Commander Staples That Aren’t Worth the Price | The Command Zone 518 | Magic The Gathering EDH

foreign your destination for all aspects of Elder Dragon Highlander enjoy [Music] episode of the command Zone podcast I'm one of your hosts Josh Lee Kwai and I'm your other host Rachel weeks Rachel we have a pretty cool topic today I love this topic because I I love building this way today we're talking about Commander Staples the cards you know you love that we talk about a lot perhaps that you know what might not be worth a price tag yeah it's about bang for your buck there are going to be doubtless some cards on this list that you strongly disagree with us about but that's okay I think there are a lot of cards that are played very often that are not worth the price tag it's fine you know they are good and you probably if you already have it would play it but I would not buy this card to put in a deck it's probably yeah so uh yeah you're gonna have a caveat these are powerful cards we know yeah they're all good cards before we get into the specifics of what these cards are well if you're gonna you know what's probably gonna happen we're gonna talk about these cards that people are going to want to buy them I know uh but if you want to buy these or the cards we all often will talk about alternate cards that will fill the same slot that are much cheaper yeah if you want to find either side of that card kingdom.com command is the place to go to get all your magic products singles anything at all if you want to build an entire Deck card Kingdom has a huge inventory they're going to not only have the cards you're looking for but also the specific versions of the cards that you're looking for and the great thing is when you add a whole bunch of cards to your cart you know somewhere around 60 to 63 let's say for an entire commander deck that generally tends to be how I do it I don't know about you Rachel but I'll Brew the entire deck oh yeah put all the cards into a carton yes I already own some of them but I don't want to have to go look for them no I never checked yeah maybe some of the cars on this list I would check because they're expensive but the other ones you know and I'm just like boom that's what I love about Card Kingdom because I go click and then the entirety of my cart is going to be handled by one company that's going to package it all together and send it to my mailing address and I'm going to get it as fast as possible I'm going to open it up and now I have the entirety of my deck right in my hand right there from one package yeah you can get sleeving but what are you gonna put those the what sleeves are you gonna put those cards in yeah once I get the cards from card kingdom.com command where am I going to go after that why ultrapro.com command uh they have all of the high quality magic accessories that you need to protect your collection and your decks and to travel with them and organize them they've got everything you need Ultra Pro has some of my favorite deck boxes and sleeves and play mats and card sorters and dice dice and I particularly love their dice I I agree I think they've gone pretty simple as far as there's a nice array of colors but the numbers are nice and big they're really good for spell table or when we're doing games uh gameplay videos or Game Nights Live or even just playing in person you never have to be like how many of those are there it's like the three is pretty big and easy to see for sure and I'm a huge proponent of when you're playing Commander make sure you're you have a very clear board State because it's very hard to play Commander already let's know what's on your board and Ultra Pro makes that super easy so go to oldpro.com command to have a cool board State and also a clear one yeah cool and clear I like that clear you know who else is cool this next Patron our patrons in general are all cool yeah all of them as a group are cool uh patreon.com command zone is the place to go to join our community you can hang out on our Discord talk with Rachel myself Jimmy all of our team were on there all the time you we even have uh spell table games that we play and then of course you get all kinds of other perks like getting extra turns and Game Nights uh access early than the general public you need to watch them early and of course we shout out one lucky Patron every single episode and this episode is dedicated to Adam Shepard Adam you rock you definitely rock all right let's get into the main topic here Commander Stables that aren't worth the price wow what a provocative title oh yes we did it for the algorithm we did it no I think this is very valuable because Commander is so expensive you're buying so many cards and especially like if you buy a staple you don't want to buy it like I don't want to buy three cyclonic riffs I don't want to buy like these crazy expensive cards over and over and over again so sometimes like I just won't I'll replace them with something thing that's as good or maybe like slightly better or slightly worse excuse me because a lot of the cards that we're going to talk about are very powerful cards and they're expensive because they were the absolute best version of this effect but we're playing Commander we're playing casually we're playing with a lot of versions of this anyway it really doesn't matter if you have the number one best version of the effect you can play with second best and it will do just just as well without paying 50 60 dollars for it you know yeah a lot of the second and third best versions are not you know one or two percentage points worse than the number one version but they cost one-fifth or one twentieth right of what the one the other one thirty dollars Less in some cases and it's one card out of a hundred cards in your deck so the fact that it is at that slot one percent worse is not noticeable to almost every player maybe in like a CDH tournament or something right being the one exception if you're re-duke or something that's the exception but you're not redo I hate to you know I'm sorry spoiler alert you out there yeah you probably aren't you're also the champ yeah again um but I I think the negligible difference in power level is often hard to calculate and so oh I'm gonna spend 50 on a card when there's a two dollar version that's very very close and by very close I mean 99 as good in almost all scenarios or even 95 and that doesn't make your deck any less powerful overall like a super computer could barely calculate the difference in your deck um so I think that's a really interesting thing that's going to come up here as we talk about the Alternatives the other thing I think that happens and we're one of the primary offenders of it which is that when talking about Commander cards and Commander Staples and just commander in general pundits such as ourselves will often sort of default to one card that sort of is emblematic of you know a certain kind of effect so we'll say Crater of Behemoth a lot right because that's the first card that comes to mind when we're talking about that effect but what is that effect that effect is just say if you have a lot of creatures now I need a card that converts on having a lot of creatures that can attack into winning the game and crater hoof is just the card that is the default card that we reference in that situation and so if you're new to the formatting even if you're not you start to think like well Kratos Behemoth is the only card or the Far and Away the best one I need to use because that's the one they call out all the time when really there is a slew of cards that can fill that slot and do basically exactly the same thing and there's often not in need to spend the high price tag on the one yeah