I'll defend Devoid, just because I think its blandness means it's totally inoffensive. Sure it doesn't actually do much of anything, but the way I see it, that's a failure to make enough things that interact with devoid cards. I guess I just have a soft spot for it, because "colored mana cost but not actually colored" communicated well that these are bizarre, otherworldly creatures.

I want to hear WOTC designers talk about Banding more, it’s hilarious.

There's something contextual about Devoid that nobody seems to notice. At the beginning of Magic, color was an important attribute of a card in play. Cards like Red Elemental Blast or the Circles of Protection or the protection ability punished cards for their color, color "hosers". Over the years, the emphasis decreased. When Battle of Zendikar was printed, there were no color hosers in the set. For most of Battle's time in standard, the only hosers were a few from Dragons of Tarkir, and I think by the time the set left standard there were no cards whose effects cared about any specific color. Ghostfire was interesting because it could get around things that cared about red. In a world where nothing cares about color, just about colorless, removing the color isn't as interesting.

I feel like companion should at least have been an honorable mention since it was so broken that they had to change how it worked and the most broken companions are still pretty broken even after the change

I really wish devoid was more of a thing. I'm red/green colorblind. I wanted to make a red/green Devoid deck. A testament to my inability to see those colors. The premise is cathartic to me. Unfortunately, there just isn't enough to make a commander deck. And that breaks my heart.

On the subject of the color indicator, I would like to make a suggestion Several friends of mine are visually impaired, and have difficulty differentiating the colors on the indicator. Is there any possibility that it could also include a shape into it, like how hybrid mana symbols do?

"Wouldn't mind it if rhystic study was white" Can we get a color shifted version? 👀

When I started playing commander with my friends I had rhystic cave in my deck, my thought process was "I'm sure they won't pay for it most of the time, since we're playing for fun", but they paid for it every single time.

I think another mechanic that should get a dishonorable mention is Ante, because there is *no* mechanic in the game that would make me upset faster than "I own your card now", but the developers know this and every Ante card is banned. One mechanic that I do think should have been on this list is Eminence. While there were only four cards ever made with the mechanic (five if you count Oloro), it has the Forecast problem of doing a thing every turn for no mana cost, but can't even be beaten with Discard. There is no possible way you can interact with it.

Turns out Saviors of Kamigawa was just terribly designed in general, who knew? Epic, Sweep, Hand-Size Matters in colors with no card draw... ugh.

I think Annihilator is one of the worst. It basically says 'If I swing, I win', but in the least fun way possible. Maybe a player comes back from annihilator 1, but sacc-ing 4 permanents is generally a couple miserable turns from game over.

I like the cumulative upkeep mechanic and would enjoy seeing it as a part of a new set. That said, I think the cost that require you to pay mana are mostly unfun und simply not interesting, but there is allot of fun and interesting design space for non-mana cumulative upkeep costs.

I'm really surprised that Companion wasn't number 1. The fact that it still warps the meta of Pioneer, Modern, and every other format they are legal in even after the nerf.

Definitely agreed on ripple. Aside from thrumming stone, I don't even think I've even heard of the other cards.

"Are you gonna pay for that" Is hilarious when you have more than one rhystic study or smothering tithe around the table .

Thank you for sharing how wonderful the Weatherlight was, a really touching tribute to Capsize.

Ripple could have been interesting if it had the Rebound clause of "if you cast this from your hand."

I'm surprised we didn't include Phyrexian Mana, just because it actually just breaks how mana works in general. But I think you took the list a better way. Also, I literally didn't know Sweep existed, so I'm gonna get my friend with one of those cards later.

I actually agree with gotcha on this list. I remember one time my playgroup did an un-draft, and played 3 players free for all. I was close to winning until my opponents decided to intentionally trigger eachothers gotcha cards so they could keep stomping me with those cards. Felt a bit bad to lose to what felt like a well earned victory to just the opponents deciding to say some words

Before watching: Eminence. You are rewarded for doing nothing and it is almost impossible to interact with it. Other than 10 and 9, I agree with the things on this list. 10. Disagree with Cumulative Upkeep being on the list. 💯 Agree that non-mana payment are interesting. Those are creative and have several fantastic cards. 9. I see most buyback as the payoff of control/combo. Sure, in limited they are brutal, but their eternal impact is quite different.

