The Forgotten History of Cursed Scroll - One of the Most DOMINANT Magic Cards of All Time

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The Forgotten History of Cursed Scroll - One of the Most DOMINANT Magic Cards of All Time

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Nizzahon Magic

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 102

@Melvinvanharn Ай бұрын

Card is a beast. Good times when the mono red player starts scrolling you with 3 cards in hand, and keeps naming "Fireblast" for some reason

@kirimaru73 Ай бұрын

Fireblast: You are already dead. Me, calculating that I'd turn the table at about 3-4 life: NANI?

@ninjanoodle2674 Ай бұрын

1:40 - Tempest Block is Tempest-Stronghold-Exodus, not Tempest-Stronghold-Weatherlight (Weatherlight was part of Mirage block along with Mirage and Visions). Pro Tour: Los Angeles in 1998 was actually the one and only Block Constructed Pro Tour to use only one set, so that list is only cards from Tempest. I think that the comparison to Ramunap Ruins is spot on. As someone who played in that era, I can attest that Cursed Scroll was a terror especially given that the metagame in Type II was so small creature oriented at the time. Getting around Protection from Red, Black or White was huge, and it just gave you mana flood protection that was proactive (as opposed to something like Jayemdae Tome which was a great late game mana dump for reactive decks). The other thing to put into context is that with the release of Tempest, players first started to really pay attention to mana curves. Before then, the concept really took a back seat to all the various card advantage theories that players had been focused on, so the concept of a deck that basically threw its cards at the opponent's life total was somewhat of a foreign concept. Cursed Scroll allowed these decks to play a tempo game and still have some late game finishing power. Great video. Look forward to seeing even more of these.

@MrKikke2 Ай бұрын

Man... this video showed me that, besides knowleadge, the personal stories matter a lot more than anything. You should do a "My top 10 favorite decks of all time"

@Windowlick_ Ай бұрын

Ramunap Ruins died for Hazoret's sins

@dyciefisk2535 Ай бұрын

Not the only point around that time they made an odd ban choice. Instead of Aetherworks Marvel they banned Emurakul, and were then considering banning Ulamog until they realized that cheating out Kozilek would still be too good. And it would seem exceedingly dumb to ban all the eldrazi titans just because of one other card, that could still be cheating out the next biggest thing.

@andrewsparkes6275 Ай бұрын

@@dyciefisk2535I dunno. It did genuinely feel like Emrakul was the be-all/end-all of that deck. When it whiffed on the Emrakul and used the ability on something else (even an Ulamog), the deck didn't win nearly as much. What I think happened is when Emrakul got banned, players got sloppier with their sideboards, thinking they wouldn't need to bother about sideboarding for that deck at ALL anymore. Which then allowed Ulamog to come in and sneak more wins than it deserved, which it never would have won had people stuck to their old sideboards that actually did work against Ulamog (even if not Emrakul). Ulamog only started winning when it was spat out rather than losing, after Emrakul got banned, and sideboards in the format changed; there's direct statistics of that. So it's more that WotC eventually had to step in and ban Aetherworks because players were sloppy and couldn't be bothered sideboarding right against it anymore.

@andrewsparkes6275 13 күн бұрын

Also (after rewatching this video a month later) I understand the reasoning given here about Ramunap - that Ruins let it win the long game. Hazoret itself would usually not survive well against removal, but a land does. Also it was called Ramunap Red before the banning for good reason; it was the main win-con. The whole rest of the deck was almost a diversion to the long game anyway. It only started being called Hazoret Red after the banning.

@cax1175 Ай бұрын

I like that Masticore was in this video anyway lol.

@llongone2 Ай бұрын

The Japanese version of Cursed Scroll had a misprint with only 2-mana activation, so it seemed even more insane (when it came out).

@samc5019 Ай бұрын

Another fun thing with Cursed Scroll is that you can use it to bluff. This is usually only relevant for casual play, but I remember winning a tournament game I was otherwise about to lose, by naming a board clear with the Scroll (a board clear I didn't even have in my deck). Opponent under-committed to the board to play around it, and didn't have enough blockers to deal with my haste creatures on the following turn.

@WCPFISH Ай бұрын

I never saw anyone do that.....freaking brilliant!

