know, this doesn't really go with it. So I always end up taking it out. But I think what I'm gonna do is, uh, I just I just decided, I think I'm gonna tune up my um yogmoth deck and I think I'm gonna slide it into there, because I think that would work pretty well.
Speaker 2:You have a Tomb of Yawgmoth deck.
Speaker 3:Well, it's a Yawgmoth Thran Physician deck, but it's just absolutely nuts. That deck is stupid.
Speaker 2:Yawgmoth is death in and of itself. Dude, that's so fucking nasty.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but yeah, that Oogliette card, it's where it's at and I mean, like dude, it's like $2, it's cheap. I'm looking at it, yeah, that card is Nice.
Speaker 2:There's some good cards that do fucking nasty ass damage. I know Black has an enchantment that it goes on to your opponent. Every time an opponent casts anything, just casts a spell, they either lose five life or discard a card.
Speaker 3:Yeah, is that painful? No, it's not painful. Damn. I can't think of the name of the card you're talking about, but I know what you're talking about. I can see it in my head.
Speaker 2:And I know Shit. They play it on MTG Arena sometimes and I, most of the time, since I'm playing green, I have Boseju, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. One second.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, yeah, Some okay cards.
Speaker 3:That was in it, if you ever met yeah it was a good set, but I mean it was a remastered set. So I mean we knew that it's just like every other remastered set that they do. You know they're gonna pull some of the big guns but it's not gonna be, you know, a banger set necessarily. Well, I mean they have potential, but sometimes, most of the time watsi likes to, they'll pull the trigger on like one or two like really big hits and then they kind of dial it back, so kind of like with the inner star remastered. Their big pull for this was hey guys, we're gonna reprint edgar markham for the first time, and you know it was that's what everybody was going after. Was that that serialized Ed?
Speaker 2:Right, I'm excited for Aether Drift. Dude, I see that Innistrad has miracles for miracle decks, like temporal mastery. So people who have miracle decks, they're gonna eat good. Give me an extra turn. Nope, give me an extra turn. Nope, give me an extra turn. Nope, give me an extra turn. Nope, give me an extra turn. So my idea here is to have this Blazer Kitten and that mage that costs for four, that, when it comes in, return Instant and Sorcery from your graveyard to your hand.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And then just keep casting it over and over. Mm-hmm. Over and over over and over, over and over, and then you can maybe have a brainstorm or something that costs for cheap, and just keep doing it over and over.
Speaker 3:Yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a good call. You know what People hate me. On that note, let's just go ahead and slide into Ethan Drips because, my fucking God, I was so surprised by some of the cards that came out with this set. Like, first of all, like, surprisingly, the Mamioplasm players are gonna love this one March of the Rose Rock. Oh yes, sir, creatures, you control Mamioplasm players are going to love this one.
Speaker 3:March of the World.
Speaker 1:Ooze, oh yes sir, creatures you control have base power and toughness 6-6 and are oozes in addition to the other types, and whenever an opponent casts any spell if it's not their turn, you create a 3-3 green elephant creature token, but it doesn't matter, because you're going to end up being a 6-6 ooze elephant.
Speaker 3:So yeah, your token, but it doesn't matter, because you're gonna end up being a six six ooze elephant.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I, uh, I got lucky. I got lucky and I pulled one of those and as soon as I saw it I knew immediately where it was gonna go. And it went in my, my squirrel deck. Because that deck does nothing but crank out little small tokens. And as soon as you get, you know march of the world is out and you start cranking out those tokens, making more and more tokens. That little that that board state that you had before the enchantment, you're like oh well, you know, it's just a couple of a couple of little squirrels, you know it's, it's just chump blockers. But now all of a sudden they're six sixes. They go from chump blockers to real fucking problems.
Speaker 1:Bro, you know what. That's why I'm kind of glad that you know. I have my Krinko deck right and I'm going to talk about that Goblin Mana Dork in just a moment. I'll get to that later. But my whole point is I'm going to add another Krinko to my main deck, so it'll be like my uh creature token um engine and then I'm gonna pop march of the world ooze on at the same time. So that way whenever you cast any spell I'm pretty much spitting out uh ooze um creature, but at the same time, keep in mind, I'm gonna have like maskwood nexus and crinko and the goblin manador, uh house squad heavy. That way I'm just creating infinite tokens. That's coming at at least 6-6. Oh my god, dude.
Speaker 3:The buffoonery that would happen in a game where those cards all were on the field at the same time is just absolute nuts man. That would be so much fun. That's like perfect Christmas land, where you get that shit out and the engine starts working. Nobody throws a wrench in the plan, you know, but it's like it's like to, to echo the cream go I or the crinko sentiment uh, the last time I played my crinko deck um I. I started, I started slow, I missed my, I missed the mana drop on like turn three, because I was like I, oh, I got two mana in hand, I'll be fine. I missed my turn three mana drop, but I ended up pulling a soul ring. And then the next turn I pulled a basic and I was like dude, I'm off to the races.
Speaker 3:I had Warren Instigator out. Whenever he deals damage, he's got double strike. And whenever he deals damage, you can put a goblin card from your hand onto the battlefield. Just just put it onto the battlefield, right. So I'm like shit bet, I hit. I hit my uh, one opponent. He had nothing, he had no blockers, hit him twice. I got two goblins out. So now I got three goblins out. Boom, I hit with a, I put crinkle on the battlefield. Two turns later I had like 28 goblins and the whole table was like all right guys, look, wait a minute. We got to shut that down, right, because if we don't shut that down it's going to get out of hand. So they nixed damn Krinko off the field and then every time I played him it didn't make it a full rotation. He was gone before it got back to me.
Speaker 2:I played him like four times and then after that I was like I can't, I can't cast crinkle for like 12. I just can't do this. You can't. That's because he can't leave crinkle out for too long.
Speaker 1:That's, if you leave him out at least two turns, it gets nasty real quick see, that's it makes me feel bad because I was just cobbled up my crinkle deck when, um, my friends, uh, my new, uh, pod was just new to the game, so they weren't aware of crinkle at the time. I wasn't aware of crinkle, really, but I just put them together because, like, hey, what, why the fuck not because his ability sounds cool.
Speaker 1:So I put him together, right, and by the time I got them out and by I don't know, turn three, turn four, I was like at 84 Goblin creature tokens and they're like hold the fuck on, like how are you popping out so fast? I'm like, well, you know, I'm just doing the math, like, okay, check this out. I had like five, six Goblins out on the field before Krinko. So I'm like like all right, so let me tap for each um one. Okay, so make six. And then I untapped. And then, next thing, you know, I'm like all right, so I already have like 12 now. So like, okay, let's do the math again. And I just kept doing until the point where, okay, hold on and you know there's.
Speaker 3:There's nothing better. There's nothing better for a crinko deck than an artifact or something else that allows you to untap a tapped creature. Because you tap Krinko you make 10 goblins and then you untap them, you tap them again and then you make a shit ton more goblins and after you do that once or twice you're just kind of like everybody at the table is kind of like we should have never let that little green bastard hit the table, is kind of like oh, we fucked up, we should have never let that little green bastard hit the table.