I could see an interesting space for “rebels” where a similar effect acts like level cards in Yugioh or Evolution in Pokémon, where doing certain tasks permits you to tap for the next “evolution” in the card’s line

Cumulative upkeep could be really good on permanents that are incredibly advantageous, like rhystic study, instead of using the sorcery speed or triggers once during your turn. I definitely agree on all the rest of them.

I loved cumulative upkeep, especially when you go into the design space of 'positive' cumulative upkeep (Herald of Leshrac, Braid of Fire, etc...) So much interesting choices can come from it.

Counter-rebels was my first competitive deck back in the day. Saving counterspell mana with the option of searching a creature if the opponent played nothing important was so powerful.

cumulative upkeep is such an interesting concept to me because it ranges so much in quality based on how far they stray from the mechanic itself i love braid of fire so much because of how it uses a negative as a really creative way to write a cards function

I'm glad Mutate didn't end up here. It's really unpopular because of all its corner cases, but I think that flavorfully and mechanically its super cool and has tons of interesting design space.

I’d actually love more hand-size matters finishers that are instants or sorceries, like Master The Way, Firestorm, Turbulent Dreams (that entire cycle) and Conflagrate. It would add another sub archetype to spell slinger strategies that just builds a huge hand rather than wheeling and storming off with Past in Flames.

Surprised companion didn’t make it

I really like this content, it’s interesting to look back on mechanics! More videos like this would be cool!

Sweep is a mechanic that has only one problem in its design, the lack of representation in green. It would be a landfall staple by now.

2:07 My friends and I in college made a cube where we inserted a few homebrewed cards. We challenged ourselves to take old card mechanics and try to make them more thematic to the cube we were making. I took Cumulative Upkeep and gave it a Vampire twist. For the black/red theme “Offering”. If you paid the “offering” cost to the creature you got an effect (it was usually a +1/0 counter or something akin to that). The idea was you as a Planeswalker made an offering to these vampires you called to battle, and as a result they got stronger at your detriment (not having mana or losing a resource to try and get ahead). There were about 5-6 creatures like this, and a lord that benefited from offerings… coincidentally it sounded like the story of Crimson Vow as house Volderen collected tithes from the humans for the wedding. But I digress 😂 It was a fun twist when it came to brewing. Not to be bias it was my favorite mechanic in the cube 😏🤣

Personally would like to see some more devoid stuff, I'd love q 5 colour devoid commander. If core to a set it would need a much different execution, but just a few more pieces for commander could have a fun little niche thing

I think the number one worast mechanic in magic is "graveyard order matters.' It's not a nemd mechanic sure, but people know what you mean. Thing is, there is some cool design space there butt most magic players rearange their graveyards (and opponents graveyards) to make things easier. So if there are order maters cards legal at all in tghe format, they technically shouldn't do that. It's a mechanic so bad, the echo of it has negative impacts on all games in any format where the mechanic has a presence* *most people ignore it, and rearange their yard as much as they want - as they should!