@zym6687 6 күн бұрын

@@WCPFISH here is the story of the scroll user at one card in hand with the opponent at 5 health they activate scroll naming fireblast and the opponent scoops up knowing 6 damage is coming at them, scroll player after reveals the mountain in their hand

@TheShinyFeraligatr Ай бұрын

You did miss one extremely important upside Ruins has over Cursed Scroll - it was totally and completely impossible to counter. And using land destruction spells on a potential sacland hurt.

@timbawden2577 Ай бұрын

I mean, i dont think Nizzahon is saying scroll is stronger than ruins (getting to make 4 of your land slots into burn spells is insane) but more showing how small damage effects are still very dangerous in red

@bluedestiny2710 Ай бұрын

Reminds me of why Barbarian Ring was ran at 3 - 4 copies in Red Decks during its time Oh... 1 question tho: is the effect of Ruins and Barbarian Ring stoppable my Stifle or Trickbind?

@TheShinyFeraligatr Ай бұрын

@@bluedestiny2710 Stifle and Trickbind weren't in Standard. where it was banned. There was a Stifle-like effect on a Cycling creature at the time, but that creature was really bad for anything except stopping Ruins.

@holotori_senior_admin_teno Ай бұрын

They went and did Rod of Ruin dirty with Cursed Scroll; Same activation cost but 3 less to cast and twice the damage. The chance of this failing is what was supposed to balance it, but it worked about as well as needing to have 7 cards in hand did for Library of Alexandria. IE, people found ways to make the restriction trivial.

@qbertq1 Ай бұрын

In the late 1990s, I used to play a B/G land destruction deck with Cursed Scroll. The scroll was often the best way to win as my opponent tried to rebuild their mana base.

@bluedestiny2710 Ай бұрын

Early in my career, I ran red aggro deck and I literally skipped over this card for the same reasons you mentioned. After my first tournament, when I lost on my 3rd match against a mono-red aggro that ran this card, I realized my mistake. Both decks reached the point where we were on topdeck mode and both of us had low Life. He drew the Scroll, and on the next turn, he used Cursed Scroll Effect + Incinerate... taking 5 damage off me and knocking me down 1 life... and THAT'S where I realized: Oh shit, imma get my ass handed to me by that scroll The next game was worse. He got a much faster start and on turn 3, dropped a 2/2 (forgot which) + scroll. Next turn proceeded to dump his hand out for damage... and every turn after that I took 2 damage... and yea... thats it O.O Needless to say I got 2 more copies of the scroll and ran a set of it for a while XD What I didnt realize is how dominant the scroll was! Its interesting to know even prison / control decks ran it! What was that you said earlier: 30 of the possible 32 scrolls were ran in a tournament? That says a lot! Was there any other card that did that? Lol when the Magus came out, I was much more aware how the game works. While I found the EFFECT great, I was skeptical for several other reasons: it had a red color identity, it was a creature so it had summoning sickness AND was easily removed (especially that 1 toughness). I tried running 3 of these with Grim Lavamancer. It... worked... sure... but most of my predictions against it DID happen

@radivel1 Ай бұрын

One thing about Standard (then called Type 2 Type II) in the days of Cursed Scroll is that the style of play at the time was such that the designers of the card rightfully thought, "No one will ever have no cards in their hand. That's not possible!". The release of Tempest itself was really sort of a turning point in constructed at the time. Even then, Tempest itself didn't lead to Cursed Scroll power - we ran stuff like Ophidian, Whispers of the Muse and "Activate my Nevinyrral's Disk, Capsize with Buyback it in response". It wasn't until Stronghold and Exodus came out to give more fuel to the aggro fire that the Scroll became noticeable. Anyway, because of that design philosophy that was in mind when making it, it was almost felt like the Scroll was a "design mistake", in that the players were better at deckbuilding than the designers. Not quite the same as an innocent 1 mana artifact from Darksteel, or that 2 mana thing in Saviors, but still... they didn't know what they were making when they were making it. Cursed Scroll was utterly dominant, on a level of Oko, Omnath, etc. WotC, still not good at figuring out what cards do, ended the Scroll's reign when they decided to make it irrelevant by printing a bunch of cards that had "draw 7" written on them and ended games on turn 1,. It took the darkest time in MtG history to stop the Scroll, but that's another story.

@bradleygiven5193 Ай бұрын

Kai Budde's deck was great fun to play too. Sometimes you'd get enough mana to activate multiple Temporal Apetures for hilarious tesults.