so I think that's part of the problem too so you know I apologize for that but that is how you talk about things right you know obviously it's going to continue the the other side of that coin is some of these cards are expensive because they're huge in other formats um so they're they show up in Legacy or modern decks so they're expensive because that format needs that card oh yeah yeah and they may not necessarily be worth that price tag in Commander it's not warranted in a commander warranted in a modern in a modern deck so that price is driven by other formats so that that has come up uh in a couple of these that's interesting as well okay all right so all the pre-game talk out of the way yes let's start with the actual cards what is the first card and these are in alphabetical order they're in alphabetical so they're not in order of highest offenders no no no but these are cards that show up really high on Eda Trek so I win I went on the Eda track like list of Staples and I pulled cards that were hi had high price tags that I was like you know what probably Irreplaceable yeah and this first one I think is a great illustration of that it's avacyn Angel of Hope which is currently clocking in at fifty dollars this is a very cool card and yes you know especially when you're newer you look at this and you're like holy crap yeah I need that it's this other permanence or indestructible yeah it's five way white for an eight eight flying vigilance it is indestructible it's a legendary creature but it says other permanent shoe control it's indestructible and it makes everything you have indestructible what's that if you read it and you're like yes I need that yeah and the answer is sorts to Black shares yeah anguished on making chaos warp capsized like cyclonic Rift toxic Deluge so we've talked about this a lot lately because of the Dominus cycle but indestructible just isn't what it used to be indestructible protects you from about half the removal and about half the board wipes that are very common in Commander so like all of your stuff being indestructible means that 50 of the time you're okay okay it's like it's still a thing that's nice it's good but is it 50 good 50 on an eight drop too yeah so I was looking at like there's a lot of Cheaper ways to replace this and there's sort of two reasons that you would run an abbison in your deck and it's that you want the board protection which is there's lots of alternatives to that or you want a big scary Angel and there are lots of Cheaper replacements for that so um I think on the indestructible side if you're like you know what indestructible works really well in my play group I want to make sure I have access to indestructibility something like a selfless spirit will go as far as an abbison A lot of the time so this is a two drop with flying it has an activated ability that says sacrifice uh selfless Spirit creatures you control gain indestructible until end of turn most of the time the indestructibility for everything only matters in the case of a board wipe so that one-off is just as good most of the time as indestructible all the time uh Lynn Wallace Shield of the Seagate does a similar thing gives all of your creatures indestructible and expert for one one turn now this stuff is only your creatures whereas Addison is all your stuff right so I think there's a little bit of a difference there but at the same time these things are actually going to be more reliable at protecting you because they can come out earlier whereas avacyn one of the reasons I think it's not worth fifty dollars is because it's an eight drop and the fact that like even if you have it in your hand it won't save you from Damnation because a lot of times they're casting damnation before you've got Avison out on the board absolutely so you'll be stared at me like it would have been sweet if like creatures any destructible I only have six Mana anyway yeah where if you had one of these one of these cheaper things like selfless Spirit or grand Crescendo is a cool new one that they printed um it either makes tokens and then it gives creatures you control indestructible until in return these things will protect your board now where avacyn doesn't protect your board until turn you know six maybe and uh I like red Crescendo a lot as a much better version of what Iverson is doing because it's an instant so if you have ever sent out and they have damnation in hand I'm just gonna use damnation as yeah what I was complaining about earlier the the you know standing in for all those type of effects yeah um they're not going to cast damnation because they see the opposite and they're right you know they see it it's very hard to trick someone with an eight Mana creature right so hard to flash that out so they'll wait until they have sword Supply shares or somebody gets rid of the Iverson and then cast the damnation whereas Grand concerto you can get them because they think they've got you and nope you're like they're they're like austere command and you're like cool Grand Crescendo and they didn't know you had that yeah yeah so I like I like that as a a much better version of protection right and like I've seen a lot of people run Addison on the other end as not just board protection but as like a big scary threat like as a finisher in white decks and it's a very expensive card but at the end of the day it's an eight Mana vigilance with indestructible and that's not like there's a that's a very replaceable kind of threat white has a lot of really good ones including Sarah's Emissary which is a amazing card it's a very powerful almost certainly better yeah Sarah's Emissary is a three dollars and fifty cents uh and it's a 7-7 flyer for four white white whites as it enters the battlefield you choose a card type you and creatures you control have protection from The Chosen card type often you choose creature usually creatures yeah you can't be damaged yeah like you can block infinitely like this is a very this is a three dollar card this card is really good and we'll win you games because you just play it and then attack and then you win right if you make a copy of it now your protection from creatures and instance it's like very difficult to get through a Sarah's Emissary if you're looking for just another like big beater I still like a chroma a chroma angel of Wrath it's a six six with flying First Strike vigilance trample haste protection from black and from Red like that's as that's a much bigger threat in the air it's faster and it like people forget about it because you're just like oh you know it's not a chroma it'll be fine right uh you've got Sephora Skies blade and a chroma the other one vision of ixidor actually there's a lot of other acronyms yeah I was going to say this is your game night yeah this is game nights at chroma this this is a finisher yeah it is a seven-man angel it says at the beginning of each combat until the end of turn each other creature you control gets plus one plus one if it has a whole bunch of creature uh yeah for whatever keyword it's got it gets more and bigger and bigger so it's it Buffs your whole board this this agromo will end the game whereas the other avacyn will sort of prolong the game right in my opinion I think there's probably a lot of people out there and they're going to say this throughout this episode which is like but my avicent is so good in my Kalia deck sure or it's so good in X deck and I think with certain synergies right avacyn we're not saying it's unplayable right it's just not worth fifty dollars and if you don't own an Avison right now even if you have a calorie deck I would say 50 is better spent in a lot of other places and another reason which we haven't talked about