1. Protection - People constantly got it wrong in half the games it showed up in for 30 years, and it continued to show up a ton. It's not the worst impact overall but it is the worst design choice to have not replaced it 30 years ago with something that does what players think it does. Shroud and Hexproof are probably worse impacts but Protection is the one on this list because it was so obviously not designed right and it took so long for anybody to even try to fix it. 2. Companion - Inherently breaks Magic's most important reward mechanism - the variance that means the better deck or better player isn't always going to draw the same cards, so the other player has a chance to win. Only mechanic so fundamentally broken that it wasn't enough to ban the most troublesome cards, they had to hotfix the whole mechanic in paper. Which is crazy. 3. Islandhome - This mechanic was never fun on any card ever, but there was a common slot reserved for a Sea Serpent in most sets for a long time - perhaps Magic's longest commitment to something nobody ever enjoyed. The only mechanic where they printed it, keyworded it, printed it, then unkeyworded it, then printed it again, for no flavor-related reasons and nobody cared the whole time. If somebody Boils you or Armageddons you you are being punished enough - having your 5/5 defender for 6 also die is stupid. Oh also there are a bunch of creatures that sort of have it but don't have it exactly so you always have to check how it works on this particular mediocre old card that didn't used to be old but has always been mediocre. 4. Banding - Super complicated, breaks combat in limited and is rarely useful in constructed, just a codification of everything in early Magic rules that sucked. Also, similar to the next entry on the list it's rare that giving a mechanic a bunch of random variations that limit when you can use it made it better. 5. Landwalk - There are already plenty of kinds of evasion, and this one is insanely complex, was around forever, punishes players for decisions they can't change, and strangely seemed to target something you were more likely to have than your opponent. Especially bad because it punishes players for playing basic lands, which is something that never needs to happen. Think of this as "there are too many kinds of dumb conditional evasion that add nothing" spot - but this is the worst designed one and the mistake was repeated as it kept being put in sets. 6. Rhystic - Yeah I'll buy this one - or, rather, pay one for it. There are a few "if your opponent wants this card to do nothing they can just make it so" mechanics and they tend to be bad, but the way Rhystic came out as a mechanic was terrible. This is an idea that can occasionally be printed as a recurring effect on wacky build-around permanents, but putting it on a sorcery or instant is terrible and then printing that sorcery or instant at common is where the design is really off the rails. 7. Cascade - Cascade is the classic "this tests as fun the first few times you play it but if we actually print it, it is a disaster for the game" mechanic. It is a mechanic that relies on your deck being bad or silly on purpose or else the whole game and ultimately the whole format stops being fun for everybody - and the main way people have fun playing it is by breaking it, which shows that the way it was designed was bad. Like if people _only_ huff your whipped cream, it is probably not good whipped cream. In general it becomes tolerable if there's only 1 or 2 applications of it in a format at any given time, and if the format is powerful enough that people don't play it a lot, but that's also a bad mark for a mechanic that it is more fun the less opportunity people have to play it. 8. Bushido - A mechanic that discourages combat put on a bunch of cards in order to make them look "good at combat" that actually made them worse at attacking than if they didn't have the mechanic in the first place. There are a bunch of combat-themed mechanics that mostly came out before the Titans were printed in M11 that hadn't yet figured out that attacking is fun to do with creature decks - Banding is the one that misses the point of creatures the most, Bushido is second.. 9. Eminence - Only this far down on the list because it doesn't happen outside of its one format, but like with companion the enjoyment of playing Magic relies on the lucky chance that your opponent's cards won't always be there to help them and yours might show up - so anything that gives you a guarantee of an unconditional expected effect at the beginning of the game threatens to ruin the psychological reward system at the heart of the game, and this is a pretty bad offender. It just reflects that the reason people play TCGs instead of other games isn't well understood by whoever designed it - or that they made an error where they forgot. 10. Sweep - This might as well just do nothing. It is not higher on the list because you're never compelled to play it if you don't want to. The baffling thing is that it even has a keyword associated with it in the first place when it is just on a small amount of unfun junk only in one set. It makes sense that a bunch of the worst mechanics are in Alpha - design has improved over time. And you can hardly blame people way back in the day for what they tried before anybody tried anything. But they are still pretty lousy.

8:20 I love how the captions show this as "A whopping 4 magikarps" instead of "magic cards" 😅

I totally forgot about Ripple lol. Bring back Flanking!