Speaker 1:We got something bad, oh yeah, oh unrelated, but another card that really caught my interest, which actually got me interested in the energy counter mechanic Nissa, the new Nissa card, where she's a creature this time around, but check this out, she has landfall. Whenever a land you control enters, she gets. You get two energy counters, but you may pay eight energy counters rather than pay the mana cost for permanent spells you cast. So, in other words, my favorite, one of my favorite mana ramp spells like uh, well, not my favorite mana ramp, but well it is, but it's my favorite landfall, infinite landfall combo with kodama of the east tree, uh, where essentially you try to make an infinite landfall with that combo and essentially, when you have nissa on the field, just keep making energy counters and you can just, instead of spending mana on your permanent spells, you can just spend energy counters and you just save that on mana for later yeah, and then you can just have conduit of worlds and have you know play lands from your graveyard.
Speaker 2:Oh hey, by the way, there's an evolving wild and a pteromorphic expanse on that graveyard, mhm oh, speaking of energy, there's an evolving wild and a pteromorphic expanse in that graveyard, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Oh, speaking of energy, let's talk about Aetherflux Conduit. Whenever you cast a spell, you get an amount of energy counters equal to the amount of mana spent to cast that spell, and if you pay 50 and tap Aetherflux Conduit, you draw seven cards. You may cast any number of spells from your hand without paying their mana cost. Energy is looking pretty good, especially with the new Saheeli commander deck. It was Timur, green, blue, red. I want both. Actually, I want Living Energy and Eternal Might, because they're both looking pretty good right out of the box.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I have an energy deck back from when, you know, the Fallout set had their energy deck and then the set after that had an energy commander as well. So it was kind of a good time right there for energy. And then they kind of took a break, you know, for the time spent in between, and so I was kind of surprised to see that it took them as long as it did to pick back up and kind of give energy some more support. But there's definitely some cards in this set and it makes sense, you know, given the theme of ether drift, that they would have energy, because you know cars, energy, physics, gotta get a job. But however it just it just makes sense and they didn't disappoint Energy. Within a, I would say, 16-month period, energy went from a very forgotten mechanic to a very viable mechanic, very quickly too at that.
Speaker 1:You just gotta put out the right cards and the potential is there. That's why whenever I see new cards come out and it seemed like okay on its own, probably not that impressive, but I got a combo or a deck that will add value to that card absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Speaking of cards that can potentially lead to nasty interactions, there's this beautiful blue enchantment that came out in Ether Drift Unstoppable Plan for two and a blue At the beginning of your end. Step untap all non-land permanents you control.
Speaker 1:So we're just gonna.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're just gonna go stupid on my turn. Oh, and then, by the way, everything's going to get untapped.
Speaker 1:We were just talking about wilderness reclamations where you untap all your lands, so essentially a Simit player would have fun with both enchantments on the field to where you're untapping everything by the end of your turn.
Speaker 2:We're going to untap our lands. Come on, minot, another card that's new to the set.
Speaker 3:That's absolutely absurd. Radiant Lotus it's so funny because you see online a lot of the arguments that have happened since they announced Radiant Lotus. They're like how can they ban Jeweled Lotus and then put out Radiant Lotus? It's just a fun card, listeners, if you're not familiar which I'm sure you are because this card has been all over the internet- it's an artifact. Six drop. You tap, sacrifice one or more artifacts. Choose a color. Target player adds three mana of the chosen color for each artifact sacrifice this way.
Speaker 3:So when I saw this card right, I initially thought I was like man that's absolutely nuts because you have a way to just pump mana and and allow yourself to get a lot of mana right. But then I got to thinking and I was like there's got to be another way to do something really stupid with this card. And then I found this commander. I was going through some of my cards and I found this card and I was like holy shit, if this does not scream, put Radiant Lotus in this deck, I don't know what does. Have you guys heard of an old card called the earlock of scorch thrash? Uh yes. Black, red, green uh yes the mana burn exactly a player.
Speaker 3:Losing unspent mana causes that player to lose that much life. And then he has an ability for one and tap him. Each player adds black, red, green. Well, with radiant lotus I don't know if you have a deck that makes a lot of treasures or food or clues or anything. That's a lot of artifacts that you can sac to just give the guy across from you a whole lot of mana that's just going to immediately go away, and what's he going to do? He's going to lose life, and what's going?
Speaker 2:to be crazy. He's going to lose life and we're going to be crazy. You can sacrifice what? Three treasures? That's three, six, nine mana. Oh hey, by the way, just lose nine life and you have eight life. So fuck off my table.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's just with three treasures. But imagine if you're like me once again with the kodama, the east tree combo, except I'm pumping out treasure tokens, clue tokens, uh, food tokens thanks to uh academy manufacturer, and essentially it's like I have like an infinite amount of tokens. Imagine if I have those two cards out on the field and I'm like, yeah, so I'm gonna go ahead and get rid of all these tokens that I just made. And I'm like, why would you do that? I'm like, yeah, so I'm gonna go ahead and get rid of all these tokens that I just made. And I'm like, why would you do that?
Speaker 3:I'm like you'll see, yeah, and also if you think about this, right, if you think about this with your log, he's got black and he has green. So if you have uh, I don't know bitter blossom in your deck, where you're cranking out you know little fairy tokens.
Speaker 3:If you have any green token generator which you could throw a fucking rock and hit ten of you just talked about march of the world, by the way, exactly if you have any of these token generators in any of these colors, right hell, if you've got crinko in your deck, you just crank out a bunch of fucking goblins, for instance, and then you have, uh, just any card. Uh, that makes, I don't know, all permanents. Uh, all permanents are artifacts now. Uh, well, now sacrificing your tokens microsoft lattice and biotransparence.
Speaker 1:That exactly that's one's for, though exactly so.
Speaker 3:if you have micro synth lattice and your everything artifacts now, anytime you want to sacrifice you know anything, just for shits and giggles, oh, I'll. Just if you've got you know an altar, I'll sacrifice 13 tokens that are now artifacts to my altar so that you can get what? 26? Or no 13. Oh my God, I can't even math right now. The point is, the point is shenanigans are you better break out that calculator? Exactly. It's at that point where the table just sits down and goes okay, come on, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:But I've noticed that this season of Aether Drift, this is basically Urza kind of touching himself gently, because there's a lot of ways to bring. This is basically Urza kind of touching himself Gently there's a lot of ways To bring artifacts Out on the battlefield Transit Mage. I don't even want to talk about him right now, but I know that there's One that people are going nuts over, which is like Repurposing Bay Pay 2, tap, sacrifice an artifact, search the library, sacrifice an artifact, search the library for an artifact with the mana value plus one of the sacrifice's mana artifact value and put it onto the battlefield. There's a lot of that in that season of Aether Drift Sacrifice and bring in, sacrifice, bring in. It's like we're tutoring and it doesn't seem fair. And then you got last ride. It gets negative X, negative X. Where it's your fucking life total. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And speaking of Last Ride, the full or the borderless and just the regular art, all of the artwork on all the different versions of this card is just absolutely amazing. Can I say that these the alternate artworks for a lot of these cards in this Aether Drift set. I love it because you've got like I don't know if you guys remember, I do. I remember this because my father worked on cars when I was a kid. There was this old drawing, this old cartoon character. His name was Ratfeet, he did like hot rods and shit like that, right, and he was like this really oddly drawn rat character who had like warts and blisters and all these like straight hairs and shit, right, and he wore like red suspenders with an rf on the front for his name.
