Cyclonic Rift is 100% absolutely categorically a board wipe.

I get that it's goldfish and all, but every time I hear someone call Richard the fish father, I can't help but think the cod father would sound amazing

Mass bounce is absolutely removal, most boards can't rebuild in just one turn after a rift

Richard is such a contrarian that he really had Seth defending green spot removal when he actually ranked green higher than Seth 😂

Cyclonic Rift bounces 7+ turns of work that *will not* be redeployed in one single turn. It's absolutely a wipe.

The strongest part of ramp is that it has a guaranteed/reliable payoff in the command zone. Ramp's weakness in 60 card formats is not having the payoff at the right time. Having a 3 cmc commander makes playing 6-7 1 cmc mana dorks a much more powerful inclusion in the deck. Or having a 4 cmc commander out on turn 3 because of 2 cmc mana rocks. Having that guaranteed playoff takes so much risk away when committing to mana ramp (in any form)

Love the way u figured out a way to present the individual tiering :) good job !

“Bounce spells don’t count as removal because they can just play the creature again” is a weird line of logic. Wouldn’t that make exile effects the only real form of removal?

saw this title and my internal reaction was "i'm not even going to dignify this with a click" ........ but here we are

I agreed with Tomer that theft spells are removal. Blue spot removal very solid.

Blue’s transformation removal is severely underrated. Frogifying a commander is great. Killing a commander with spot removal is card disadvantage. You lose a card in hand and they can still recast the commander. But if you frogify the commander, then they spend a removal on the enchantment, that was one-one interaction.

Big fan of the rankings showing up over the individual cameras, appreciate the constant improvements on this podcast!

Blue being the worst makes sense for lower powered combat based metas where combo is frowned upon, but at tables where people jam the best staples of each color blue may be the best. I only play against randoms in LGSs and am always way more worried about the mono blue deck than the mono green deck. There is a wide range of power levels between the average Commander Clash deck and CEDH, which I don’t play, and saying blue is the worst color broadly in EDH is bizarre.

Honestly, Tomer is schooling them all on Blue's removal ranking. I commented on the last podcast that if I'm building a Dimir or U/B/x deck, I'm putting in Blue's spot removal over black's. It's just more efficient, and can kill artifacts. Seriously underrated.

Richard's targeted removal tier list is just the best 2 removals of each color, he doesn't play more then that in any given deck

Richard arguing that Red has better spot removal than Black is wild, LOL. I feel like their group in general really underplays Indestructible creatures. Every other table I've played at ALWAYS has at least one ind. creature or other permanent on the table.

In a format where the graveyard is considered a second hand I would say that bounce spells are close, though not equal, to destruction based removal.

15 mins in: "Man, Tomer getting beaten up on Blue removal." I'm with Tomer here; Blue has enough ways to get rid of creatures. At least a B.

I have to say, completely agree with Tomer as a mono blue player. Bounce is also severely unrated

I feel like blues interaction is a bit undervalued here, and black is a bit overvalued in that sense. Pongify is strictly better removal cost wise than most of blacks removal, raven form hits artifacts and creatures, bounce spells hit almost anything and can end up timewalking someone, etc... still think blue is lacking a bit in regards to diverse playstyles and options for "fair decks", but I dont think its nearly as bad as people seem to make it out to be either.

This episode is basically an excuse for us to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of each color. Our rankings are meant to be generalized and based on our experienced power level (mid-power). Obviously there's far more factors, most notably the actual commander choice; if someone ranks Blue lower than Green that doesn't mean they think a Blue deck led by Urza is weaker than a Green deck led by Autumn Willow. CEDH is its own beast and the weight of each category would be totally different -- countermagic would be more important for example -- and not reflected in our rankings.

The more i listen to this podcast the more i belive this guys don't play enough islands and manarocks. Bouncing may not be a permanent solution but the fact that you get very cheap ones, instant speed ones and creatures attached ones. Makes blue amazing at keeping the board clean. The only real problem blue has in casual is closing out games, cause u want to stay away from combos so you are left with few, subpar, options. Also you are severely underrating mono black powerlevel.

I loved this podcast so much. Don't ever change, guys. So many awesome disputes.

Weird to me Richard and Seth don't consider Cyclonic Rift as mass removal. Is literally removes everything on the board. Especially if you do it before someone's end step and then they have to discard to hand size. Its insane

Crim: Edict effects are not "spot" removal--they don't deal with specific threats, all else being equal. Tomer's right on Blue, it has multiple, efficient, instant speed creature removal. I'd say it's above Red--which just has chaos warp+good artifact removal--and maybe even Black. Seth is too hung up on permanently removing. Yes exile>destroy>bounce, but Rift still resets everyone else's tempo, and gets rid of tokens and counters as a bonus. Everyone has to rebuild using their mana and hand. Sounds like a boardwipe to me. Richard: ...3-4 removal spells?

