Big shoutouts to Seth pronouncing "cthonian" right this week, very proud of this character progression.

Seth said "They play that Silly Goose" and no one giggled

The choice of a badger for this card is a total nod to Redwall. Badgers are rare but important to the stories, typically the strongest creatures on the side of the good guys. Worth noting that the Redwall series found success in the US roughly the same time that Magic did. They're contemporary pieces of popular culture. I cant have been the only kid using Revised basics as bookmarks for Redwall stories. This already feels so much like a crossover, it seems like it would be incomplete unless the estate of Brian Jaques signs on for a Redwall Secret Lair.

Keep in mind most lands are not from Modern Horizons sets. 36% is wild

The badger disrespect is unreal

Goldfish Crew - Badgers are low tier. Redwall fans - Badgers are GOATed

As a legacy player there is no playing around grief, you can't counter it as that's basically grief just taking your counter and they can reanimate it to get something else, and if you let it resolve, it just gets your counter + best card or 2 best cards.

Very much disagree with Crim. A card being in too many decks because it's just a generally good card is the EXACT reason to ban a card. Magic is a game about deck building no matter what format you're playing. With The One Ring Modern is a 56 card format. The last Standard banning banned Fable and Bankbuster for the exact reason. When building your deck with those cards in the format, you had to think of a reason to NOT include the card rather than a reason why it should be included. The same is true for The One Ring. Unless you're playing Burn, there is no reason NOT to include The One Ring in your Modern deck.

A potential solution for errata with The One Ring might be to have the Burden counters get added to the player rather than the card itself. It'd be a flavor win and it would stop the chaining of One Rings from resetting the damage you take.

HOLD UP did Richard say possums aren't cute?! Look at their sweet little faces! Look at a picture with a momma possum carrying all of its babies! They're adorable! Creepy tails though lol

Why the badger hateorade?! Super happy for badger commander… 6 playable badgers in mtg history unit :)

What makes the One Ring so powerful isn't the card draw. It is the chaining of One Rings together to completely kill any progression by the other player. Fogging the opponent for a turn and then activating the ring 2 to 3 times to draw into a board wipe or enough targeted removal to kill the opponents board. Then when your ring has stacked too many counters on it you play another copy of the ring and fog the opponent out for another turn.

when they initially revealed that Duskmourn is coming at the end of the year, I was really excited, cause I love the creepy ass horror themes. when they showed the previews I was really disappointed, because I am indeed one of those leftover players who actually care for a *somewhat* coherent theme across sets. I disliked Thunderjunction for its campy cowboy theme that just doesn't fit into MTG imo, but they at least tried to make it fit into a more medieval-fantasy-esque multi/universe. but what I've seen from Duskmourn, they actually just use modern settings for the card arts. straight up TVs, modern glasses, etc. and I find that really lame. at first I hoped it would be alternate arts, like some special treatment or whatever, but it seems to be on the regular cards too. I would have much preferred if they stuck with art like on Overlord of the Hauntwoods (52:35) or the one version of Doomsday Excruciator (54:03). they already have Universes Beyond to bring in settings that aren't "MTG flavoured".

I remember exactly when I quit modern. Turn 3 my Karn got countered by a free spell. The next game my wurmcoil engine got exiled by a free spell. Then my opponent cast a time warp, fetched an island that put time warp back on top of their deck. Never again.

It should have started as a one of for flavor reasons

I usually think Crim has pretty measured and reasonable things to say about MtG, but “Immersion is already broken, so complaining is incorrect” is a pretty hot and pretty bad take. Replace immersion with power creep. I don’t think that Crim, or the rest of the crew, would agree with the statement that “power creep is already bad so we should just go all in on it”

The perfect card to be restricted to a One of

Hi, I'm the guy that loves badgers and wolverines. I actually built Greensleeves just because she made badger tokens. Not sure if I'll build Hugs as a separate deck, but I do love the card.

UW Madison students are crying rn. Not knowing what a badger is is a personal attack lol

12:28 My favorite Redwall book growing up was about a badger, and I was so excited for this set because of the inevitable badger commander. I am heartbroken that Hugs is so boring.