yet is because it's five white white white and this there's only certain decks first of all only white decks only decks with white could run it right yeah so you take your calorie deck apart or you know you whatever build a new deck even if it has white in it let's say say there's only five White cards there's only seven white yeah maybe ten white sources in the deck you might be hesitant probably to play a card that has white white white in its cost if it's not a heavy heavily white deck and so it's just a very narrow card whereas let's say avacyn was just eight colorless Mana broken first of all but yeah yeah then I think the price tag is a little more warranted because at least then any deck I own yeah I could consider putting a chroma into that deck because having all my permanents be indestructible you know it might not be exactly what my deck is trying to do but it's going to be good it's good in any deck even then it probably still wouldn't be worth 50 bucks but at least it would be a better case to be made whereas this one is very narrow just having not just be one color but so you have to be so devoted to that color in order to really run it right yeah it it's just not it's just not worth fifty dollars like it there's there's a lot of it's very replaceable at that price tag all right let's go on to the next one yay we had an interesting discussion which I'm sure we will rehash here yeah about this card because I do like this card yes uh so the next one is burgeoning and burgeoning is King dollars right now which isn't the most expensive staple but this is this is an effect we see a lot of uh it says whenever an opponent plays a land you may put a land from your hand onto the battlefield so it gives you extra land drops it's one green for the enchantment it's one green yeah it's it's very cheap it's so it's comparable to exploration which is currently only twelve dollars they've repented a lot of it yeah exploration is one green for an enchantment you can put play an additional land on each of your turns so the way these are different is on turn one you play exploration Play a land if you had another one drop you could play it right then but on turn when you play burgeoning you tap your land you play burgeoning now on Rachel's turn presumably's turn when she plays the land you look cool I got another Lane in my hand I play it then it goes to Jimmy's turn he plays land you go cool I got another land in my hand I play it then it goes to Jake's turn he says cool I play land and you go I'm out of lands because I only started with a three lamber um but still I got my lands into play yeah all of them right now and there's that feel bad moment where you draw the next card for turn it almost feels like you missed a land drop even though you're still one land ahead right but in that scenario you're exactly where on your turn where you would be with exploration right right you you would have had three layers on turn two right in in some like in most cases it's going to be basically the same as exploration right because you will run out of lands at some point unless you're doing a lot of card draw unless you have a ton of car drivers yeah the thing that I like about exploration more than burgeoning is burgeoning requires that the hand the lens be in your hand yeah the way you really utilize the multiple land drops is usually by playing lands out of your graveyard with some sort of effect right and burgeoning doesn't give you additional land drops you could also play that with a course of crew fix and things like that right yes yeah off the top of your library merging requires those lands be in your hand yeah it's kind of like Horn of greed is weirdly uh worded so that you it's not landfall it has to be played from your hands for it to trigger this is a similar thing yeah so like burgeoning is a put trigger and or is a is a put ability and won't trigger Horn of green where this is an addition a land drop which will trigger hunt of great yeah it's interesting because exploration I think is better in a land focused landfall that because it's going to have Crucible worlds and ramanak expert where burgeoning might be better in a car to draw deck a wheel deck something enchantress yes enchantress something where you are going to turn through a lot of cards from your life so you're going to usually be holding 12 to 15 cards but I like to play basically sure yeah yeah and in that case burgeoning can feel like fastbond right it can be like you know after turn one I've got four lands and then after turn two I've got seven right and it's like yep I'm not dropping lands every single you know I'm not dropping four every single turn anymore but that Advantage is ginormous because on turn two Utah for two on turn two I tap for seven and then on turn three I tap for seven again and you tap for three and I'm up you know about 11 Mana or something no seven mana on You by turn three that way I think that comes from I think it comes from a big misunderstanding of the kind of decks that burgeoning is yeah like I think burgeoning gets slammed into lands decks a lot of the time whereas most of the time I would rather have an oracle of mildaya or or even an Explorer where it just keeps like it keeps Lanes in my hand gives me additional jet land drops helps me trigger my things where I'm not necessarily drawing you know 15 cards a turn cycle or something like that to really take advantage of getting the lens out of your hand yeah I think exploration is probably a little bit better for its price in more wider variety of decks because exploration's still good in your card draw deck right yeah it is definitely where burgeoning's not that great in a deck that's not drawing a lot of cards right I think it's more Niche than exploration is so most of the time if I'm going to spend money on this kind of effect I would rather spend that money on an exploration or an oracle of moldaya or uh even Druid class yeah I think is underrated it's a really solid version flipped under the radar classes one dollar and it does it gives you an additional land drop and it lets you or you gain life when lands enter and then yeah and make something huge if you get down to the last one it's like a Mana sync for these big Mana decks Druid class is very strong um and then I was looking at it I was like there's a lot of ways to just put additional lands into play on your opponent's turn without spending the money on burgeoning right if you're drawing all of these cards you can use the Sakura tribe Scout which is like the card is a dollar no it's two dollars and fifty cents you tap it to put a land card from your hand into play Walking Atlas this is a Murph favorite this is a colorless version two manafort one one tap it you may put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield yeah there's a bunch of cards that kind of do that thing right a landmark Scout Sky shroud Ranger yeah um those are obviously a little more susceptible to removal they cost a little bit more they don't work the turn you you play them but they're way cheaper these are all one to two dollar cards ones you know Landmark Scouts 25 cents I think burgeoning is an if you have it great it's very good and if you don't have it make sure you want it because I put burgeoning into a couple of decks and been like I this is not any better than than any other card yeah Virginia is a card that you read and you probably see it do something cool one time against you and you think this card's insane yeah because that it has that fastbond is a band card in the format and it can happen feel but there are many points in time where burgeoning doesn't do that it just gets you your three lands into play and you're in the same