Speaker 3:But, like all of these alt art cards remind me, uh, of that.
Speaker 3:Like, for instance, um, the gas guzzler, the vampire rogue with start your engines, this creature enters, tab the max speed ability, all that his, uh, his special art is just so reminiscent of that.
Speaker 3:Uh, rat fink's style of art, uh, I just love it. It's like this cool, like, uh, nostalgic callback to the whole old-timey hot rod movement where, like it was this very specific stylized style of art and it's just a really cool thing that I never it's one of those things that I never in a million years would have thought would creep into magic the gathering. But I mean, given the way things are going now with all of these universe beyond and secret layer drops and all this other stuff, it makes sense. But it was still a pleasant surprise for me because it was a part of my childhood that I had kind of forgotten about until I started seeing the spoilers pop up and I was like, oh my god, this is absolutely amazing. It's like that, that hot rod art from my childhood, and I love it. So I'm gonna make a point to try to collect all of those uh artworks for those cards, if I can, provided they're not horribly expensive. Hold on.
Speaker 1:I just remembered something, another card that just came out in this set when we were talking about spitting out artifact creature tokens and what not? One card called stridehanger automation, automaton, my bad. Essentially, the options you control get 1-1. Okay, not that bad. But if one or more artifact tokens would be created under your control, those tokens plus an additional thopter is created instead. So you're doubling the amount of artifacts you're creating from the uh artifact generator that we were just talking about. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's so nasty, that's so goddamn nasty. And there's also.
Speaker 1:And keep in mind, prophets usually are flyers, so yeah, they're flyers, so yeah.
Speaker 2:They go nuts Shit With flyers and protection and flying in the ground. That shit is amazing, absolutely. I see that there's gods coming back with catcher mows and uh oh, loot, loot the pathfinder. Then what is that? Riptide gear, hulk, double strike and prowess when this creature enters very japonam. But the one target non-land permanent that puts it on the library there from top.
Speaker 3:That's so nasty dude they did they did some really fun stuff, bringing a whole new cycle of gear hulks in, because you know we had uh in older sets. We had a nice set of uh gear hulks, you know like colossal gear hulk and all that um. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that and you know they didn't disappoint. Like you know the Coldstroke Gearhulk, he's got Menace and Death Touch and when he enters you put target creature card with mana value 4 or less from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control with a finality counter on it. That creature gains Menace, death Touch and Haste. At the beginning of your next instep you exile that creature. I mean, like it's just, it's just fun little things like that where you could take something really good or you could be really petty and like, say, the guy across from you plays spore frog. Well, okay, well, I'm just gonna take your spore frog and on my side so you can do all kinds of fun shenanigans with a card like that, you know.
Speaker 1:No hold on. You want shenanigans, I'll give you shenanigans. This new Chandra planeswalker. This is the first Chandra that I was like, hey, I need this one, check this out.
Speaker 1:At the beginning of combat of your turn, choose up to one target vehicle you control and until end of the turn it becomes an artifact creature and gains haste. That's its passive. Now, plus two, you sacrifice an artifact or discard a card. If you do, you draw a card okay, not bad, uh, it's okay, but it's zero ability. You create three, two, um vehicle artifact with crew one okay, not, that's cool. This is where it got me interested. It's negative seven, where you get an emblem with whenever an artifact you control enters, this emblem deals three damage to any target. So keep keep in mind about this. Usually with emblems, as long as you have the loyalty counters for it, you can make multiple emblems. So I say that when you're spending a whole bunch of artifact creature tokens or creature tokens in general, like we discussed before, creature tokens in general, like we Discussed before, essentially Every time you produce a Food token, a treasure token, a clue token, you're doing three damage to any Target, like it can be your opponent, it can be Any creature, it can be another planeswalker.
Speaker 3:Yep and yeah, and you know, the cool thing with that is, you know, if you have this card in a deck that's blue, so you've got green in there too. If you play a card like Doubling Season, what you then end up with is you double the counters that you put on for your upticks and when it enters, it enters with double. So if you have doubling season out and then you play Chandra, you immediately minus seven her the turn she comes in, and then when you plus two her, you actually plus four her. So you have the ability to make a lot of crazy, crazy plays. If you have something like that available to you, um, so it's it's. It's crazy that that ability is, you know, repeatable, like that, like you said, where you can just make multiple emblems like that, because you know, if you have the ability to play her and then immediately ult her to get that emblem, well, what the fuck?
Speaker 3:what's the table gonna do? Because, like nobody counters it as soon as it's played. Nobody counters it, it's right off the table as soon as it hits and you have doubling season out. It's, it's dude, dollar, dollar just gonna get pinged, and in two more turns. I'm doing the shit again, so you're just gonna get pinged for a. In two more turns, I'm doing the shit again, so you're just going to get pinged for a lot more if you do not handle this right now.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah, Hell yeah. Another planeswalker that I was kind of surprised about. Let's talk about the Aether Spark for a minute.
Speaker 1:Like how it's the first artifact planeswalker that's also an equipment and as long as the ether spark is attached to a creature, it can't be attacked and the equipped creature whenever um it deals damage. During your turn you put that mean loyalty counters on the ether spark, so it'll have that uh counter ramp when, depending on what creature you're attached to, plus one. The creature that's attached to it Gets a one more encounter and you're just pretty much Attached to any creature that you choose. Negative five you draw Two cards and you know I don't think it's that worth it for two cards. I don't know, it depends on how you're playing it, but it's negative. Ten Is you add ten mana Of any one color. So that's good for like mana ramp. So, and for Forge drop colors, that's not bad.
Speaker 3:That's not bad at all.
Speaker 1:It's like a good little mana rock in a way that kind of buffs your equipped creature.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then there's also take into consideration. There are cards. You know, typically if you have unspent mana at the end of your turn, you lose that mana, but there are cards that allow you to keep unspent mana at the end of your turn. So if you have a card that allows you to do that in your deck, with this you can ult it. That's just 10 mana that you can hang on to, you know, and you just carry it over, and so there's a lot of things that you can do with that card that you can hang on to, you know, just carry it over, and so there's a lot of things that you can do with that card that can add to and make it very interesting, for sure when we were talking about doubling season and what not.
Speaker 1:That reminds me of another card that came out with this etheric amplifier where it's like a mana rock where you add one mana of any color for a three drop artifact. That's cool. And then, of course, the main thing is when you uh pay for and tap it, then you choose one of the other and you only activate this as a sorcery. But of course, when you use this card, it'll be best if you had like clock of omens and a bunch of artifact tokens that you don't mind sacrificing to do so. But either you can double the number of each kind of counter on a target permanent or double the number of each kind of counter that you have on yourself. So that's like, if you have what would be counters that you have on yourself, that would benefit you. But, like, the only time I remember something like that is if it was like either poison counters or rag counters. But I don't think as a player you probably have counters, I don't know, or, unless it means energy counters. That's probably what it is energy counters.