Richard with spot removal: random with chaos warp is good Richard with counterspells: random with tibalt’s trickery is bad

This has been a super interesting exploration of each color by itself, though I'd be curious how your answers would have shaped out if you'd ranked each color pair and wedge as well. I'll bet you'd find that a lot of color combinations that include blue end up on higher on that list.

Cool black counter I did not hear mentioned - Withering Boon. It's a color-shifted Essence Capture they never see coming. Niche but not bad at all.

I needed a good laugh for that last segment. Thanks.

The Cyc Rift debate had me dying XD

Seeing the order of the colours in the video for each of you guys is so much nicer going to the link as I watched it .

Great episode guys!

Lightning Bolt is so underrated in commander. The format has gotten smaller and faster these days. Archon of Emeria, Hushbringer, Drannith Magistrate... so many problematic creatures can be delt with with a bolt.

great pod! way late obvs, but for unique/strengths of each color i like: White - lifegain, auras/equips, enchantment focus, stax, protection, go wide, flying, blink, small creatures Blue - copying stuff, storm, flying, extra turns, artifact focus, blink, stax, mill Black - sacrifice, graveyard focus, discard Red - storm, copying stuff, artifact focus, burn, go wide, combat focus/extra combats, land destruction, stax, discard Green - +1/+1 counters, enchantment focus, go wide, protection, graveyard focus

I’d really like to see a ranking of the best two colour pairings. I think it would be a really interesting podcast that has a lot of connections to this one.

I kind of think they are undervaluing a lot of the things blue can do, especially artifact synergies essentially giving it ramp and recursion rivaling green.

I consider bounce removal. With how easy it is to get anything back from the yard I dont see it as a whole lot worse than destroying creatures. Don't get me wrong, it is worse but destroying a creature is not even close to permanent.

Glad to see Crim covering for Rotwolf's absence, hope to see him again

For board wipes it's WBU(R/G tied) White is amazing. Black is good but only hits creatures. Blue has full board bounce (can redeploy but that's a whole turn wasted to end up less than where they were) Red and Green have good removal but it's limited in the number of cards that are worth playing to wipe.

Richard is 100% wrong about extra turns. There is not a single mid powered deck in the game that would not be improved by adding a Time Warp to it. You don't need to be an extra turn deck to make use of what is essentially a free spell that draws you a card and gives you extra main/combat phases. There just will be incidental synergy no matter what deck you are playing.

Seth comparing unsummon to swords has me cracking up 😂😂

I am with you Tomer for that part about cyclonic rift, it can return more than just creatures, and it is good in removing indestructible boards

Ah the clickbait, as for the actual answer. I actually think Red will be the weakest color if not already in the near future The biggest thing holding White back was card draw/card advantage and Wotc so far has been exploring different ways to do so.

I personally consider bounce as removal, that being said, this view only stems from the amount of graveyard recursion that every color has now. Eerie Ultimatum works when you do get board-wiped, but not if you get bounced.

White also has like unique "Grand Abolisher" type effects or "Silence" which are key in CEDH.

I think blues color identity is unique in that it lets blue "bend the core rules of magic". So it interacts on the stack, it messes with extra upkeeps, extra turns, it mills cards, it has alterante winconditions based on number of cards in hand (artemsis, omniscience in some sense) or in library (jace, thassa's oracle, labman). It also has cool alternate wincons related to its mastery over artefacts (mechanical production, phyrexian vs mirrodin enchantment thingy). I think expanding this, and possibly the sphinxes as blues core multiplayer identity could be a good way of 'pushing' blue for commander, without breaking it in other formats and maybe even without making i obnoxious. I think adding more counterspells is not the way to buff blue for casual, and giving it ramp would indeed make it very unfun in casual, and break the pie which is not good imo. Give me more cards that give me weird extra phases (extra untap steps, extra end steps, extra end of combat step, whatever, bend those rules, skip steps of opponent turns, phase things in/out; interact with exile if you really want, more knowledge is power themed alternate wincons, for example if you have more cards in hand then all your opponents combined, you win)

Are counterspells not often used as spot removal? And good removal at that?

In my opinion, counter magic is spot removal, and because of this blue is an S in spot removal. I know y’all had a separate category for counter magic, but I wouldn’t separate that from spot removal.