place you would be on exploration on turn three you stop hitting land drops you're not drawing enough cards it's doing nothing and it literally would have been better to have you know a land in the slot for burgeoning you know because if you just don't have enough velocity see in your deck enough yeah for sure 18 bucks 18 bucks I can't you know what I can't believe Oracle of Modi is 750. I remember when that was a 40 card I know I was so excited to be able to put it on this list and say that like look you can get an Oracle and it's a reasonable price I was like that's a cheap alternative I look yeah we begged for that reason for years but they did it they did it this next one we have teased a little bit yep it's crater hoof behemoth all right let me read it it's another eight Mana spell five green green Green for a five five Beast with haste when it enters the battlefield creatures you control gain trample and get plus X Plus X until end of turn where X is the number of creatures you control in general if you have about eight creatures or more you will now win the game because this comes in becomes your ninth creature and all your creatures get plus nine plus nine and travel wow and I believe is 81 and that means if they had zero power to begin with which they didn't so it's probably more like 90 or so damage yeah 95 damage yeah normally when you cast a crater if you win the game if you can attack and they don't weren't ready for it yeah yeah that's it that's the thing I but this is this is an overrun effect so plus plus X Plus X and trample is in a fact that green does really really well and often you don't have to pay 33 dollars for uh I do want to I've included a finale of Devastation as like a sub option of on this list finale is it's 55 five dollar card it's a 55 card and if you're using it primarily as like an overrun to Caster where X is 10 which is not always where it's being used usually yeah right effect on it yeah so it like that it plays more double duty than crater hook does but you can get an overrun effect for like four dollars literally overwhelming Stampede which is a sorcery version of crater off right three green green yeah sorcery and telling of turn creatures you control okay trampoline plus X Plus s where X is the number of or sorry is the greatest power among creatures you control very similar yeah uh if you're in a green deck you often have like a five five or a six six and that's a very reasonable yeah even a toky deck it's usually like well what's the power of your commander whatever that is yeah and you're like okay everything gets plus four plus four in trample that's usually enough to win the game right and you're like yes crater hoof does give you plus nine plus nine in that situation but like dead and more dead are the same yeah uh you put a Craig favorite on here Triumph of The Horde which is 14 yeah it's two green green for a sorcery until end of turn creatures you control get plus one plus one trample and infect so this is yeah effectively the same yeah often we'll pump all of your creatures enough to kill multiple players and you don't need a lot more power because you only have to hit them for 10 total because of the infect right yeah and and Triumph of the hordes is still relatively pricey like 14 isn't nothing yeah but it is significantly less than the 33 price tag on Crater hoof yeah they've also printed a number of things that just give uh plus three plus three or plus uh this one's plus two plus two in trample I really like Earth Shaker Giant in this slot Earth figure giant is only six dollars and it is a six Mana six six with trample that says when it enters the battlefield other creatures you control get plus three plus three and gain trample until end of turn so if you want if you like that crater Huff is on a creature and you the ETB is the important part of it that is a replaceable effect for for five or six dollars a lot of people like end race four runners for just a similar effect it's plus two plus two vigilance and trample so now you still have your defenses up if you can't take them out on that turn yeah I like Earth Shaker giant quite a bit because it is six Mana as opposed to eight and that often matters sometimes you're staring at the crater house and I want to do two things here right because I need to remove the propaganda plus play this thing or whatever and Earth Shaker gives you a couple extra Mana to be able to pull off you know better sequencing yeah so I I think like crater hoof is a good card obviously but this slot can be filled by a lot of popular green cards and you can save yourself 20 bucks and spend it somewhere else another card I use a lot in this slot is Beastmaster Ascension that's a great one which is like three dollars yeah it's so cheap yeah and it doesn't give trample no but I've found that in general since it gives such a big buff to everything plus five plus five right yeah it doesn't it also still doesn't matter because you're like okay whatever I've got 10 things you can block three of them but the plus five plus five means you die right to the ones that get around more and tends to and you can play it and it's cheap the turn that you're going to attack with a lot of things and get all the counters on that attack and so yeah I tend to use those interchangeably try for the hordes Beastmaster Ascension crater hoof tend to be like my top three right yeah and Creator hope is very expensive so I use the other two more yeah it's uh it's a very replaceable effect so don't run out run out and snap up a crater hoof unless you already have one all right well we are just hating on green yeah because we've got our third green card in a row and do you think this one will be controversial I don't know this card has been reprinted over and over and over a hundred dollars one hundred dollars when you put this price down I was like this is not a hundred dollars right they just reprinted it I feel like it's it is back up to a hundred dollars it's insane I mean even born collects monstrous Raider which does effectively the same thing as a 50 Magic card yeah so doubling season is a very splashy card it has been popular since the moment it was printed because it's one of those cards that you read it it's kind of like obviously and you're just like wow yeah I could immediately think of a million reasons why this is good uh it double yeah it's an enchantment for five Mana that doubles how many plus one plus one counter or something would get or how many sorry counters of any kind that something would get or how many tokens you would make um you're like and it's only you not your opponents yeah so if a planeswalker comes down it comes out on double the amount of loyalty if you would put five plus one plus Encounters in everything you control you're gonna put ten if vendor of zendikar goes yeah if you're gonna make a 4-4 Angel token you make two of them yeah you're gonna make two of them you make four of them um it is very splashy and it is just thematically like a commander card right like this is so over the top yeah it is just one of the reasons that this type of Effect one of the reasons why people just play the format just would be like I gotta mean a lot yeah did a lot right absolutely like that's one of the reasons we're like you know what I I can only do 40 damage to kill you but I want to do 200. yeah exactly or 20 000 like the the numbers just get so crazy but a hundred dollars and you know what's crazy I've started cutting it from quite a few decks in fact it's just it's a it's five Mana for you to do something better later it's very hard to play to find a spot to play this anymore I find that only Super Friends decks want it right um just for the counters or