Speaker 3:Well, you got to think there's ways to manipulate that. There's ways to manipulate that. So you've got like indestructible counters, you've got shield counters and shit like that. And then there's cards like the Ozolith that allows you to remove counters from a card and put it on the Ozolith no-transcript and you can redistribute those counters. So there are counters that are beneficial to the player. It's just a matter of piecing the combos together, you know. But I mean, there's definitely things that you can do like that.
Speaker 1:yeah, Okay, yeah, it's like it's not that crazy on its own, but it really depends on how you're playing the card, like how it fits In your deck, and I'm like, okay, I can kind of See it now Like say, for instance, let's talk About the commander decks A little bit, after that we'll probably Like close it out. I know Saitama had to Step out because something came up and I appreciate him for being on the show, but we're going to probably close it out After we talk about the commander decks. Just for a moment. Saheeli, like I was saying earlier, she's one of the two commanders in the new commander decks, where with her she's Timur.
Speaker 1:Whenever you cast an artifact excuse me, an artifact spell or an artificer creature spell, you get one energy counter and at the beginning of combat of your turn, you may pay three energy counters. When you do, you create a token that's a copy of that targeted permanent that you control. It's 5-5 artifact creature and it's just other types and have haste and you sacrifice it at the end of your next instep bug. You have things like conjurer closet and my favorite right now sundial of the infinite, where you just end the turn. It's like ah ha ha, I fucked over the rules. I'm not getting rid of shit absolutely, yeah, there's a.
Speaker 3:That card is always fun because you can definitely, uh, put a damper on someone's plans for sure. Uh, that's definitely a very good card. I'm pleased to see that they got some more love. Um, you know, I was, I was kind of staying away from the pre-cons, um, but the zombie pre-con, hashitan scarab's fist, he seems pretty fun.
Speaker 3:Uh, the only reason I didn't want to get him is because I have a demir. I don't demir. Uh, I love my zombies, I love, I love my, I love my scarab god. I know there's other zombies that are good, but I can't let go of my Scarab God. So the fact that he's white, black, blue, I can't bring myself to it because I feel like I'm cheating on my Scarab God. However, that does not mean that he isn't good, because I think he actually does have a lot of potential. Whenever you discard a creature card, you may pay two and a blue, and if you do create a tap token, that is a copy of that card, except it's a four, four black zombie. I mean the just just the ability to discard. Uh, so much, uh, you can. You can do a lot of stuff with that man, especially with the love that this card has, and then, of course, um the, the card that really I'm really happy that they reprinted. That pre-con is the Zombie Master. You and I talked about this.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, the.
Speaker 3:Zombie Master, where other zombie creatures have Swamp Walk and other zombies have Black Regenerate and it's permanent. And you know, you and I were talking about how you slap Zombie hunter in a fucking deck with her board and and fucking the maskwood nexus dude and you've just got shenanigans of abounding. So like I'm really happy that they reprinted that for sure that's, that's definitely a good card to have.
Speaker 1:The crazy part is the crazy part is taciturn. Is not even the commander in this deck. Like the actual commander I want to say it's not bad, but like the potential is not really the commander in this deck, like the actual commander I want to say is not bad, but like the potential is not really there. In comparison, it's almost like the commander is more like uh, just pretend Hatchitan doesn't exist. He's not a real threat. But like, here's the thing, pivot, uh, he has Vigilance, menace and whenever you attack, attack you draw a card, then you discard a card and whenever you draw a card dumps, you control, get one more to enter turn. See, that's not that threatening but has a ton. Yeah, that's a lot of potential with there. Uh, but he's not the commander.
Speaker 3:That's the weird part well, I mean, you know, they, they always give you two cards in there that you can make and they like to say you know, you've got your main commander, your backup commander, and you know, I liked. I looked at Tomet and I was like, yeah, you know, that's cool, but I kind of liked Hashatan a little bit more, just because my mind immediately went to some shenanigans that I could pull with that. But you know, once again, like I said, I can't, I can't not do my scarab, god man. And the fun thing is, is the scarab?
Speaker 1:god is in the pre-con.
Speaker 3:He's there, yeah and so, like the synergies are there, man, I just I guess it's, I guess it's me showing favorites, because I've played scarab god for so long that I just it's like, it's like, uh, it's like. I had this conversation with my group the other night about crinko. I was like there's so many other goblins but I I can't do a goblin deck if it's not my crinko deck. I just can't. There's, especially with the ether drift set they did. They printed a very fun, uh, red, green, uh goblin that my buddy wanted to build. And you know I was like, hey, man, you know, good for you, go, go for that. But I'm staying firm with my damn Krinko man. And that's just how I am with my Scarab guy too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, if anything, I'll make another goblin deck and be like okay with the multiple colors, and I'm like, okay, like Shattergame Brothers. And I'm like okay, like shatter game brothers. I'm like, uh, okay, I just fit it in there. But, like crinko, there's always going to be a mono red crinko deck, like absolutely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, because I mean like that, that red green one that I was talking about, redshift, the rocketeer chief, vigilance tap. Add x mana of any one color where x is red, ships power. Spend this mana only to activate abilities and then his exhaust ability. Um, for 10 red green, put any number of permanent cards from your hand onto the battlefield. You know it's crazy, crazy ability. And in red and green, you know you have. You have the color that ramps, and then you have the color that's fast and does direct damage, and so like there's, there's potential there. And I saw that card and I was like color that's fast and does direct damage, and so there's potential there. And I saw that card and I was like damn, that's cool, but I wish you were mono red because you would fit in nice with Krinko. But you're not, so I don't know. But there's always ways around that. I just built me a Korvold deck and he's got red and he's got green and I've got creakle and corvold, so maybe he'll fit in there somewhere oh yeah, oh uh.
Speaker 1:Another creature where it's like not the commander, but kind of surprising that, um, the sub commander is like kind of more interesting than the actual commander. Uh, and the living energy deck. When I was talking about tahili, uh, the other one was pia nalar, uh team mechanic. I was reading about her and I'm like hold on, check this out.
Speaker 1:So whenever you uh one or more artifact creatures you control, deal, combat, damage to a player, you get two energy counters and at the beginning of your instep you pay one or more energy counters and if you do, you create an xx uh vehicle artifact I'm named no, our uh etherjet, excuse me with flying and crew 2, where x is the minimum of the amount of energy spent that way. So in other words, you just crank it out. Another artifact creature token uh, and the fact that it's timber, you can run doubling season, all those different token doublers into a point where I'm like, bro, if anything, I'm like I'm kind of more excited about this timber deck than the s protect absolutely and go ahead and I was gonna say, um, they got all those other cool stuff like, uh, the adaptive om Omni Tool where you get 1-1 for each artifact.
Speaker 1:You control the Aether Flux Conduit, like I mentioned earlier, the Aether Amplifier, chromatic Lantern, midnight Clock, bootlegger Stats. Like bro, like this deck looks so stacked. I'm like, hey, yo, like it looks good right out of the box.
Speaker 3:I'm like, get this deck looks so stacked. I'm like, hey, yo, like it looks good right out of the box, I might get this one. Yeah, absolutely. And then you know once again, don't forget, they just printed unstoppable plan that would slot in very nicely where you go nuts, and then you just untap all your damn permanents at the end of your turn you know, it's like.