@stuflames4769 Ай бұрын

The cursed history of cursed scroll.

@8pm Ай бұрын

Pay 3, tap cursed scroll, named "Fireblast", then sac 2 mountains for 4, good old memories😋

@vsully360 Ай бұрын

End of your turn, scroll you with fireblast, untap, scroll you with fireblast, fireblast you.

@bluedestiny2710 Ай бұрын

Yup, another good thing about Cursed Scroll is that you can show your opponent their impending doom >:)

@WUZLE Ай бұрын

I traded away a set of these for next to nothing back in the day and felt bad about it for years. Much later I bought a set for just about as little and actually used it. Very good card in the right deck.

@paulbbryan Ай бұрын

In those days I ran a deck with 20 shadow creatures, and even I wasn't rude enough to run the scroll.

@mark6302 Ай бұрын

nice

@unclerobbieslug Ай бұрын

I used hatred with shadow creatures... Never scroll.

@NEOS-Scott Ай бұрын

Love the Freudian slip calling the Block "Tempest, Stronghold and Weatherlight" (instead of Exodus), since most people feel that Weatherlight doesn't fit in the previous block, Mirage :)

@Space00Cowboy Ай бұрын

Sir, I just wanted to thank you for your precious, diligent and entertaining work making these videos. The history of our hobby is so entertaining and interesting.

@Stanslick Ай бұрын

You should mention "Premodern" format in you videos. I know it's not an official format blessed by Wizzards but the community is growing and it's becoming immense! This whole video series is basically cards you can play there.. :-)

@carolaqalk5978 Ай бұрын

Wasn´t Exodus the third set in Tempest Block, and not Weatherlight?

@didymussumydid9726 Ай бұрын

Correct, weatherlight was part 3 of mirage block, not tempest block

@randallbachir3695 Ай бұрын

Man that 99 deck from kai was a masterpiece. It was the first deck i started playing with and i used to love it. I think that deck is timeless right now and can still win soo many games

@SwedeRacerDC Ай бұрын

I was hoping for Masticore, but this one turned out good as well. I still hope we see the Masticore around the corner and happy he made a cameo here. Definitely enjoying this series!

@charlescothran4946 Ай бұрын

Having played the game since 1993, I really love this series!

@vensantillan3000 Ай бұрын

I love how Cursed Scroll can kill those pesky creatures with color protection, since this artifact is a colorless source of damage. It kills Soltari Priest, Paladin En Vec, White knights, and Black knights, and Mother of runes. Haha.

@Wojtek36762 Ай бұрын

Great video! This was right around when I started playing Magic, and I remember being confused at the time about why the scroll was good, and eventually getting why it worked in red aggro. I hadn’t considered the value against color hosing, but that stuff was huge in 90’s Magic, it makes sense to need an answer to a sideboard CoP: Red in standard since red can’t hit the enchantment. A source of direct damage for a deck like mono green Rancor aggro is neat, too.

@christopherhaas8637 Ай бұрын

Great history lesson! I love this video format. Here's a thought when showing the resume. What if you compared the current card to the resumes of the other cards you've visited? Perhaps a radar/spider-web chart showing the number of appearances/wins in each category. Not to say "this card is empirically better than that one", but it would be interesting to see each card's "thumbprint"

@thescenesnotdead Ай бұрын

Love this series so much, makes me miss my cube

@scottclark3761 Ай бұрын

It was a definite include in my Legacy Pox deck. Just a removal and damage engine. And colorless, which does help from time to time. It is a great card.

@Dinamosaur Ай бұрын

When I read Covetous Dragon for the first time I instantly thought "There's NO WAY this thing wasn't played in it's day, right?" But I had no idea It was a World champion!

@IPlayMagic Ай бұрын

I can confirm it’s still amazing in the premodern format

@jacobcarter6221 Ай бұрын

Love these vids alot. Never stop doing them!