the tokens alone it is it's too slow five Mana is a lot now and like you said it's kind of like my Davido my vidalcon Ori realization from you know a recent episode which is like it's just really hard to be like five mana and you're like what did you do nothing go yeah and they'll go I'm gonna remove that yeah and then I'm gonna get on with my turn yeah now you've done nothing and it's I I like in most Decks that are making counters I would rather run something like a deep glow skate which is just ETB double the counters on one thing double it now though double it now it's already here and it now is the what is it's an ETB it's done get the benefit it's not like hey play this and then something else it's I played something before and now I'm getting you know now I'm doubling what's there yeah especially for a hundred dollars like playing a a permanent that's five mana and it's sweet and you're excited about it and then have it removed and it does nothing it just doesn't it just doesn't feel very good so I I think there's a lot of Cheaper effects that will get you more value out of what you hope your hundred dollar ex expense I I think this one is so egregious that a lot of these cards are not only cheaper but also if they were the same price still better they'll just do better yeah yeah so if it's plus one plus one counters you're after hardened scales yeah honestly let's imagine yeah parallel universe where you're building your plus one plus one counter deck and price doesn't matter they're the same price and I say you can only have one of these two cards in your plus one plus one counter deck it's hardened scales or doubling season it's got it's got to be hardened skills so it's not even bang for your buck it's just straight up hardened scales is better in a plus one plus one counter so cheap it's cheap I agree with you but I'm just saying like so then why would you even consider 100 because hardened scales is how much four dollars and fifty cents yeah yeah it's it comes down before everything you start getting value every time a creature happens I like and this kind of effect is on a ton of things like corpse Jack Menace says basically the same thing winding constrictor even if you if you want to get a little spendy and you're playing plus one counters that can really want a doubling season kind of effect branching Evolution does basically the same thing 23 still one fourth the price yes and in three Mana it's three it is literally better yeah again same question if you was parallel universe doubly season is only 23 but you can only put branching Evolution or that in your deck you're taking branching Evolution you're one one I would think so counter yeah right if one or more plasma encounters would be put on a creature you control twice that many plus one counters are put on the creature instead it's just what you want but for three Mana yeah and I think some of the reason doubling season is more expensive because it is more versatile than hardened scale right it does tokens as well and it does like loyalty counters and things like that but still any deck your building it doesn't want all of those things right it wants only one of those things and so yeah spend four dollars don't spend a hundred dollars yeah yeah um and if you're like you know what I like how big doubling season makes my stuff get an unnatural growth that card is seven dollars and it doubles the power of all their creatures every turn it's sweet uh if you're playing loyalty counters there's a similar effect so you can get pure imaginative Rascal for six dollars and fifty cents Evolution stage is absolutely insane in way better with loyalty counters it is one dollar whenever you play a land proliferate yep uh the lion yeah I'd say even like flux Channeler depends on what colors you're in but often if you care about loyalty counters you're not a mono green you're playing like a five color deck or something like that yeah so lots of replacements for doubling season obviously just go out and spend one yeah in token decks I don't run rolling season anymore it just is too slow I'd rather have you know a million other things just like felodar retreat or something yeah yeah so that makes tokens yeah having something that doubles what you do and says in a second it'll be sweet is is I hesitate to put my decks anymore all right now we are done making fun of green for a second or making fun of yeah I suppose we are blue now it's time for blue uh this next one is a 70 Magic card it's Fierce guardianship ooh this is the quote unquote free counter spell from the commander product a couple years back from the deflecting squats uh cycle and I would say this applies to force of will which is 85 manage range is 43 fluster storm which is 33 Swan Song even even swan song which is a 15 counter spell there are there are I was just pining for the days when Tuan song was like 250. I can't believe it's 15 they really need to reprint it dollars and these are all cheap counter spells that you run because they're as efficient as it gets yeah Fierce guardianship in particular is tuna blue for an instant if you control a commander you may cast the spell without paying its Mana cost that's the key part it says counter Target non-creature spell forcible of course is another free counter spell you have to discard a blue card Mandarin gives you the Mana uh the man of value in colorless Mana equal to the spell you countered that one I think has the best argument for being like it's the most unique of the of the group yeah and it often leads to You're Gonna Play a couple times and realize that it actually leads to unfun games because you generally counter something big then have an extremely crazy turn and now the game's over on turn five is that what you wanted but power level wise you don't necessarily need to spend 70 on Fierce guardianship because if what you need is a counter spell there are a ton that are still very efficient and way cheaper yeah I mean starting with just counterspell yeah like blue blue holding up two Mana is nothing it'll counter everything it just gets the job done and it's you know a dollar dollar thirty dollar Thirty Arcane denial is this a lot of people like it's one in a blue for an instance it counters your spell and then its controller May draw two cards at the beginning of their next upkeep and you draw one card I I like Arcane denial it can trips it's also a more splashable counter spell so it's one in a blue versus the blue blue which it can be tricky in three or four color decks I'm a big fan of delay it's uh two minnow for one and a blue it's counters Target spell and then uh it suspends it for three turns so they can't resolve the spell now but they'll respond they'll resolve it in three turns which in Commander is they're never it's done you'll never see it again or that spell that you encountered three times from now will not be that impactful anymore yeah or if it's an x-bell it's gone yeah I like to lay a lot yeah there's the new one from uh new Cabana which is an offer you can't refuse yep one blue instant is kind of the new swan song counter Target non-creature spellage controller creates two treasure tokens yep that one's only three dollars and this one was brought to my attention I haven't actually played this before but it's stubborn denial uh counter Target non-creature spell unless its controller plays one but if you control a creature with power four or greater counter that spell instead so it's just a hard counter spell especially if your commander it has four power or greater yeah you could compare it to Fierce guardianship if your commander is for power or greater right because it has that basically says if your Commander's in play right now it