Speaker 3:It's like it feels like they're kind of starting to like. It felt like prior uh well, they've gotten really good about it recently, the past couple of years but uh, back when my buddies and I were like really starting to get into commander, like um, we really picked it back up, like I always play. I used to play standard um and then I stopped playing and then my buddies and I started playing right around with the uh, the og, edgar markov, uh pre-con. Yes. So I bought I have the original edgar markov pre-con and I actually tore that apart to build a new edgar deck. But, um, that's when we first started right.
Speaker 3:And back then it was like I remember, when they would release a commander deck, they would release the four commander decks, you know, in a set or whatever, and they weren't really at that time, they weren't tied to a specific set, but you would get the commander deck and you could look at the commander deck and it really felt like you got this deck and it was like 60 to 70 percent of the most of the decks. Granted, there were a couple that it was a lot better, but most of the commander decks that they were putting out back then as the pre-cons, uh, you would look at them and you would get like 60 of them and you'd be like, yeah, that's good, but what the fuck is this other 40 percent? Like what is this? I don't understand why this card is in here right.
Speaker 3:And now, especially the past couple years, like I said, these pre-cons have started getting tighter and tighter to where, like, you get a pre-con and sometimes you just look at this pre-con and you go, I mean shit, this is actually kind of good straight out the box, like do I really need to upgrade it? You know, of course it's always good to upgrade things because they always make the pre-cons run a little slow, so there's always ways to improve. You know whether it's through the mana base or through other cards to swap out, but the, the pre-cons, have definitely gotten tighter and more efficient as the years have gone on. And this is just like you said. Looking at the, the deck list for this, this team of pre-con, it's like damn, this is kind of a banger right here.
Speaker 1:I kind of wish I might have to call my local shop and see if he's got one available, because I might be building the team or energy deck and taking my damn jessica energy deck apart, you know I feel that, yeah, like et Dress was actually kind of surprising to where, like there's like a lot of potential going on, to where, like you know what, let's go ahead and talk about the whole bracket system and the game changers that they did. Now I'm like Wizards, what are you doing, see?
Speaker 3:I think they're shooting themselves in the foot, because the bracket system is really, really dumb in my opinion, and I'll tell you why Because they put so the way I'm looking at this. Right, they have their quote-unquote game-changer cards and if you look at these game-changer cards, these are all of the cards that and this is my hot take I know that I'm going to step on somebody's toes here. I know there's going to be people that are like, well, that's just mean to say their game changer cards are all cards that people bitch and cry about playing against because they feel that the cards are too oppressive to the game, right, like you got cards like Turgrid and you've got like Turgrid is your prime example here that I can can use.
Speaker 3:You sit down at a table and you see someone pull out a turd. Their turgrid is in the command zone. You know when turgrid is going to get played, relatively, I mean. Obviously you know ram, etc, etc. But, like you know for a fact that if somebody's playing a Turgrid deck, they're not coming to be cute, they're coming to do mean shit, right, they're coming to play your deck against you. So you got one of two options here. You either look at the person and you say, hey, man, look, I'd rather not play against that deck, and if that's the deck that you want to play, cool, but I'm not going to participate in this game and you get up and you walk away. Or you sit here and you say, okay, cool, well, I know I need to run a deck that's heavy on counters and heavy on removal, because when Turgrid comes because, realistically, look, I used to have a Turgrid deck and I took her apart and I was thinking about rebuilding her again. But when I played my Turgrid deck, man, if she got wiped off the board twice, I usually didn't play her again because at that point. It's a lot of mana just to play the commander.
Speaker 3:So I think that with them, uh, doing their game changer cards, right, they just took all of these cards that all of the people have bitched and wanted to complain about for all of these years and they're like okay, well, these are the cards that hurt people's feelings and make games go too quickly, so we're gonna mark these as game changers and you know if, if it continues the way it's going, there's potentially bannable material here. And then their bracket system. I know, I just I know for a fact. Some asshat at watsi sat down and was like guys, this is how we fix this problem. We do these brackets and we put these rules and stipulations on them.
Speaker 3:But they didn't think about the fact that commander allows you to use so many cards that you can literally find cards that cost a little bit more that do the same thing as cards that are in the game changer category. Because when you look at the game changer cards, what I feel like they were doing is is they were saying, well, these are the mean cards and these are the cards that make games go too quickly, so we want games to last longer, so we'll put these in the higher tiers so that those games go quicker but your casual games go longer. Well, when you take those fast cards out, you force me to use slower cards that do the same thing. So now I can build a super oppressive deck that's gonna play in a longer game but achieve the same thing as those game changer cards.
Speaker 1:So they've effectively circumvented their whole system yeah, it's like they're just adding extra steps to the same shit that we already been doing. And plus, with turgret like, okay, as much as I love turgret, I would say I would never play as a commander. Because, uh, because if I'm playing turgret as a commander, like that should tell you right out of the gate that I don't care for your feelings once we're at the table, like as a friend outside the table, okay, of course. But if we're gonna play, especially we play in a competitive setting, like if we're at it, uh lgs, like playing a tournament, there's like, uh, money on the line, there's cars on the line. I'm like fuck your feelings, man, I came to win so yeah, like I get it.
Speaker 1:If you're like at home and shit, it was like I'm not going to go too hard on you, but like if you standing in my way of winning big money or whatnot, like I'm going to use everything in my power to stomp your ass out. Like I'm sorry, but you're not going to tell me like, oh, I'm supposed to let you win. Like I to like give you like a little leg or like a little van. No, fuck all that.
Speaker 3:Like you just ask your opponent to set you up exactly because, when you think about it right, when you look at any other format of the game, any other format that has tournaments and shit like that, there's always always a meta and the meta is usually I want this in my opening game so that I can play this, to get this, to get this. How is that any less oppressive than me having a 99 card deck and out of 30 fucking games I might draw a jeweled fucking lotus in my opening hand? How is that any? How is that more oppressive than a deck that is literally built to loop the same combo every time I play? You know what I'm saying? It's it's so stupid that they're trying to put these limitations.
Speaker 1:The crazy thing is tattoo the same people that's probably bitching about jewel lotus. It's probably the same people that bitch about having a soul ring in the first turn. I'm like man, get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 3:It's just a soul ring, like you think it's gonna make that much of a difference no, because, because, and even then, even then realistically, like look, so my group and I we had this talk back when they banned lotus and doxai. We sat down and we were like hey guys, look like, yes, I have doxai, I think two decks, and I think I have three jeweled lotuses in three different decks, right, and I was like guys, look, y'all know I have these cards. Is it a problem? They're like dude, I don't fucking care, it makes for fun games, right, and I kid you not, that night I uh, one of my jeweled lotus is in my uh yawgmoth and that's one of my favorite decks.
Speaker 3:I play it fairly regularly and I had played it I that the night we had that conversation I played it and I shit you not, my jeweled lotus was in my opening hand. However, that being said, that was the first time I pulled the Jeweled Lotus in my opening hand since I built the deck a year and a half ago and I play it regularly. We usually play every other Saturday and within two Saturdays of gaming, I will have played that deck one to two times and in a year and a half, I pulled a Jeweled Lotus at my opening hand One time and it helped me. Yes, I got ahead of the game. But the funny thing is I actually lost that game Because after I got that gas of the Jeweled Lotus, my deck took a dump.