I have not watched the video yet, but I want to give some predictions in no particular order: - epic - sweep - wisdom (aka "don't play your cards so your cards get better") - banding - ante, if we count that - shroud - annihilator - fateseal - ripple /Edit: not the best hit rate

Hello Nizzahon

I LOVE Cumulative Upkeep! I run 4x Ritual of Subdual in my main deck, but much more helpful when I drop an Eon Hub with it too, although it's never needed. Annihilate was worst! Or at least should have been errata-ed to how we use it in our LGS for EDH: Annihilate does't trigger unless the creature with Annihilate deals combat damage to the player it is attacking, and THEN it will trigger. If the creature with Annihilate gets blocked, no permanents get sacked.

I don't think epic should have been named, given it's five total cards, but I think those five cards are goofy enough and good enough at getting gears turning that they deserve to exist.

Charge Across the Araba is in my Omnath Locus of Creation deck. It has done surprisingly much considering the presence of Sakura Tribe Scout and Wrenn and Seven in the deck.

Honestly i like the concept with sweep now that with have alot of cards and mechanics that care about lands entering the battlefield + leting you play more than one land per turn. Also, if you have the mana for it, tap out all of your lands, play a sweep spell to return all of them and then play armagedon... with red moon out. Also Ashaya and creatures with etb effects would be a nice way of playing with sweep, if we had a sweep effect for green of course. I would like for some new sweep cards in this age of magic

I noticed a distinct lack of banding in your list, and now I'm excited for the basically all but confirmed future release of a banding-focused commander deck, complete with minor rules changes to make attacking work the same as blocking and errataing "bands with other" to just "banding" on the 5 cards and token that have them. It's a great mechanic that deserves a comeback, come on, let's go!

While Rhystic is bad in an kitchen-table-hodgepodge situation, I do think it was a fine inclusion in Prophesy (though I haven't actually played any limited of it). At least on paper, having the choices of "Do I go for the bonuses of having no untapped lands, or do I leave mana open for Rhystic? Do I sacrifice my lands instead to get the bonuses without taking mana burn? Do I play a card that lets me sink the mana but also lets my opponent use it?" sounds like an interesting and unique time. Obviously that was probably a *bad* time as well, appealing to only a niche kind of player interest, but I'm glad it exists if only for an attempt. Lord knows it wouldn't have been made today.

How about energy counters, a mechanic that is weak everywhere but the standard it was in, had no response to it in the sets it was in, ruined standard, and made WOTC make hour of devastation and amonkhet to hate it out of the format, which honestly just sucked. A weak mechanic that broke the standard

Also, one of the mechanics I dislike the most is "Eminence". It's really baffling to me how one could design a mechanic specifically for a format that contradicts exactly what the format is supposed to be. It's like a free walker emblem that constantly benefits you and your opponents have no way to interact with it. In competitive commander formats (such as Duel Commander and Archon) almost all of them needed to be banned.

Enchant World, I remember once trying to play Nether Void with The Abyss already in play. It never occurred to me at the time that two cards with different names couldn't exist in play. It wasn't mentioned in the video but it would be one of my picks for this list based on my experience.

Devoid actually always seemed like a cool design to me, it may not have played well in the environment it was stuck in, but the concept of giving eldrazi coloured costs was an interesting and needed in the design space, and I like that they sort of mirror the colourless symbol eldrazi in the next set. The way they would play in environments with protection (rare as those may be) is a useful way for a deck not to just get destroyed. Case in point, in the Goblins VS Merfolk duel deck, master of waves had pro red, and one of the only solutions the goblins had to not just fold to it was Ghostflame. It’s not a very generally useful mechanic, but I’m glad the design was enacted in case it ever needs to come up again. Plus the frame looks really cool, so

Genuinely surprised Banding wasn't on the list. I loved the mechanic growing up with MTG, but I think I was the only one.

I actually really like devoid. I just wish there was more payoff in the set.

Was expecting to see Haunt or maybe Cipher but I get what he was going for. There have been tons of mechanics out there that are on the weaker side and just need a small tweak or support to get them to a better place. Forecast would be interesting if it was tied to the Suspend or Foretell mechanic. You would get an upkeep effect and then removed from your hand to be cast later. Sweep would be interesting if it was on a permanent. Also I do not see why Arcane hasn't been done again. It is a sub-type that literally can be put anywhere. It doesn't have to be tied to just spirits.