becomes a pure counter spell right and stubborn denial is what a dollar is a dollar fifty for stubborn denial and it's only one Mana versus Fierce guardianships zero but you know the difference between seventy dollars and 1.50 it is a long way I do want to pause here though and acknowledge the fact that like Fierce guardianship is a very powerful card and you can't make that hardened scales versus doubling season argument with the cards we mentioned as its replacement there's no world in which if the cards were worth the same price you would look at counterspell and look at Fierce Guardianship and choose counterspell yeah it is undoubtedly more powerful and the thing we're weighing here is but is it seventy dollars you know almost 70 times let's say 60 times more powerful than counterspell if you have a counter spell on your deck and in this then you have the exact same deck and the only difference is fierce guardianship is where counterspell was how much more powerful is the fierce guardianship deck than the counter spell deck undoubtedly it is more powerful right how much more powerful a percentage point two probably two is even pushing it yeah because you have the same effect in the same slot and one requires mana and one doesn't and I don't want to claim that those things don't matter but they don't matter as much as you think and if you are worried about budget right like you don't own every card or whatever like none of us do and you know I have a lot of cards and you know I have two or three Decks that don't have to worry about budget and all the rest still do because I just don't have you know yeah I have one Fierce guardianship yeah exactly my CDH deck and everybody else deals with an Arcane denial yeah exactly and the other decks feel fine right they don't they don't you're not sitting there going like I was trying to First guardianship in this act right and it also is the type of card that is power in the power level uh column at such a high level that it can often feel bad for your opponents because they're like oh you got a fierce guardianship in your deck I'm playing on a different level than you are so free means is so powerful even in a game that goes as long as ours has as many players free it's just like you can get in a in a stack fight and you can win because you don't run out of Mana you know it's it's definitely very powerful it's very powerful so this is one of the ones I could see people sort of disagreeing with but 70 bucks is a lot for a single part in your deck yeah yeah and it's like does it yeah does it make your deck 65 dollars better and the the a similar thing to Avison not the exact same is like again this is not a colorless card so we'll only go in blue decks right and not every deck is you know I I think it does go in a lot of blue decks and you could almost put it in any Blue Deck unless you had one that was like not going to play its Commander out very often man I think that's the only thing I could think of um it is going to be good in most your blue decks so this is this is it's close but I I do agree I wouldn't spend 70 bucks on it yeah it's um this is the kind of thing that like these cars that we're listing these are powerful cards and these are effects that they're going to reprint so I don't buy this kind of card until a reprint comes around and then I keep an eye on prices because at some point like maybe it is worth 30 or maybe it is worth like 35 dollars to you but 70 is just like such a such a real dent in a lot of people's financial situation that it's like you just can't yeah you get to the point where like you're gonna get so blown out by a reprint that you don't you it's better to just wait and seventy dollars is about where Dockside was sitting before they reprint it and again it's going to climb back up Dockside is so powerful that you know it was worth it right when it hit the 35 40 mark and now it's already past that again but like yeah waiting for the reprint just run an offer you can't refuse like that that functions exactly the same way uh all right this next one we're talking speaking of big splashy enchantments this is a fun one I wish it wasn't thirty dollars it's fiery emancipation three red red we should have used that as our background we'd have it somewhere three red red for enchantment if a source you control would deal damage to a permanent or player it deals triple that damage to that permanent player instead they were like doubling season hold my beer yeah we're triple x card came out why why quadruple magic in 2042. there's gonna be quadrupling season and uh firely quadruplication 44 fiery Fury yeah dumb uh so this card this is a 30 card it is also a six-man enchantment that does absolutely nothing on its own you have to have a board state for it to be valuable you have to have a second spell to cast after it or you have a big attack it does cool things damaged doublers worked just fine and they're like and grass Marauders is a 1.80 card and it is a seven Mana spell it's essentially the same and it's as if a source you control would deal damage to a permanent or player deals damage to double that damage to that permanent player instead and you know what I'm fine with double I think double does the trick double will will often do the same as dribble we'll just kill the thing or kill the player it's the difference between between Crater huff and overwhelming Stampede where it's like Dead versus double dead they're the same uh there's gratuitous violence which is two red red uh for basically the enchantment that does a doubling again uh that card is three dollars and wrestling Runners was a dollar eighty solfem the new Dominus in red says if a source you control would deal non-combat damage to an opponent or permanent uh in employment controls it deals double that damage that player or permanent instead if you're really into tripling you can do it Jessica's Thrice Thrice reborn will triple the damage your commander does if you're like if you're like I gotta triple it right but I want triple I don't want double yeah Jessica will help your commander out and that's only four dollars and fifty cents yeah I've played with fire emancipation quite a bit um and I've found it to be pretty awkward in that it is similar to doubling season as far as it is going to be six Mana you're gonna play it and often you will not be able to take advantage of the triple part of it until your next turn you're right you're like okay and then next turn I'm going to cast whatever uh Comet storm or some sort of earthquake or something like that solfem actually in a lot of ways was better because it only affects your opponent's stuff when it takes the damage and fire masturbation can get awkward with hitting yourself so if you're gonna heartless hit a tsugu or something like that yeah so there's a lot of reasons why fire masturbation is awkward even you know it once you get it out just figuring out how to sequence it and whatnot like you said you really need a way that like I have an attack I'm playing this and attacking in right I have a tap ability I'm playing this and I'm tapping that ability and I'm getting the triple right now and that's it's harder to set up than you think is all I'm saying I still have it in a couple decks but I often it's sweet I often do not play it in the game yeah the next one the next one the price is purely attached to availability uh it's Imperial seal and it's ninety dollars uh Imperial seal is a tutor it's a one a single black Mana for a sorcery that says search your library for a card then Shuffle and put that card on top you lose to life so it's basically vampiric Tudor with um sorcery speed yeah and the beer tutor is extraordinarily powerful but also vampiric