Speaker 3:Which never happens with that deck? Normally, if I don't have the Jeweled Lotus in my opening hand, the deck is just all gas. But for some reason the probability gods were like not tonight, my dude, not tonight, and it just got shut down. Right, but that just goes to show. It's like they ban these cards and they call these cards game changers because yeah, they, they do fast ramp, they make games quicker. But it's like, unless you mulligan and mulligan and mulligan and mulligan until you get that card, the chances of you drawing that card, let alone the chances of you drawing that card multiple times, are astronomical like it shouldn't be, an issue hold on tattoo.
Speaker 1:Hold on. We were talking about turd writ and it's now a game changer which like okay, fair enough, but then again, like didn't they just release a tiny bones variant that does the same thing but slower?
Speaker 3:and that's my point. Right there you're gonna, you're gonna put a card like turgrid as a game changer, right, but then they release other cards that do the same damn thing, just slower. So what you're telling me is is, with your new bracket system, if I put card a in, that is a game changer my deck jumps up a power level, quota or a bracket level. But if I put a card in that costs one mana more and does the same thing, but it's not a game changer, well, my deck is not as oppressive. I have the same ability, just one turn slower. How does that make sense?
Speaker 3:Their bracket system is so stupid. It's asinine. It makes no sense. It's like they're they're playing word soup here and it's not working to their favor. Man, I don't understand their logic behind it. I would much rather go back to the old power like. Like, what's your deck? Is it a seven? Okay, cool, yeah, that makes more sense to me than, oh, my shit's like a bracket three. No, the fuck, it's not, because, because I have a deck. Dude, you've heard me talk about my Jota, my legendary deck, how stupid it can get. My play group will tell you it's absolutely nuts. If you don't shut it down. You know it's considered a three. It's considered a three. I bet money I could stomp ass with that deck if I played against what their bracket system calls a four, because the deck is very oppressive. The difference is it doesn't have many of the game changer cards in it.
Speaker 1:Nah, hold on, hold on. I'm sorry, tessie, but let me talk about this for just a moment where, with this bracket system, it's bracket one through five. Really, it comes down to if your deck is a two, it might as well be a one, and if it's a four it might as well be a five, based on how they worded it. Yep, but how, based on what they're telling me is, it's not a 4 or a 5, unless there's mass land denial and you gotta make like you can chain extra turns.
Speaker 1:And I'm sitting there like okay, you do realize that there are multiple cards, like you told me yourself. Like there are multiple cards where you can destroy or, straight up, exile all their lands. Oh yeah, there's a bunch of cards that's like only one card that does all the work, like War's Toll, price of Glory and whatnot. You have Liquid Metal Coding plus Splinter on there. Yeah, like it's very easy to make lands go away, and with extra turns that's even easier to. Where it's like there's a's very easy to make um lands go away and with extra turns that's even easier to. Where it's like there's a whole bunch of cards, like especially in blue, that have extra turns.
Speaker 1:But there's also cards like artifact cards, where you're gonna have to like kind of sort of uh work around it, but if you got the combo for it, you can essentially make extra turns, like with uh I think it was magististrate Scepter, but you gotta have Quack of Omens or whatnot. You gotta keep tapping it in order to do that. It's slower but it's possible. So I just gotta add all that shit into any deck. It's level 4, but since the way they worded it, it might as well be a level 5.
Speaker 3:Exactly, there's so many cards. There's so many cards that can do things like that. Like you mentioned, price of glory that's one of my favorite red cards that does stupid shit like that. However, there's also a very old card that I'm very fond of. I've got like three copies of it floating around. I tend to not put it in decks unless I really want to be a spiteful little asshole. Uh yoko hops, have you heard of this card, uh, which one yoko hops, yoko hops no so it's.
Speaker 3:It's from uh, it's a very old, old, old card. Uh, yoko hops. It's a red sorcery for four. Red red destroy all artifacts, creatures and lands. They can't be regenerated. Tell me if that's on the game changer list, because that's a very mean card. I don't if that's on the game changer list, because that's a very mean card. I don't think that's on the game changer list.
Speaker 3:So you're telling me that I can put this six drop sorcery in my deck and it's gonna fly under the radar, even though it destroys all artifacts, creatures and lands, All it. Just it's a full board. Everything on the table goes.
Speaker 1:Are you telling me shit like damnation and Worldfire? Those are not game changers.
Speaker 3:E. How does this new system make sense? How did these listings of game changer card? It doesn't make sense. It's like I said, what they did was was they took cards that hurt people's feelings and even though Damnation that hurts people's feelings, yes, but you know what hurts people's feelings more than damnation? A Jinka Taxis. Jinka Taxis is very mean. He doesn't let me have a hand. You know what helps that? A fucking one blue mana counterspell helps that. Leave one blue mana open just in case some bullshit happens. And if you see some shit, boom, Taken care of.
Speaker 1:I like how they came up with these game changers, but they completely glossed over Sin Triplets, which is one of the most oppressive. Y'all glossed over Sin Triplets.
Speaker 3:That's what I'm saying. These, these new, this new bracket system and their new classifications of of cards that are quote-unquote game changers. It doesn't make sense. And do you know why? Is because what they are focusing on is they went back and they were like okay, in the past we'll say five years. What are the cards that that casual players cried about the most? What made the most casual players but hurt the most in the last five years? Well, that's going to be the cards that we keep an eye on and we're going to call those the game changers, and those are going to be the cards that we keep a watchful eye on and if they keep getting out of hand and people keep crying about it, we're going to ban them potentially.
Speaker 3:Yet send triplets, yokohams, price of glory cards that are very mean. Just don't count as a game changer. I would. I would much rather you limit my hand size than me get a board presence on like turn 9 and wipe my whole board and all of my lands. I would not want to play against Price of Glory, but I would like to play. I would find it a challenge to find a way how to remove your Vorinclex that have to deal with remembering if I tap land on his turn, I have to sacrifice that land because of Price of Glory. You know what I mean, right? I just don't understand their logic here.
Speaker 1:I would say Karn Liberated is a literal game changer. To where like oh, you don't like where things are going, just restart the game. It's no problem, we'll just restart the game. He's a literal game changer. But instead of Making it a game changer, they're like nah, you know what, let's put a new barrier when he's like out in the sun and he's in his own swim trunks. It's cool.
Speaker 3:Exactly exactly, man. It's like I don't know how they came up With this list, but like they, just I don't get it. Like I was, I was very, uh, optimistic. You know, when watsi got a hold of um, when watsi got a hold of commander, I was very optimistic. I was like, maybe, maybe they won't completely screw the pooch on this, maybe, but then they're just they're doing so much stupid shit and I just don't understand it, man, like fucking it's great arbiter no, no, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Grand Arbiter Augustine. Yes, he's oppressive. I have, I will not lie, I have a stacks deck with him as the commander. I don't play it often, but when I do play it, the people, when I play it and I set the commander down on the table, they look at it and they go, oh, you're playing stacks, okay, you're the first one out. Like they look at it and they go, oh, you're playing stacks, okay, you're the first one out. Like that's literally what they do. They will literally make a truce. The whole table will say we're only attacking him and and that's what happens. But that's, that's what you welcome when you do something like that. You know, and you, you have to keep that in mind.