Sink into Takenuma sounds like great gameplay! It's like a more fair version of Mind Twist.

I like the flavor of epic spells. I would like to see something similar to them come back, just a big massive effect that is essentially your trump card. There are a lot of spells similar but ones that have a unifying theme between colors.

I actually really like cumulative upkeep since it's more like a sorvery that lasts as many turns as I want (or can pay for).

I think Devoid is pretty cool. It allows more dynamic space in colorless, and really hoses color hate cards. For a personal example, someone tried to hit me with an equipped Sword of Feast and Famine and I blocked with one of my devoid creatures.

Protection, Intimidate/Fear, & Landwalk will always be my holy trinity of bad mechanics cos they were all evergreen at some point. They all (generally) hate on specific colors which means they either do nothing or everything. Protection is a rules nightmare. I recall a particularly bad moment where my opponent conceded and packed up his cards because he thought he was dead on board but he actually could have blocked with an artifact creature. And landwalk makes you play in a paranoid way from turn one when you know its in the opponents deck.

Day and night cycle for sure. Even if you find a card that is good that you want to use outside of a werewolf deck everyone at the table must suffer keeping track of a day and night cycle for that particular card and that’s just annoying

So if hellbent is having no cards in hand should “heaven sent” be the ability a card gains for having seven or more cards in hand? Not that it would come up very often.

As a Commander/Pauper player, I cant really get behind the thought of the Rebels being a bad mechanic. First I think it is important to see some of the other cards aside from the tutor Rebels that have been developed and reprinted over the years (including Rebels in Time Spiral Remastered). I think the Rebels are a fascinating trip into the past and to see how some of their abilities can mesh with certain cards we play with today, especially in commander, it really makes for a unique gameplay experience. Second I feel with the amount of options that are out there in the world for deck building, if you build a deck to the meta standard instead of brewing, then any deck will be stale after a few games. I currently run a mono white Rebel commander and a Black/White Pauper Rebel tribal deck and honestly my commander deck is built in a way that utilizes tutoring, minor stack pieces and board wipes while buffing the Rebels for attacks. The fun part is Rebels are one of the few budget Tribes that can bounce back fairly easily even if its at a slower pace. Not looking for cEDH here but its fun to play.

Cumulative Upkeep can be a really wonderful design... when it's a positive one like Braid of Fire or the mentionned Herald of Leshrac. In my headcannon beneficial upkeep is intrinsically white. Other interesting possibilities are : - gaining exponentially more life each turn ; c.upkeep : gain x life where x is nbr of time counters - a time planeswalker(not Teferi flavorwise, more likely a student of him) with only strong minus abilities but c.upkeep : +1 loyalty - as a removal, put a time counter on target/s nonland permanent they gain c.upkeep : {1} - a cheap small creature with c.upkeep : put a +1/+1 on creature unless an opponent pay {1}

I actually kind of like upkeep costs on enchantments. It makes thematic sense - upholding and maintaining the enchantment is taking a toll on you over time.

Surprised that Dredge didn't get a mention with Buyback. In Commander it's so fun to see Life from the Loam a million times.

Great video, some interesting insight on these mechanics. I knew Sweep would be in here. I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a one off design in a Modern Horizons set lol.