tutor is forty dollars yeah so um just strictly better for a spirit tutor yes and more than half the price so already you shouldn't buy Imperial sale if you don't have a vampire like yeah right this was was the thing when they reprinted Imperial sale it's like when it was 700 or whatever it was everybody knew there's like I'm not gonna buy that but then when they reprinted it I was so worried about Commander Blair is running out yeah because the card's bad you're still not playing Imperial steals and it's Imperial seal I would say is like the fourth or fifth best tutor in Commander it's definitely behind demonic tutor it's definitely behind vampiric tutor I would say it's but it's behind Grim tutor which is three Mana but puts it into your hand it's right there I think yeah yeah I mean like putting it on top of your deck and then passing the turn if you need a way to draw it yeah like immediately which means that you already need another thing on board for it to be good like it Imperial seal sees play in CD CDH where they want every single tutor in the colors yeah you really have to ask yourself if you're even considering Imperial seal for ninety dollars it's like why do you want a tutor so badly you have a combo or something in that deck and then even then if that is the case you've got what I really like is as an alternative is scheming symmetry yeah which is one black you tutor and another player tutors does the same thing as Imperial seal but it will in the situation where you're going to combo off do the exact same thing right yeah it's functionally the same as Imperial seal if you're ready to go right now and it's only seven dollars and fifty cents and the thing is if you are looking for the best in slot number three tutor because you already have the other two and you're trying to combo then you're going to be using it to end the game in that way right then now it's is kind of the fourth slot down then because I put it behind scamming Cemetery because of price right yeah it's like wish claw Talisman puts it to hand for three Mana so it's hard to like if Grim tutor's in the list then wish claw talisman's also on the list diabolic intent Miss is a tutor but you have to sacrifice a creature that's a little and that's a hand it's a little harder but it's like you know these cards are nine dollars which called Talisman is three dollars and fifty cents you do not need to spend ninety dollars like ninety dollars doesn't mean Imperial seal is good ninety dollars means they haven't printed a lot of Imperial seals yeah and I would also say that in general you know if it's not a CDH deck and most of the cards we're talking about not most but a few like Fierce guardianship have to be re-evaluated if you're playing CDH because you know in that format like the one percentage does matter a little bit more you know but in general if you're playing more casual Commander you're newer to it another tutor is not what you want in your deck right in general that's not how people are playing the game you're not trying you know to have your entire deck revolver I'm getting a specific card or two uh if that is what your deck wants to do then you know having another way to do that might be worth it to you but your deck probably already costs thousands of dollars if you're right to the point where you're spending 90 on the one yeah exactly but if if yeah in any other deck the 90 is just egregious yeah I and I I was thinking about this and I was like okay if you're really worried about Tutor density clearly you're looking for something specific and there are other ways to find that that you don't have to spend ninety dollars yeah and they're not as Mana efficient but they put the card in your hand and this is the transmute cards there's a Tran there's black transmute cards at two Mana at three Mana at four mana and at five mana and they all have abilities that say one black black discard this card look for something with the same Mana value as this card so if you have like I'm going to find my combo piece and you know your combo piece is a three drop you can go go find it with a transmute card and these cards are pennies on the dollar transmit is kind of critically underrated and has always made yeah because these are tutor cards yeah and if like if you have a tutor for a reason even if your combo is the dumbest combo ever and you're like I just need to be able to find it like these will go find it and you usually in your deck have like necropotence or something you know that's like okay you've already have that combo piece in hand or that really important piece I have two or three other cards they're just good in all situations that this will then go get instead yeah the other thing I was thinking about is like if you have all these tutors and you're like really I just really want to find the right cards it's possible that you're just as you're you would be just as served by a big draw spell especially in Black then you would be searching for one card and giving it to you in a second so so anything that draws you a number of cards could get you both your combo pieces or you know just get you a lot of good stuff where instead of one good thing yeah right I really like this uh you've got greed painful truce which is a little bit of an underrated card I think so uh siphon mind which makes your opponent's discard then you draw I really like stinging study I've been playing this a lot there's like four in a black for an instant and the instant is really Prime here you draw X cards and you lose X life where X is the Mana value of a commander you own on the battlefield or in the command zone so as long as you know that your Commander's Mana value is four or more stinging study is amazing it's really good yeah if you draw at least four off of it and you know this when you build the deck yes you know what your commander is and the commander doesn't have to be cast it's not like Fierce guardianship either yeah it's there are ways in Black to put a ton of Cards into your hand and it like I I think people especially casual players with tutors will think of them as like oh I'll go find the card I need in this situation yeah um Imperial seal is very bad for those situations because it doesn't give you footage sorcery speed yeah so a big draw spell can be as tool boxy and can serve your deck as well as like a mediocre tutor especially one that's 90 black also does have tutors that don't go to your hand so something like entomb so yeah also depending on your deck and what it's doing an entomb could be a cheaper version of an imperial seal so it in certain decks Imperial sees even farther down on the list because if you're like no I'm cool I wanted to I actually want something or whatever buried alive or whatever so yeah yeah cool all right well we have a number of cards left to go on our list stay tuned to make sure that you are not buying a card that you could replace easier and save you some dollars but first we're gonna go to a midworld ads ah so many sites so many resumes hiring is a nightmare hmm how does ellishnorn find such loyal workers I mechanize their flesh and bind them to my will oh no I don't think I could do that the news indeed you sniveling fool with indeed all will be in one place it's the perfect platform to attract interview and hire new employees and Flash thanks to powerful tools like instant match which gives you a short list of qualified candidates the moment you sponsor a post or my favorite screenings and assessments oh yeah with assessments I can add over 100 different skill tests to my job post then I'll know everyone I'm looking at is actually qualified now I can skip the boring stuff in the interview and focus on what matters like