Speaker 3:So, like I don't understand it and you know, I'm looking at a list. I don't I can't remember if this list has been updated or not, but this was uh, on magic's website. But I mean, like you look at the colorless quote, unquote game changers, uh, ancient tomb, chrome, mox, the one ring tabernacle at pendril vale, of course, uh, trinosphere. First of all, if you have a Tabernacle at Pendril Vale, I want you to play it, because good on you, my friend, because that is a chunk of chain right there. In itself, you should be proud to have that card. Grim Monolith, lion's Eye, diamond Mox, diamond, mana Vault and Glacial Chasm. Okay, ulamog, why is that not on there? Any Ulamog, any of them, any Kozilek, any fucking Any?
Speaker 1:Emrakul.
Speaker 3:Emrakul. It Betrays. It Betrays is fucking turgrid. Why are these not there? You know, like there's other cards that would make more sense on this list than the cards that they put on here. It's very much cards that people are upset about and people don't want to play, because they're cards that get played more often than the older cards, and that's how these older cards have kind of flew under the radar, because it's like you know, you've got turgrid. Turgrids mean turgrids. I steal your stuff. Oh man, that sucks, but wouldn't you rather have your stuff get stolen so that you could remove turgrid and potentially get your stuff back when it dies and goes to your graveyard? Or would you rather have all of your shit just taken off of the table? You know?
Speaker 3:like there's there's just I don't, I don't understand it, man, I don't understand, and it seems, it seems like a lot of these cards that they put on here are the cards that are expensive. So you know that kind of tracks a little bit too tracks a little bit too, I guess.
Speaker 1:You know, like, at this point it's kind of like some. It's kind of reminds me of some video games where, uh, I don't like some of the balance changes that they're making, but they are putting out some good shit. But even then it's like okay, yeah, I, I see y'all putting out good shit, okay of course, but I don't like these changes that y'all putting out. Good shit. Okay, of course, but I don't like these changes that y'all making in the background, like that's just my main thing. It's where I'm like okay, y'all put out some good cards lately, but with the way y'all trying to change things, like with rulings, bans and whatnot, it just kind of makes no sense. It's almost like it's kind of like saying I'm sorry, but it's almost like saying imagine you're in a relationship with somebody and they do something nice for you, and then it just come out of nowhere and he's like what the fuck did you do? I'm like nothing. I'm like what did you do? I'm like I just changed the rule. Like what changed you know what?
Speaker 3:I mean yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's almost like they do something good Just to cover up some bullshit that they did. We can't hate them too much. They gave us this no fuck all that.
Speaker 3:Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:It's like we said, we talked about several good cards that came out in the Etherdrift set.
Speaker 3:You know, several new cards that are good and, yeah, that's great man, but it's like you're making us look over here while you do something silly over here, and it's like it's not cool man, because and you know, the thing is is like when, when I first started playing magic, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on cards.
Speaker 3:I wanted to be budget friendly, I wanted to, you know, do this and that. And then, as I played it more and more, I was like, god, you know, if I just had this one card, it would really make things work. And and so I tried, I I you know, did some trading, some wheeling and dealing with this and that got the new card and, man, it worked. And so then you kind of evolve your your deck building strategies and stuff, and it's like you don't have to go balls to the wall with every deck. You know, I've got two or three decks that are pretty pricey, and then I've got some other decks that aren't so pricey but still do work. I have a mono green Wilson deck that, if Wilson.
Speaker 1:No, I know you meant Wilson the bear, but I just can't help but think of that one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, but I mean it's Wilson and Raised by Giants man. If you let me get Wilson and the enchantment out, you've lost the game. You've just lost Because at that point I'm swinging, I'm making wilson fight your, your block, I'm making wilson fight your creature so that you don't have a blocker, so that when I attack you for 11 commander damage well, there's half of your commander damage and then you're gonna play a creature and then I'm just gonna make wilson fight that creature again so that you don't have a blocker. Next turn, and now you're you're dead, and then I just rotate around the table. Wilson can get out of control super fast. He's a cute little bastard, but boy does he go quickly. And I mean, of course he's mono green, but I put 40 bucks into that deck maybe, and it can be stupid things.
Speaker 1:You just gotta love it when the players that spent thousands of dollars on their deck be crying about they got beat by a dude that bought a $40 deck.
Speaker 3:Bro, I kid you not, I've taught my coworker how to play Magic one of my coworkers and he came to the house one day and he's got a rudimentary, uh, knowledge of the game and I handed him my dina soul steeper deck and man, I I got I think I got 50 into that deck because I got lucky and I pulled an exquisite blood out of a jump start pack and I put that in there, right, but total card value that I paid into that deck maybe fifty dollars. You know the value of it goes up with exquisite blood. Obviously, uh, I let him play that deck because he's like you think we can get a quick game in before I go home. I'm like, yeah, here, you know you didn't bring any of your stuff here. Here's my dina soul super deck, I think you'll like this.
Speaker 3:And I pulled out uh, I don't even remember what deck I pulled out, man, but it was a couple hundred dollars. You know it was a significantly more upgraded, true stuff deck. Bro, when I say the motherfucker got exquisite blood and Sanguine Bond out, I was like you, motherfucker, you just won the game on like turn six. Before I played three creatures, like I don't, and it's just how it goes, you know Like it just happens that way sometimes.
Speaker 1:See, that's what be tripping me out to, where, like once again, when I was talking about my Crinkle deck, keep in mind, mind it was a cobbled up deck, like I just had like a whole bunch of goblin decks and I'm like a goblin car, excuse me and I was like you know what, fuck it, let's just make a deck out of it, let's uh see how well it runs, and then I didn't expect to pop off that hard, but then people were acting like oh no, you need to be kept on a list.
Speaker 1:You need to keep our eyes on you from now on. Like I became the threat at the table ever since because I was like oh, I just surprised them with how like. It was almost like saying like, oh, I was really just throwing shit together and they were talking about oh no, no, no, you know what you're doing. Like you're more diabolical than you letting on. I'm like guys, really Like I'm just You're like you letting on. I'm like guys, really Like I'm just having fun here. Nah, like it's almost like you just hate it when it seems like you are essentially the arse enemy at the table. Like as soon as you pull up, it's pretty much like you said, you're now the designated threat at the table. And I was like what the fuck did he do?
Speaker 3:Exactly, it's always fun. One of the guys that comes to my house to play. He also goes to my local shop and so he will see a lot of my new builds before I take him to the shop to play when I go to the shop, and so it's always funny because I'll sit down at a table and he'll usually try to sit in the same pod as me and he'll see me pull out a deck and then they'll go which one is that and I'll show them. The commander here. But, like guys, look, listen to me, okay, what he's about to do is not going to be fun, so you need to bring something good with you, okay.