Crim made the same argument for Modern & Legacy of why not to ban Grief/TOR. “But ThOSe ARe ThE PoWERfUl ForMaTS.” Cards can still be too strong for a powerful format. Strength is relative. 🤦

The badger depicted on the magic card is a European badger, and so was the picture of the badger they looked up. North American badgers have the same basic body shape, but they look a lot meaner.

Badgers are great! Much love. They live in cetts (burrows) that they sometimes share with other critters!

Modern Horizons is just Alchemy in paper, and we should just make a Traditional Modern. My locals and I have talked about trying it for a couple FNMs to see if we have fun.

I couldn't quite read Richard's t-shirt, and didn't know what chaturanga was. So I was sat there thinking "T-Rex hates Chaturbate"?

I also would have appreciated a discussion of Duskmourne outside of the straw man. "But what about walking dead hur dur dur" this is a REAL in universe magic set though. Whatever about lazy tropification, its about magics lack of ability to tell a real story or take itself seriously. People in fedoras, holy cow and people in cowboy hats and now we have Van High Tops in White and TVs.

Not knowing what a badger is wild to me.

I strongly disagree with Crim: I don't mind loosing, but I want to have a chance to play. Most of the +3 years cards put yourself as the underdog even against precons nowadays...

Could you guys get in contact with daybreak and interview them about this? There might be information that we don't know about, that they actually can talk about.

My cousin and I have talked about this for years; playing Yu-Gi-Oh back in the day, the Restricted/Semi-Restricted list always felt nice, since it allows you to still play your favorite cards (even if they may be a bit OP)

Should have never been printed. It is a flabbergastingly powerful, mechanically unique, non-Magic IP card that is a 4 of in eternal formats. The licensing issues we've already seen in stuff like WH40k are almost certainly going to plague this card as well. Its literally everything that people who have vocally been against UB have said would happen.

Im sorry, did we miss the whole 'body horror' axis of ALL OF PHYREXIA?

I feel like you're missing the point about Duskmourn. It's an in-universe set that more than ever before breaks off with MTG lore. It's up for debate whether the set's setting is welcomed or not, but you can't just brush off the complaints by comparing it to UB products. I feel like at this point WOTC has brought down the quality of the lore so much that people don't care about any kind of consistency and continuity over multiple sets.

I hate the idea of restrictions, BUT, if it would apply, it should be a change in the oracle so that The One Ring text reads that you can only have one in your deck

Very simple for me. It should neither be banned or restricted. Restricting it would’ve been fine if it had been specified on the card itself as part of its rules. Kind of like the opposite of relentless rats, but introducing a whole new section of a ban list into modern or legacy is just pretty outlandish. Before anyone asks, no, I don’t own any The One Rings, no I’m not a Commander player, I mainly Modern, Legacy and Pauper.

Restricted sounds good because it’s such good flavor one per deck and you can’t play a new one to avoid dying to the one ring counters building up. But whoever draws the one ring is just gonna win the vast majority of games

I feel releasing previews for Duskmourne this early is what the set needed because I'm way more interested in it now that I was before.

I can't get too upset about the tone breaking or Fortnite-ification (or whatever you want to call it) of sets like Thunder Junction or Duskmourn compared to the normal high-fantasy tropes of MTG. Wizards themselves seem to be putting less emphasis into the narrative of the Magic IP proper, so might as well have fun with these theme park sets.

metashare was the reason smugglers copter was banned in standard. if its played as much as it is, then why not ban it to see decks at their more "original" theme rather than just shoving all generic staples in. edit: i posted this at the beginning of this segment and LOVED that seth brought it up also. Its a VERY relevant topic to think about seriously

As a central european i cant help but notice the difference in perspective. For the record badgers are quite large, like roughly the size of a medium to large dog. They generally fall in the category of "dont mess with them", that said you usually dont see them that much since they spend a lot of time in rheur burrows.

Add to the LEGENDARY RULE with: You can not cast a Legendary card with the same name as one you already control on the battlefield. Problem solved!!!!!!!