Honestly, Cumulative Upkeep is one of my favorite mechanics. I like the Idea of a heavy downside like this to balance a otherwise extremly strong card. Of course there are many boring cards with it, but there is a lot of cool and interesting design space. There are some interesting cards right now (Glacial Chasm is one of my favorite Cards in the game, Wall of Shards was really interesting and powerful in Mystery Booster Draft when I played it, and I just want to play Jötun Giant in limited or constructed). I like the choise it brings to the table at the upkeep. Is this card woth keeping on the Table? What will I do if I keep it? What if I don't? How long can I keep it on the battlefield? What does that mean for my Play? How high of a cost is too high? What can i do to keep it on the Battlefield? Do I wan't to do that? And If you are Playing against a card with Cumulative Upkeep, you have to evaluate correctly how dangerous it is to let it be on the battlefield, until it dies naturally. Do I play this Removal? Or do I use it on a per se weaker card, that will stick around longer? Do I trade my creature against theirs, or do I just take the Damage, knowing, that I will take that damage only one or two times more? Can I do something to make the cost more difficult or unconvenient to pay? And yes, it is true, that it is a hard mechanic to use correctly, a new or unexperienced Player will struggle, some experienced Players struggle, but that is the element of Skill, that I like in magic. You missplayed because of Cummulative Upkeep? Why? And what can you learn from it? I like choices in general in Magic, and few other Mechanics bring as much choices to a game as Cumulative Upkeep.

I support the gotcha mechanic for giving us "Stop that"

The omission of Companion seems surprising. The mechanic forces repetitive games where players consistently have access to this one card every game. They were originally super mega broken and even after being nerfed to cost 3 whole mana more still dominate every constructed format theyre legal in. The only thing that is supposed to be fun about them, the deckbuilding restriction, mostly doesn’t matter as the ones that see play have virtually no restriction at all in the decks that play them (jegantha, lurrus, kaheera, zirda, yorion). And to make matters even worse some of them even push out tons of cool cards from seeing any play. Were you considering playing Seasoned Pyromancer, Grist the Hunger Tide or Bloodbraid Elf in your Jund midrange deck in Modern? Oh well, you’re giving them all up for Lurrus because having an 8th card in your starting hand is too good to pass up! YUCK!

Storm, Cascade, Companion, Dredge, and Infect all should have been on this list. They all lead to stupid and unfun gameplay in their own creative ways. Storm: Because watching you draw cards and generate mana for 10 mins only to either win instantly or concede is so fun. Cascade: Because casting anything for free is so fair and how the game was designed, especially when you cast huge suspend cards because they technically have no mana cost Companion: Because having an automatic extra card in hand from the start of the game that your opponent cant do anything about is so fair that even after it was nerfed its still warping formats Dredge: Because who needs a hand when you have 30 cards in your graveyard. Did you bring GY hate? No? Have fun losing Infect: Because now I only only have to to do half the damage I normally would to win. Oh? You play EDH? Good news! Now I only need to do a quarter of the usual damage to win!

Phyrexian Soulgorge is one of my favorite cards every design-wise. Getting a 8/8 so easily on the field gives you a huge powerspike for the turns it is out. And especially in a deck that is build around this card, it's a very fun risk and reward mechanic.

devoid is a fine mechanic, it works well with temple of eldrazi and stuff that cares about colorless stuff. it kept the "color" flavor of eldrazi without having them actually be a color

How did companion not make the list ? xD

My roommate who taught me magic and I would spring to by boxes together and split the packs(this was during Zendikar/scars block, we both had our fair share of vampire hexmages and both desperately wanted a Dark Depths because the combo was hilarious! To top it off, boxes of coldsnap were the cheapest at our LGS) long story short We opened no dark depths, but I have a playset of Thrumming Stone and have honestly always thought about building a Rats deck...

Ignoring Bands With Other, I'm going to bring up Bushido. The "fixed" Rampage (well ok, some would say Elvish Berserker was the fixed Rampage), Bushido was designed to make your opponent cautious about attacking and blocking- a fundamental part of the game. That's bad enough, but most Bushido cards were costed as if Bushido was always on. And that really felt like you were paying in more than you got. A 4/4 for 6 that's sometimes a 6/6? Be still my heart!

*Gavin Verhey*: "Epic is the worst designed Magic mechanic." *Companion*: Didn't even wait to ask him to hold its beer. It's already drank the beer, five whiskey shots, snorted cocaine, got in it's car, and crashed it backwards into a K-mart.