Crim's pup is the goodest doggo.

this would be a huge ask, but would you rate the guild colours and alara shard/tarkir clan combinations?

1:10 "I'm here, I'm high" LMAO

i liked these color ranking videos alot but i think the more common and interesting ranking discussion is the 2 color pairs in commander with 2 color being pretty much the floor as the lowest amount of colors one player will averagly have in a game at this point

They should definitely remove the top card for each category per color from their consideration, as good as some of them are, one card can’t carry mono colored deck and I think it would give a better representation of a colors power.

Black in bottom tier for counter magic: Can't belive y'all sleeping on Withering Boon.

For removal: White S Black A Blue B Red C Green D White is unquestionably best while black has so many great effects and even cards like attrition, blue has good spot removal that is somewhat versatile, red has great artifact removal lots of damage dealing and chaos warp, and green hits mainly artifact and enchants and only has 2 cards that deal with any permanent.

i love this - and mass bounce is removal - Gotta love mass bounce + windfall :D

Crim's dog had the best insights in this podcast... We need more mtggoldfish dogcasts

Well, unless your opponents have a reliquary tower or similar effect granting no maximum hand size, a cyclonic rift will be getting rid of most of the permanents bounced with it, since they won't have the mana to replay everything on their next turn and will have to discard down to 7 cards in hand.

Love the way you guys placed the colors by the cams this week. Was hard to follow some of the arguments on the last one.

also in green removal it has kenrith's transformation, which is a bad creature removal (2 mana sorcery speed) but it cycles itself and does have the upside of not sending the commander back to command zone immediately

The boys are back in town

How does bounce count for board wipe but not spot removal?

5:20 the chaos that follows the statement lmaooo

It pains me that no one brought up withering boon, a legitimate 2 mana black counter spell. I have gotten so many people by holding up counter magic in mono black

Ok I'm gonna need these guys to not put black and green in the same tier for counter spells. On top of imps mischief they also forgot withering boon 2 mana pay 3 life counter a creature spell. I'm pretty sure there is a black enchantment that counters things too but I may be misremembering on that one.

Considering the graveyard being pretty much an extension of your hand in commander, it's hard to consider anything besides exiling to be true removal. Rift is mass removal just as much as wrath of god or damnation.

I would say Mono blue is definitely the toughest mono color to play, but it would be my first choice as a secondary color for a commander deck. I feel like you add to any color and it gets a lot better due to the amount of interaction you get

For counter magic in black don’t forget Withering Boon, it’s only for creatures but it’s an instant speed counter for 2 mana.

Seems like they forgot about the green counters for activated or triggered abilities, still fairly narrow but they have a few of those. Green has even been seeing more of these effects recently.

I feel like this podcast only just came out, and it's already on episode 45. What the heck happened

37:48 Cyc Rift is absolutely a board wipe. Your opponents are often discarding some of the things that got bounced, so all the stuff that they discard was permanently removed. And none of them are attacking you next turn.

I live for episodes like this. Man wish I had friends that love this game. In BROOKLYN!!!

Blue also has Imprisoned in the Moon, feels good to hit a commander with it. If they got no enchantment removal, their commander is out of commission for the rest of the game lol

Black has Dash Hopes and Withering Boon; plus imp's mischief and Deathgrip. It's not super great, but it does have some countermagic.

I also would consider Spectral Deluge, Whelming Wave and Engulf the Shore good board wipes in blue

I have a voltron decks that uses Uril ans the commande and wincon, so Lapse of Certainty and Tibalt's Trickyery are ,for me, a must have.

Avoid Fate is an interesting green Counterspell. True it can only hit instants and auras, but it is only one mana, I can see an argument for it.

Seth called resculpt not a great card :(. I really think resculpt is still incredibly underrated. I consider the best spot removal in blue.

The number of notable creatures Lightning Bolt kills in EDH goes up every time somebody asks "who would play that?"

you shoud do the same with what's the best combination of colors, like: is izzet better than abzan? nice video btw, I like that all think different

I have been using since it was released confounding conundrum in all my decks with blue except child of alara gates

the discussion about what a counterspell is was very weird. how could you possibly consider veil of summer a counterspell? a counter spell has to say "counter" and "spell" on it.

I think bounce has a secret upside that it shares with cards like oblivion ring. Sure there is a chance that they can get the threat back, but by that time the board state could be completely different. A lot of the time if you hide something under an oblivion ring and then there’s a board wipe, that person can become archenemy. Similarly if they drop a blightsteel and you bounce it, you can bet the rest of the table is going to try to punch them.