Speaker 3:And so, like, it's always funny because, like, if he's not there and I sneak in a deck that you know the rest of the table doesn't know about because it's all new players or it's a deck that I haven't played up there before and my buddy that goes up there isn't there, I can usually pull one over on him. But for the most part, I've kind of earned this reputation to where, like I, I will build a deck that will either pop off super hard, super fast or it will fail so spectacular that it's laughing. So it's one of the two. I never have a middle ground game where I look at the deck and I go man, I you know what. I didn't win, but I did. Okay.
Speaker 1:I either I either hit the ground running or I fall flat on my face, and sometimes it's the same deck that it happens with man, hey, you know what your story reminded me of, how I was getting my buddy into the game and I was like, okay, tell you what I was trying to um see how this other deck was gonna work.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna let you play with my main deck, my wing race deck, the one that I've been like obsessively trying to upgrade, and I'm gonna use this other debt that I'm trying to like get a feel of and I sit you. Not, he actually beat me without barely even playing a creature card. It was more like, uh, he just kept playing um more lands because it had mana ramp, but it had, uh, one of the uh retreat, the black retreat card, where it's like you, um, whenever you play a land, your opponent um takes like a damage or whatnot. I think he did have creatures on the field, but whole point being is that he pretty much like, while I was trying to um put something out there, like he was just burning me um for life, just playing lands and shit, like holy fucking shit, like it just goes to show that sometimes you don't need to spend a whole lot of money to play a deck. That's really good absolutely.
Speaker 3:I mean, like one of the things that I love about my crinko deck and this is uh what happened the last time I played him, when my friends decided to just absolutely nuke Krinko every time he came out, turn three, I got impact tremors on the table and you know, if you get impact tremors with Krinko, shit gets nutty fast. I mean, it was two turns of impact tremors and they were like fuck this, he has to go. But speaking of letting your friends play your decks and stuff something that my buddies and I like to do occasionally, that's always fun. Um, and I would recommend, if you have a play group that you play with locally, uh, we do what we call the gauntlet, and so the rules of the gauntlet is is uh, player. So we will take a total of 20 decks cumulative from however many players are at the table. So you know, if we have a full pot of four, we got five decks from each player. We put them on the table, we roll a d20. Whatever number you get, you play with the corresponding deck. So already there's a chance you're going to play with somebody else's deck in the game.
Speaker 3:Uh, you go into the game. Whoever wins the game, they have to keep the deck that they played. The rest of the table gets to re-roll and play a new deck and we just see what the best deck of the night is. Um, and we do that, you know, every once in a while like once we build up a couple new decks we're like, hey, let's run the gauntlet again.
Speaker 3:So that's a fun thing to do, because if you've never tried to pilot someone else's deck, it's absolutely fun, because you have to sit there and try to make your brain work like their brain worked when they built the deck. And sometimes it works out that way. And then other times you'll do shit and they'll look at you and they'll go what the did you just do with my deck? What was that? Because you'll see a combo or you'll see something that they didn't necessarily see or they didn't account for.
Speaker 3:Because I do that with my own. Sometimes I'll just think of a card and I'm like, yeah, that'll go good in this deck, and then I put it in there and then once I play it and it's in play, I'm like, oh shit, I did not think about how this was going to interact with this and this, like I knew how it was going to interact with the commander, but damn, these other two cards that are in this deck just makes it go absolutely nuts, and so it's always fun to try to pilot someone else's deck and try to figure it out see, that's why I was like kind of um geeking out when I was playing like what I like to call magic solitaire.
Speaker 1:You know, like you just uh, when you don't really have anybody to uh play at the time. Uh, it's just more like, hey, just break out two decks and like just kind of like simulate a match just to see how well they run. And I was using, um, the get raw monster and you know how his work um, but the whole thing was that I had like cards that normally isn't out on the field the same time as him, and it interacted in a way to where it just felt like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna have to like uh, sack uh land and whatnot, but I get that land back. I get to draw a card, I get uh. It was almost like uh like, say, for instance.
Speaker 1:Say, for instance, I have the Gitrod monster and the Abundance enchantment out on the field. Oh, yes, essentially, if I sack a land, I get to draw a card, but with Abundance I just be able to bring a card and with abundance I just Be able to bring a card and I can just play it anyways, because you get to play additional land during Each of your turns because of the get robbed monster. So it's almost like I'm kind of man and rampant, especially If you consider you have like something like Crucible of worlds or Rampant Excavator. That was the card, that what it was is like the fact that I can play two lands and I have a second land, but I end up getting both lands anyway. So it's almost like I'm kind of ramping up that way. So sometimes it get kind of weird how like you realize that some cards have like a hidden interaction with each other that you did not take account of war absolutely one of my favorite things that I accidentally stumbled across.
Speaker 3:Uh, and I don't, I don't know why, for whatever reason, it didn't click when I built it, but, um, I have my mimeoplasm deck I have a, I have a ruminant excavator in there and then you've got evolving wilds and you've got, you know, all of your fetch lands.
Speaker 3:And uh, dude, I I had a fetch land in my opening hand, boom played it, drew into room and played him and then I started missing my land drops. But then I was like, ha, you know what I can do, I can pull that evolving wilds out and that fixes my damn land drop issue if I'm missing. And it's just a fun coincidence when that happens, because it's an interaction that should just be common sense. And when you see it you're like, damn, I can't believe. I didn't think about that and intentionally put that in there. But when you find something like that, it's just a fun workaround because it's like how many times have you had an opening hand? And you're like, bro, this, this hand is, this hand is good, I'm golden.
Speaker 3:And then you don't draw a land for like four turns and you're like, fuck, that was you know what I mean so, like it's always fun to happen into interactions like that, I, I, I love it, it's, it's one of my favorite things to happen, honestly, why I built wind grace the way that I built?
Speaker 1:because I just got so tired of getting mana screwed and whatnot. But when I saw wind race out in the wild, when I was like stopping with my friends, I like this deck is not leaving my hands, I am going home with this deck because it's like speaking to me for some reason and then it made me realize that, oh yeah, like lands do matter to a point to where land's gonna matter so fucking much in my deck, to where not only am I gonna have like a whole bunch of land out on the field so that way I have a good mana bank going on for me so I can play whatever I want but I'm also got to a point where I edit it to where my lands can become creatures and all the other shits, where I can like have like this big ass wall in case somebody tried to uh attack me um, well, it's their turn. And I'm like, oh well, that's okay. I have lands that have like like, say, for its own leads of the tangles, where if you attack with that guy, you make all your lands become like eight, eight creatures. And essentially, if you try to attack me, um, during your turn. Then I just have one. My lands just, uh, block you, but, um, yeah, like not to cut it off to I don't know, but we're going to go ahead and try to cut this off, and I got other things going on.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, tattoo, I do thank you for being on the show with me and I thank the dear listener hearing us babble until the end. We are going to try to get to tarkia dragon storm when that comes out, and I'm actually kind of looking forward to the rest of the year as far as what they're going to be putting out, because sometimes, with these sets, they'd be putting out cards where I'm like, okay, the whole set. I don't know about the whole set, but there's at least some cards that I might buy singles of. So, with that being said, let's just go ahead and close this out. Y'all go ahead and have yourself a good morning, good afternoon and good night, but, more importantly, you take it easy.
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