@hellcopterts8895 Ай бұрын

Here is why Cursed Scroll was OP from an efficiency point of view: 1- The activation of Cursed Scroll costs 3 mana 2- The draw of one extra card also costed around 2-3 mana Every time the player kills a small creature with the effect of the scroll, its very much the same as to pay 3 mana (minus the opponent's creature cost) to gain +1 in card advantage, since he lost his creature card while the player didn't waste anything other then the cost of the scroll's activation. Combine this strategy with land destruction so all he can play are small creatures the scroll can kill, while also turning high mana cards into dead draws in his hand and there you have it

@ZackeroniAndCheese Ай бұрын

10:40 minor decklist mistake: Innocent Blood is misspelled as Innocent Bloom

@mark6302 Ай бұрын

Tempest is when I was the most into MTG and my buddy used to smoke me with cursed scroll and scroll rack constantly

@SerathDarklands Ай бұрын

There's a strange set that very few people even know exists, called the Astral set, which was developed for the 1990s MicroProse Magic PC game. The cards mostly require random number effects and other computer=restricted effects, like Whimsy, which casts X random spell effects. Any chance you'll ever take a look at that? Maybe for an April Fool's Day video? It's only a dozen cards, so you could probably cover it in less than a half hour. It's one of my favorite sets just for how odd it is.

@TheKalaxis Ай бұрын

30 copies out of a possible 32 being played in the top 8. Those numbers would see a card banhammered so fast you'd think Thor throw it down.

@BigChucka419 Ай бұрын

I used it in block in a Bottomless Pit/ Megrim deck

@gregconen Ай бұрын

I saw people playing with the 1999 World Championship decks, and the person playing Kai Budde's deck got lethal by using Voltaic Key to untap Cursed Scroll. Not why the Voltaic Key is in there, obviously, but a fun extra synergy.

@NizzahonMagic Ай бұрын

The Key can also be used to untap all those mana rocks and cast wildfire earlier.

@gregconen Ай бұрын

@@NizzahonMagic Presumably untapping the rocks the main reason it's in the deck. It's just a cool add-on that it lets you do more with cursed scroll, too.

@xMizzlex Ай бұрын

Dude. Love the content.

@tommytheecat Ай бұрын

Just my 2 copper, but I would still love to get a Masticore video in this series!

@NizzahonMagic Ай бұрын

It's next, won the latest poll

@QuantumRunnerXX Ай бұрын

We love Cursed Scroll!!!

@magicsinglez Ай бұрын

I played against someone playing Armageddon/Cursed Scroll. My friend laughed and said, ‘that doesn’t seemed like a good combo. He was playing Cursed Scroll very early/very soon after the set came out, and that was not the style of deck he usually played. He usually played a control deck with White.

@bojuka_bob Ай бұрын

Love cursed scroll in my sligh premodern deck

@joshuaadkins2491 Ай бұрын

That card was busted. I went 7-0-2 in a regional with it and qualified for US Nationals. If it was introduced into any other format besides legacy or vintage it would become the best card in the format. Awesome card.

@blodia_vulcan4361 Ай бұрын

Did that Kai deck have a signed edition that you could buy? I think someone in high school had this deck with a signature and gold outline.

@gwikeh Ай бұрын

Yes, this was a recurring product from 1997-2001 or so, sorta similar to the recent Challenger Decks.

@robnotwicz7002 Ай бұрын

Honestly, I'd like to see Cursed Scroll reprinted just to see what it might do in a more powerful standard.

@rickbezoski682 Ай бұрын

Tempest stronghold and exodus

@Kasigi03 Ай бұрын

Another great use for Cursed Scroll is actually blue control. Keep the board clear and have a way to deal direct damage is BIG for a blue deck, with few or even no creatures.

@WCPFISH Ай бұрын

during the time cursed scroll was in its heyday, no one playing blue used it. Blue (at the time and during 90% of the time) always wanted to hold cards, bluff, grind with card advantage (Thawing Glaciers). I can't recall any tier 1 decks from that era using scroll in blue control and there weren't even any merfolk rush decks that used it because if you were going aggro red and white were so much better than blue.

@Kasigi03 Ай бұрын

@@WCPFISH Well I suppose you never played boomerangs and counterspells then. Just because it wasn't popular doesn't mean it wasn't played or effective. MTG players tend to be very narrow. They only play MOSTLY what everyone else does. Hence why Commander is so popular. Less creativity, more precons.

@lancergt1000 Ай бұрын

Hey wait a minute, Cursed Scroll can be tutored by Urza's Saga 😮

@0verbeing Ай бұрын

How good was decree of justice? Its reprint in mh3 and downshift in rarity says a lot about where magic was and the mark it left on the game.