I'm shocked Crim and Tomer didn't mention Hibernation when listing the best blue wipes

One thing with Black is that uses the life total as a resource so it gets a bump more than any other color just by the nature of the cards themselves.

i was listening on Spotify. i have to say that ricochet trap is red counter spell. you slap it down and point the spell at Ricochet trap then everything fizzles on the stack.

what about an instant for two blue mana that said “counter target spell, then draw a card if you have three or more opponents”

Cyclonic rift is removal when it forces your opponents to discard cards at their end step after picking up all their permanents

On counters they could consider stifle effects and green actually is quite good for that. I’d also argue that anti-counters is probably lumping into the same conversation as blue does Counters so uniquely, it’s a bit of a nonstarter talking about the rest. Silence and effects like that are very white which could also be brought into the discussion.

if I ranked colors (mid power) I'd honestly probably agree on placements with tomer at the end. The only change I would make is shirnking some of the gaps between colors, but overall I think its a pretty agreeable tier list. Also appreciated mentioning that it isnt just add and divide to find its ranking because of how important things like ramp and card draw are to functionality over something like diversity.

Black green blue white red for me. Black can do so much and can combo off so much with just cheap cards

That Blue board wipe discussion was hilarious. But seriously Cyclonic Rift is definitely a board wipe. Its commenly said the graveyard is your second hand, so how is destroy that much better than bounce?

Yes, bounce spells are generally very, very underrated!

I ran flood gate in mono U Thassa blink deck. its great. I too would rate U over Red and green. Also, I typically consider counterspells as 'removal' they are so unique the 2/3 cards that can counter spells that arent blue are A tier or better and generally considered auto includes in those deck when they are sans blue. that says something about being able to interact with the stack.

I think it would have been wise to compare the various win cons in the colors. That's an important facet, and the two colors that struggled elsewhere, U and R, do somewhat well in that category with Kiki Jiki and Thoracle.

Thank you all for making glorious content for us by frying your own brains with such hot takes