Honestly, in low-power formats, Sweep is pretty interesting. It's extremely skill-intensive to use well and you can easily screw yourself out of playing a game, but I've had a lot of good experiences with it as well. That said, I do think it belongs on this list.

My Thrumming Stone in my Grenzo, Dungeon Warden commander deck is just a very fun card, but I agree to say that it is an edge case 😄

I would point out that during Masques block, LD was more prevalent than it is nowadays (Stone Rain was legal), as were cards like Counterspell. Also, Rhystic appeared in Prophecy, which also had a suite of cards that were better if you had no untapped lands (eg Chimeric Idol), or cards that allowed your opponents to spend mana to make them less powerful (eg Glittering Lynx). Suddenly, if they countered a spell, they wouldn't have the mana to stop your Rhystic Tutor, for example. Or if they tapped out to enable Chimeric Idol, you could burn it away - or the opponent - with Rhystic Lightning. I think the mechanic was better than we gave it credit for, but I also think we didn't analyze cards and mechanics as thoroughly as we do nowadays.

Hexproof. Only in that ward is so much better for gameplay that it really lays bare that interaction and choices should be prioritised (at least within individual standalone cards).

People might fight me over this, but i think hexproof was a mistake. I get that WotC wanted to get rid of shroud because people did not like that they could not target their own creatures. But that also prevented the problems hexproof now provides. Take Slipery Bogle decks for instance. Just slam your bogle on board and see your opponents internally scream in agony as you suit up your bogle with all the most broken auras and your opponents can't even interact with it. Also companions for obvious reasons.

Sprout the swarm is a staple in my saproling deck...the convoke makes it helpful with casting other spells

What about snow ?

Companion

I like Sweep and I think it could be fixed (and the design space opened by a lot) if it had a limit to the number of lands you can return, say 2 or 3. At the same time, make the cards have actual floor effects for when 0 lands are returned.

I think Rhystic Study is the one good "Rhystic" card because, as you said, it doesn't feel like a Rhystic card. It fits fine as it plays like a tax but play patterns really hamper it. The fact that it's a "may" ability really sets it back as you're constantly forced to asked the question or miss out on drawing the card. Smothering Tithe helped fixed that problem as it removed the "may", you have to make the treasure unless your opponent pays the 2 so instead of your opponent getting sneaky and catches you slipping on asking the "do you pay" it halts the game until the trigger resolves where you either get the card or you don't.

I think Energy deserves a spot on the list. It was a cool idea but poorly executed. There needed to be ways to interact with your opponent's energy counters. It was a resource that your opponent couldn't touch.

See some of this is kinda dishonest when you look at things not listed like the obv ones like Companion. Cumultive upkeep isnt a bad design idea (as he literally shows good execution example) but the fact most dont give u a significant tempo gain in form of reallly increased stats etv. This is a mechanic that could be done properly for red/black cards today without much issue. Just use a proper powerbudget. Not naming Companion is a joke tho. There has never been a mechanic so laughable dogshit designed they had to errate it a few weeks in because it was literally ruining the game everywhere.

That black card with sweep seems insanely good in tergrid god of fright

I think pushing cards, but giving them diminishing returns through cumulative upkeeps, or having positive CU's on cards that start off harder on the caster has some great executions and room for much more! Please consider a new cycle in a future set, along the lines of Psychic Vortex. I expected to see Eminence on the list all the way 'til the end, was only surprised it didn't show up at all. Thanks for sharing this inside perspectives, I hadn't even heard of Sweep...

I am very much going to disagree with devoid: Devoid is singlehandedly the reason why bfz block and the eldrazi tribe are my favorite block and tribe in magic.