31:08 Having a set be 6x more likely to be played doesn't mean it's 6x stronger, it just means it's 6x more likely to be at the top of the list. Imagine ranking all the cards in the format from strongest to weakest. If all the MH3 cards are at the top of the list, you'll see this effect, regardless of *how much* stronger they are. They could be 0.01% stronger, but if everyone agrees they're stronger, they'll still be at the top of the list. Doesn't mean the sets aren't screwing with the meta, but the answer to Seth's question is no.

I think WoTC is afraid of player backlash from banning millions of dollars from decks.

Crim look so good in this angle!!

DOINK!! Cactar: 1/1 haste, deals 1,000 damage to a creature that blocks it. Shroud (so you can't give it lifelink)

Ban Nadu Ban Ring Ban Grief

50:45 Re: Fear of Missing Out. This seems like a giant missed opportunity. If you sold me on the idea of "fears manifested," I'd think Incarnations like Anger - where you have a guy who does something on the battlefield, and then he also has a related ability in the graveyard. Anger & it's ilk are fairly easy designs, but they could arguably be streamlined even more; Ex: Fear of Aggravated Assault 2R Legendary Enchantment Creature - Incarnation (R) Menace 3RR: Untap all creatures you control. After this phase, there is an additional combat phase followed by an additional main phase. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery, only once per turn, and only if ~ is on the battlefield or in your graveyard. 3/2 Instead we get power creep, complexity creep, "different for being different", and FIRE! design all rolled up into "Why the hell are you making me read this card. Maybe you want to die the graveyard ability to delirium - that sounds like fun - but honestly, the additional words of delirium and threshold can probably be cut by adding a single mana and the complexity reduction for that seems well worth it. I mean, you'll probably run FOAA in your Delirium graveyard deck anyway, so why restrict it for shaving a mana off of the cost? Maybe the problem is contemporary magic designers don't like magic. Whenever they have an opportunity to reprint a classic card, complete a tight cycle, or pay homage to a classic cycle of cards... they just say "nah, dude, I know better than magic designers. My KCI combo engine is simic and has flying, completely different degenerate playpattern. My signature demon (M) is a 6/6 flying trample with all upside for 5 mana, surely it'll see play, right? My Hexproof has "performance issues," but as the ladies say size doesn't matter and 2 mana feels like forever in bed.

Max flavor win for The One Ring: - If The One Ring would enter the battlefield, exile it instead if you control a card named The One Ring. - The One Ring cannot be copied.

Imagine being so chronically online you don’t know what a badger is

You should be allowed to play 8 of them

flavor restriction on One Ring is a win, and it deals with the toxic protection looping issue. even with a bunch of tutors you still gotta be careful when you trigger the protection

@13:00 badgers and wolverines are similar, both are part of the weasel family. But badgers and wolverines are OP, that is where the saying "honey badger don't care", and why literally a wolverine can take on / scare off bears and mountain lions.

Should be errataed to give the player the counters like experience counters. Fits more thematically also.

I wish they "The One Ring" had the text of Only one ring can be on the battlefield at a time, if your opponent controls "The One Ring" They sacrifice it, and your one ring gains all the burden counters on their Ring. I wonder if that could fix it or if it would be more broken. My other thought would be that "The One Ring" has the text of if you would sacrifice a Ring, the new Ring enters with same number of Burdens counters equal to the number of the counters on the Sacrificed Ring. Sadly there is nothing we can do to fix the Modern Meta but I wonder what could of fixed "The One Ring'

As someone who got back into arena last year and was looking to get into modern, it feels impossble to jump in with the one ring running rampant right now. Spending 400$ on these 4 cards and just praying they dont get banned while 90% of players have said it should be banned since the Modern PT last year, feels like im winding my fist up to punch myself in the balls. The difference between grief and the one ring is that grief is tied to a color/archtype, if its strong, you can build a deck that is good against that archetype, the one ring just goes in any deck, if you focus your deck on trying to stop it, you die to whatever the main focus of the deck is(nadu for instance). The one ring, by itself, single handedly wins games.

The errata I would like to see is : "tap, put a burden counter, draw x, loose x, x equal to the burden counters" and not the upkeep thing. Basically speeding up the life loss by one turn.

Crim, the issue isn't that these new cards are powerful, it's that they're redefining what powerful is. Thus the old favorites are gone and there's no competitive justification to play anything else.