Blue isn't a low tier for spot removal any more, it's got lots of exile vs creatures, cheap destroy vs creatures, and can even deal with artifacts reasonably well, all this ignoring it's access to bounce, so I feel like I'd order things thusly: W is S tier again for removal due to how many good options they have to deal with essentially any card type now, Sultai is at A Tier, with each having shortfalls in it's package, Red is probably C tier as it can remove creatures, planeswalkers, artifacts and even players with it's spells/effects, but most of them require a lot of resources to work effectively. Remember, Red can generate a ton of mana and use that to burn pretty big stuff, it's issue is that it can't readily exile creatures, so Red is hardly a slouch in this area, but it's not really above what you'd call 'average'. Black technically can remove artifacts, enchantments, creatures (it's 2nd best at this, White is just better except Deadly Rollick), planeswalkers and sometimes a player, which is honestly pretty good if you've got a high enough budget to afford the good removal. It's also worth noting that Blue's best 'spot removal' is actually just Counterspell, so it's not like Blue can't deal with almost every card for UU, a big part of why Blue is not a bad colour, but apparently we're putting that elsewhere. Green has tons of naturalize effects, lots of fight effects for creatures and planeswalkers, and it has some damage based wipes vs flyers (and rarely vs other targets technically)/targeted removal for flyers, as well as having various 'destroy literally any permanent' stuff, Desert Twister is probably playable in budget mono-green, and Beast Within is a top tier card. I would say creatures and planeswalkers are the weakest area of Green's removal, but it's naturalize stuff is actually better than what you get in White generally, Green also has cheap wipes for Artifacts and Enchantments. Huh, now Tomer brings up card theft as removal, I'm actually liking that point and I've listed it thusly, stealing stuff is making it 'not a problem anymore' usually, and often turns it into an asset for you. Blue also has some pretty big 'spot removal' effects, Mental Manipulation and Curse of the Swine can be a late game spell to swing a game, either can just devastate a board, especially in a Simic deck. Counter magic is clearly just 'Blue Removal', but okay, I'd tier is U at S, Boros at C, and Golgari at D. In other formats, you've got weird counters that can matter, but you don't run Meren in cEDH because of her sick interaction package IMHO, you'd run a Jeskai deck for that. Stack fiddling is biggest in U, but it's also present in Boros in some cases, part of why Jeskai spells decks are pretty solid inherently at very high levels, they can just interact with everything and control the board. I guess Green has stuff like Avoid Fate? Does that matter? Black has essentially nothing. I think I might agree with Richard that White has slightly better stack interaction, look at all those W Silence effects, along with various 'bad' mono-white counters like Memory Lapse, along with Rebuff the Wicked, it's not like W can't do stuff. You could even use Teferi's Protection as a sort of counter, more or less dodging an annoying (or worse) effect, and there is also Angel's Grace. Red has less, but it does have some. Maybe I'd say W is C+ and R is C-? I guess R does have stuff like Fork, and Pyroblast? Green is good at wiping flyers, artifacts and enchantments. Ezuri's Predation is hilarious, but I use Monstrous Onslaught to good effect in OG Multani, where I can play it and deal +20 damage as I see fit, which should result in a dead player due to them having no blockers left. If you remember that Green can easily Naturalize wipe, Green is probably a bit better than you're rating it. Anyways, W is S for wipes, R is A, Golgari is B, U is C. None of the colours are helpless here, but R is arguably the least narrow colour after W, which can just wipe anything period. U is the hardest to work with, but it's mass bounce isn't bad, and it also has big spot removal like Curse and Manipulation, but Green's numerous naturalize wipes along with it's bad solutions to creatures/planeswalkers are solidly better, but not generally more relevant in a Commander game than Black's access to several very good Wrath effects. Black does suffer a ton from versatility issues, but it can also force mass sacrifice potentially, which can win the game while dealing with some problem permanents, I think Black might be worse than Green if your meta actually cares about naturalize. Red is actively good at wiping artifacts, and it's not bad at clearing the board of most creatures, and it can also blow up lands, especially non-basics, but it also has Flashfire, Boil/Boiling Seas and Omen of Fire if you really hate Azorius. Red has damage wipes galore, both big, small and versatile, so Red can be very good at controlling a board with wipes. For uniqueness, I feel like it should be Grixis on top, Grixis gets access to all of the cards that are just ridiculous that aren't Shahrazad, they've since taken away some of the uniqueness of these colours, but White is not known for crazy/chaotic effects (it does have them I know, like mass removal that trickles permanents back into play), but chaotic effects are a viable strategy to actually win games in Grixis, you don't even need wincons, you can just steal theirs. Anyways, I'll rate as follows: R is probably A, Dimir is B, W is C and G is D. White has some unique stuff, but it's biggest features are just removing things (either one at a time or a bunch at a time) and hitting people with creatures, I guess Silence is pretty unique? Protection stuff in general I guess, but I think you should break Protection off into it's own area. Green is low on the uniqueness totem, with very few cards doing especially interesting things, often the Green card in a creature cycle's perk is being big and having Trample (more true historically I guess), with other colours getting actual abilities that are interesting, like First Strike or Flying or non-keyword stuff even, Green is super-boring but super-powerful. I don't think any of the colours are really S tier at this point, too much colour pie bleed has occurred, perhaps as I see more of the new sets (which seem pretty interesting, and offer more unique cards arguably) I'll bump one of them up. 'Can't lose the game' is 100% Protection. Black's unique stuff is literally just cards that are ridiculous, especially the crazy old enchantments from back in the day, Chains of Mephistopheles for example, effects that are not really part of the colour pie, and this is where Grixis in general shines, it's got lots of effects that aren't really 'on the colour pie' because they are so weird, and Red gets the most of these crazy Chaos effects. Land destruction is under Removal and Wipes btw, and yeah Red is probably the best at this, especially hosing the living shit out of the poor Blue players with Boil. I think if you didn't count it as removal, Blue has tons of theft effects for all manner of stuff, so that's crazy unique, other decks might get stuff out of the graveyard, but Blue can just take stuff. I think Dimir is pretty much 'you can do anything you want as long as it'll help you win', while Izzet is 'you can pretty much do anything, even cost yourself the game!', put them together to create crazy and memorable games. White is openly the least unique colour for the record, it's supposed to be the 'support' colour that helps fill gaps in your deck, being 'stand out' at few things.

Avoid Fate is a one many green counter spell that goes in mono green voltron.

When I make categories in deckbuilders, cyclonic rift does go in the board wipe category even if it doesn't kill anything. Most people play a board wipe to reset the board, for whatever reason, and Cyclonic Rift certainly does that....

Cyclonic Rift is a board wipe and Unsummon is not a single-target removal because your opponents untap after a Cyc Rift, play a couple things and discard the rest. Unsummon bounces one thing, they replay it. Nothing to the graveyard. So, where the cards end up is basically the decider. Cyc Rift ends with a lot of cards in the GY just like a board wipe does.