10- Companion 9- Companion 8- Companion 7- Companion 6- Companion 5- Companion 4- Companion 3- Companion 2- Companion 1- Companion

I actually liked 'Sweep' on Infernal Harvest in Visions... that is secretly a decent card, even great in some cases (IE if you can count on your opponent having multiple 1 toughness creatures, maybe 2, it's great), that garners very little attention. It's not quite a free spell, but it's nearly a free wipe if you're in the right situation. I liked it in my Shadow deck, as a way to slow down my opponent's tempo. I feel like you could probably play Rhystic Tutor in Legacy or Vintage, but you'd need to use Ports and Wastelands to cripple your opponent's mana base. It's colourless, so even fun stuff like Blood Moon doesn't help. It's massively nerfed by costing 2B, it should have just cost B for such a bad ability. Rhystic Study would be less miserable in White, the colour that's supposed to be anti-fun (which I've assumed for years now plays a big part in why it's cards tend to be so weak at times, if they pushed them more, they'd be infuriating to play against, most people do not like playing against D&T or Stax, and W is very good at both) to an extent. I liked Bushido, but the more I thought about it, and how clunky it made closing (IE a very important part of the game), I realized why it was not a very good actual mechanic in practice... if anything, you want creatures that get BIGGER when they hit the opponent somehow, to close games faster. Creatures that are always a weenie when hitting your opponent are bad at ending games. Kamigawa block was just full of stuff like this, I still say Soulshift though is the worst overall mechanic, finding a weaker creature to replace your better one seems like a step backwards if you actually pay any mana at any point, if your bigger spirit wasn't big enough, how is getting a smaller one supposed to help? Now you can chump for an extra 3 turns, hoping maybe to get a draw I guess? Not a good mechanic, and I'd argue worse than any other in how it actually plays in 60 card formats.

How to fix Join Forces: Have it so only people who contribute can benefit from it. If you pay 0 into it, you don't get anything. But if you add to it, then you benefit from it. Would create some interesting play decisions where you might try and time the casting of your spell until a certain opponent is tapped out. And it "forces" them to contribute to it and make it a bigger effect if they want in on the action.

Not even mentioning Companion, the mechanic that was so poorly thought out and so horrifically broken that it literally warped every format around it overnight after release? Man, talk about trying to sweep that one under the rug. Companion is genuinely the worst thing to happen to Magic since the Reserved List.

To everyone that is going to yell about companion not being on this list, I ask of you to differentiate the mechanic from the cards they are on. Companion is kinda cool, it’s just the design of some of them were too strong. At least that’s my opinion anyway, but to each their own.

Hey, as a mono red player I really appreciate devoid for giving me sideboard removal to deal with death & taxes builds 🙂

I've still got my fingers crossed that someday we get some legendary creatures with devoid. I could totally see a Grixis (or maybe Jund) Eldrazi commander that makes use of casting colorless spells, or having colorless permanents on the battlefield (this would include most artifacts, so would potentially work very well with Blood tokens!)

Alchemy is the worst mechanic in my opinion. It made stop playing in Magic Arena

I actually love the Rebels mechanic. I love seeing Rebels in Pauper. I think the interesting and fun thing about Rebels, is they have this really neat tool box potential that could have existed if the Rebels each had ETBs in addition to their Rebel effect, so they could really generate value. That, or give their Rebel effects costs beyond mana. Like an Orzhov Rebel Commander that lets you Birthing Pod your way into higher level rebels by sacrificing other rebels. Or by discarding cards like spell-shapers.

I think we don't talk about the mechanical time that was between Champions of Kamigawa and Shards of Alara enough. You have hits like Bloodthirst, Ninjutsu, Suspend, Persist and Convoke. You have the busted stuff like Dredge and Transmute and Delve. And you have the experimental stuff like Evoke, Conspire, Splice and Champion. And then you have the what were they thinking stuff like most of this list, Soulshift, Recover, Haunt, and Radiance. Definitely a time when abilities were really starting to go from 1-5 a block to 3-5 a set and it shows.

Before I hear you name the last one (since the background makes it kinda obvious) I really like Ripple and I can't be the only one who does, playing an Advisor "tribal" (Persistent Petitioners) or a Rat "tribal" (Relentless Rats/Rat Colony) with Thrumming Stone is so fun!

I have a Mercenary tribal EDH deck and it's always a blast to play.