A solution to "the one ring problem" is to create a new card rarity or keyword: "unique cards" that have a deckbuilding restriction like companion cards, so you can only have one per deck

It should either be a ONE of or banned. They banned Smugglers Copter for less.

They probably found some security flaw when they switched that would potentially have affected them with the previous state aswell but was exacerbated now. So they took it down entirely to fix it straight away because being aware of an issue and not fixing it right away can get you in real hot water if something happens that could cause legal liabilities.

Should be errata'd to add the line "A deck may only contain one copy of the one ring."

Listening to this on my commute in Wyoming and seeing two roadkill badgers.

What if the one ring put the burden countrers on the player similarly to an experience counter, that way a new one ring won't reset your damage

Seth doesn't realize that if Ring was restricted, Phyrexian Metamorph would become the next big expensive magic card :)

Fun fact, that type of badger is from great britain I think? And they are super chill. Not like badgers here in the US who will rip you in half. so it's funny that they chose this version of a badger to be all angry

Restriction just means you end up playing a couple copies of Phyrexian Metamorph and ways to Karn Wish or search up your 1 copy.

Usually I agree with most of Crim's takes but in my opinion the One Ring should definitely be banned for no other reason than simply Reckoner Bankbuster got hit with the hammer for the reason of it being powerful colorless card draw played everywhere except the One Ring is that times like a million. It's just a horrible card to play against beyond it being simply "a powerful card." Also Seth hit the nail on the head that a one of One Ring is much, *much* better than having four of them. In Brawl and Commander I see a lot of One Rings and there the life loss actually does matter because you can't get rid of it. The main issue, I see-which Richard alluded to-was that the design of the card simply doesn't work. "Indestructible," for example, was obviously meant to be a negative in the greater design of the card so you couldn't easily remove it. In singleton formats this shines as, even though the card is busted, there you actually have to worry about the life loss and there's three other players staring the One Ring player down who can use that life loss to their advantage. Hell, even in Brawl I personally notice a massive increase in my chances at winning when most One Ring players drop a ring because the life loss just becomes so high. In constructed, though, it's horrible because as Richard said you just chain One Rings transforming the indestructible negative into all positives. It's just a poor design for 60 card formats.

Crim: Hugs is Gruul Golos Svella, the Ice Shaper: Am I a joke to you? (Yes)

We need Sir David Attenborough to narrate this episode while the crew talks about badgers.

The thing is, what makes a card being played too often ban worthy is how it warps the game around it. No one cares if basic lands are in almost every deck because they are background noise. Replacing them with other lands rarely changes the deck's strategy at all. Even cards like Llanowar Elves aren't that bothersome because they're just "generic mana dork" in our brains, but the moment that they get more complex and start to have more unique effects, their presence stops being background noise and becomes tiresome. I think that's because of the mental effort they require. It's just so much easier to our brains to think "1/1 green mana dork" than "1/2 green mana dork that makes colorless except for legendary spells and makes it so those can't be countered". Your brain can't go "ok, it's basically as if they had 1 more forest", it needs to keep track of all the possible interactions, how it affects your game plan, etc. And The One Ring is just so much worse. "Protection from everything" completely changes the game for an entire turn, the amount of draw and pain the ring gives changes every turn, you need to keep track of how likely it is for your opponent to have another ring and just reset it... It just adds extra steps to every calculation in the game. Which is not bad, I love complexity and nuanced interactions, but it becomes tiring really fast. You'd think that having to deal with the same thing over and over again would make it easier, and it does to a degree, but it also becomes psychologically harder as the novelty fades away. Our brain just begs us to do something different for a change and tries to distract us with better things, so we become more detached and sloppy. It's just bad for the game.

10:56 looking super forward to hugs in Rosheen and a heavy X spell theme. We also have a bunch of support from war hammer and some new modern horizons cards. Overall he reminds me of escape to the wilds on a creature.

Powerful and generic are 2 of the worst things to describe a card. Powerful cards should be in a niche or specific archtype while generic cards should be lower to mid level.

They should errata The One Ring to include the line: "A deck may have only one copy of [CARDNAME]".