@NizzahonMagic Ай бұрын

It was once really good.

@crondog Ай бұрын

Cursed scroll in UW counter top featured in one of the most famous cheating clips of all time. Card has range.

@tjimicole2677 Ай бұрын

When I first got into magic in 2001 and saw Cursed Scroll, it looked very underwhelming despite its reputation. Then I lost to it once, and understood.

@BrotherAlpha Ай бұрын

Cursed Scroll would certainly get banned in Standard today. It might even get banned in Modern.

@RobotDCLXVI Ай бұрын

What block is Exodus part of?

@chadcload1349 Ай бұрын

Its been in a ton of worlds decks

@TheCommodus13 Ай бұрын

Finally 🔥

@Jawzah Ай бұрын

How good was Goblin Bombardment?

@abrahamwarner4408 Ай бұрын

I have a cube of all 1 drops, and the scroll is arguably the best card. Magus is probably top 5.

@someguy1ification Ай бұрын

Oh. Yeah, I can see that. It kills every creature in the format except those with hexproof or shroud, and without costing any cards to do so. That... Actually sounds kind of oppressive.

@Xoulrath_ Ай бұрын

Ah, 40 card deck minimum and Red Burn dumping their hand, then finishing their opponent with Scroll. How fun that was to play against. 😂

@NizzahonMagic Ай бұрын

The 40-card minimum was long gone by this point -- unless you're somehow talking about Limited.

@Xoulrath_ Ай бұрын

@@NizzahonMagic nah, talking about 5th Edition. It was 1997.

@NizzahonMagic Ай бұрын

@@Xoulrath_ The 40-card minimum has been in place since 1994, at least at sanctioned events.

@Xoulrath_ Ай бұрын

@@NizzahonMagic there's your answer: sanctioned events. There weren't a lot of those going around backing 1997. And when the store that you played at, a comics and game shop, still sold Unlimited booster packs and those funky "starter" decks of random cards, it should be easy to understand why people would think that that was still "official." I personally found it odd to begin with, being that doing simple math tells you that the smaller, faster decks benefit greatly from that. But yes, there was s dude running a 40 card Red Burn Jackal Pup Cursed Scroll deck there for Type 2, and cleaning up.

@danboggus9357 Ай бұрын

is there a better one stop shop artifact source of damage thats repeatable?

@davidlundquist1979 Ай бұрын

The Smart Aleck in me wants to say "Walking Ballista", but that isn't really repeatable unless you have other ways to put +1/+1 counters on it, or infinite mana. It's always annoying to see one on the other side of the battlefield though, much like the Scroll.

@ianhay527 Ай бұрын

Cursed scroll was the original Oko

@MikeTHEmoneyshowmohs Ай бұрын

Cursed scroll was/is win con my lantern control

@OneOfDisease Ай бұрын

I guess the rack wasn't legal then. I would love to punish the meta of top decking.

@linkelia7 Ай бұрын

In today's standard i think ruins would be not very strong tbh

@glubstubs Ай бұрын

:) new video :)

@elmksan Ай бұрын

"begs the question" doesn't mean what you think it means

@NizzahonMagic Ай бұрын

It has 3 meanings, pretty sure this falls under "raise a question or point."

@elmksan Ай бұрын

Call me a purist but I'd rather reserve the phrase in the sense it's been used since Aristotle than the corruption of that use

@NizzahonMagic Ай бұрын

@@elmksan If you're going to do that for that phrase, you have to do it for all of them, severely limiting your ability to communicate with human beings. Words and phrases change and evolve just like people and culture do. Also, Aristotle didn't speak English and "beg a question" is an idiom to begin with, so it doesn't even make sense that you feel that way. You're actually basing it on a 16th-century translator, not Aristotle.

@elmksan Ай бұрын

How does that limit your ability to communicate with human beings? We have a great phrase for a particular logical fallacy. Why not reserve it for that and use "raise the question" for the sense you want? Yes, language evolves, but here's a case where it robs a perfect phrase of its perfect use. My gripe isn't with you man...I'm just venting a peeve. Seems a shame for "begs the question" to get crowded out needlessly

@NizzahonMagic Ай бұрын

@elmksan I just mean - if we reduce everything to only it's original intended meaning and nothing more, we end up with a very different language