Unfortunately, Wotc is gonna ignore their formats till the next B&R announcement. So both Legacy and Modern are screwed, even Pioneer could use some attention, but nope. As for The One Ring, I'm against restrictions in non-vintage formats, even if it's flavorful. It just sets a bad precedent, that people start to expect other cards to be restricted instead of being banned.

There's a certain video about honey badgers that you guys need to watch. They needed a vicious animal for the cutesy bloomburrow realm. Badgers fit pretty well.

33:44 I actually agree with Crim here and idk what fantasy land he's living in that commander decks from 4-5 years ago don't hold up. I have commander decks from 4-5 years ago that I haven't tweaked and they're still brutal. I see people with commander decks from 8 years ago with minimal tweaks that are still insanely powerful. Commander focus isn't bad for commander, because that format isn't about a meta or competitive tournaments. Modern focus is bad when it shifts everything constantly and peoples decks become unplayable. That format isn't a casual fun format. Commander is.

The best way to think of Modern (format and time) design is this. A set poisons you and makes you sick, the next set will sell the cure to you. Return to step 1.

No mention about Duskmorne being a tricolor set? I want to know what kind of new triome we will get

Fomo seems only strong with vigilance creatures. If you play it with normal creatures, you don't truly get an extra combat step, you just give one creature double strike.

Maybe they could just errata The One Ring to say "You may only have one copy of this card in your deck." Kind of like the opposite of Shadowborn Apostle. That's the exact same as making it restricted but makes it more flavorful I guess. But then it would apply to all formats not just modern.

They should have had the burden counters get attached to the player, so playing another ring or flickering it doesn't reset how much damage it would deal you if it's on the field during your upkeep.

Burden counters should have been placed onto players and have an innate "deals a damage to you on your upkeep" ability. Frodo's and Bilbo's exposure to the ring haunts him long after the rings destruction.

Saying "Restricting the One Ring is a flavor win" is like saying "Restricting Oko is a flavor win because there's only one Oko in the Multiverse." As a big supporter of Universes Beyond, don't use the lore of J.R.R. Tolkein's literature to dictate the health of a format.

Badgers are incredible, powerful, and shy. Had a den in the back of my property for years and have never caught a glimpse

Errata-ing the protection effect is too awkward, the easiest errata would be to put the burden counters on the player.

I have a feeling if the one ring is restricted and karn is not (or banned), you'd just see 4x karn lists with ring + blood clock or whatever

New Phyrexia has some of the most unnerving cards printed in MTG, and I dont know if that will ever be matched again even though duskmourn is trying.

At this point Seth is DEFINITELY better known as Saffron Olive

Huggs is going to be a super cool card in the 99 in gruul x-ramp.

I suspect the only time I will see that badger outside of limited is in the 99 of Gruul Omnath.

Teleportation circle your one ring every single end step

In this episode 3 men who’ve never been outside try to figure out what a badger is. Stay tuned for more exiting episodes of Goldfishball Z.

34:03 It would be interesting to see a Commander Clash where one can use the current card pool for their deck vs card pool 2/4/6 year ago

My solution that will never happen is that you can have 4 of each common, 3 of each uncommon, 2 of each rare, and only one of each mythic in a deck. It would solve so many problems, including dripping the price of cards.

the main problem with one ring is that I feel like there are just one ring decks and non one ring decks.... that itself is a problem, it just warps all the formats... being colorless is also a HUGE concern. At least if it was one color you did more diversity for decks not using that color. The problem is that is it literally goes in all the decks and is basically not doing aggro. You want to play control? One ring, combo? one ring! midrange durdle fest? one ring!! random ass brew? one ring!!!

Mechanics aside. Hugs deserves a badge of honor. on legacy bannings , the whole 5 man community is in awe of how little wotc cares about the legacy metagame.

What if new card "the ring" representing the movie. If your opponent has cast "the one ring" this game. At your next upkeep they lose the game

The one ring should have a one of restriction on it for purely flavor purposes anyway. Maybe even one per battlefield like the old legend rule

Crying about grief but advocating for the one ring is wild

The funniest thing about the decision to wait m3 out before banning Grief is that it got even better. Psychic Frog took it from tier 0 and innaugurated tier -1.