achieving Perfection oh Alice Norton you complete me that is the plan wait what indeed knows when you're growing your own business you have to make every dollar count that's why with indeed you only pay for Quality applications that match your must-have job requirements visit indeed.com command Zone to start hiring now just go to indeed.com command Zone again indeed.com command Zone terms and conditions apply cost per application pricing not available for everyone need to hire you need indeed hi-ho human friends we're the Seven Dwarfs I'm talking this is 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the easy way to save when shopping on your iPhone or computer hey Rachel Foundry inspector it's a good ramp card right sure it's cost reduction so the more spells you cast the more money you save well honey does basically that but for money I like money tell me more honey is the free shopping tool that scours the internet for coupons and promo codes so you don't have to all you do is install honey and shop online like you normally do then when you get to checkout just click apply coupons and honey will automatically find any working promos you can apply and it doesn't just work on desktops it works on your iPhone too just activate it on Safari on your phone and save on the go no matter what you're buying dog toys desk lamps monitors video games honey can help you find deals on just about anything so it's just strictly better than shopping normally yeah last week I was looking for a new Bluetooth speaker and honey found me a 35 cash back deal huh that's just enough to buy you a risk study I'm way ahead of you Josh you have a problem yes I do if you don't already have honey you could be straight up missing out and by getting it you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting this show get PayPal honey for free at joinhoney.com commandso that's joinhoney.com command Zone all right we're back we are talking about the Commander Staples that are not worth the price we're about halfway through here the next one it's a it's a good card but uh I read it less and less these days for sure yeah it's a white card so we're not picking on green still and it's a 38 dollar card it is land tax for a single white this is an enchantment that says at the beginning of your upkeep if an opponent controls more lands than you you may search your library for up to three basic land cards reveal them put them into your hand and then shuffle your library so um the first thing you put here is the thing we always say when we talk about land tax which is land tax is not a ramp spell a ramp spell is something that gets you more Mana available to you than you would have if you just made one land drop per turn land tax doesn't put lands into play it puts them into your hand so latex is a card draw spell it's a card Advantage spell it gives you more cards in your hand now those cards just happen to be lands which does guarantee you will hit your land drops but it does not give you uh access to more Mana than you would otherwise have and I think land tax really became a staple when white really really struggled with card Advantage yeah where it's like white had didn't have any card draw and land tax was kartra it gave you the lands it gave you the velocity that you needed to make sure you were keeping up with your opponents and now that Wizards has printed more and more and more draw for white something like land tax becomes a lot less valuable yeah because I'd rather just draw cards that have the chance of being spells yeah you know if land tax is great if I don't have that option but when I do I'm like well would you rather draw three cards but you know their lands or two cards but they could be spelled but they could be spells I mean usually two cards but they would be spelled I agree these lands come up your hand and you're like you end up discarding a lot of them yeah which can be good depending on what else is going on it's deck thinning yep um which we know just statistically doesn't matter much but yeah we've got 100 guards it's a lot of thinning needs to happen there yeah um but they've given white a lot of great tools for cardra and one of my favorites lately has been rumor gatherer is a one-way with a card with Alliance it says whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control Sky one if this is the second time this ability has resolved this turn draw a card instead so if you can play two creatures you're gonna draw and the sky is actually worth some percentage of a card right right because you can say oh I don't need lands I'm putting that one on the bottom right yeah so it and in white you it's very easy for you to get tokens on the board it's very easy for you to do tokens at instant speed and you can keep triggering this thing over and over and over again this card is insane in my his on Deck because it makes two tokens at the same time so you just cry draw nice every time it's really cool uh you've also got takasha's welcome on here which is two and away for an enchantment whenever one or more creatures with Mana value three or less enter the battlefield under your control draw card this ability triggers only once each turn so this is just another sort of card draw spell for why because you tend to have small creatures great thing too if you have creatures of flash you can create tokens on other players turns then you could draw on more than one and more and yeah this is just a card that you know welcome a vampire is very similar yeah these cards didn't exist yeah and landex looks a lot better when those cards don't exist but now you're like ah I'd rather have a card that can be expelled yeah I'm drawing plenty of cards and I know you look at those and you're like those require me to be doing something I was like ah sure but those are things that white textures the white decks do if you want something a little bit more passive I really liked Master of Ceremonies it's not exactly a card draw spell but it says at the beginning of your upkeep each opponent chooses money friends or secrets for each player who chose money you and that player each create a treasure token for each player who chose friends you and that player each make a citizen token and for each player who chose this secrets you and that player each draw a card wow it's a ton of value it Triggers on your upkeep and people are always greedy always one person will give you the card every time it's usually one responsible player that gives you a token one who's looking cast the spell if I wanted to and they get a treasure token and then Jimmy's like a card of course and then this four Mana Rhino has just given you a ton yeah there's uh also other ways to replace the land search if that is the reason that you wanted land tax in your deck there's much more cost effective as far as dollars so weathered Wayfarer is one white for a one one and you can pay a white and tap it to search your library for a land card reveal it put it into your hand and then Shuffle you can only activate though if you're if you have an opponent that controls more lands than you do which is a common sort of writer clause and a lot of white yeah it's the same step as map has similar wording right um gift of Estates we'll put lands into your hand a rescos Explorer we'll put lands into your hand these cards are extremely inexpensive they're like one dollar and thirty cents and 35 cents respectively whether wafer just got a reprint it's only three dollars now um and that one will let you search for any land yeah so if you've got specific utility lands and then if you want to upgrade the actual to you know make this card into ramp right yeah take out your land tax and put in a card that's going to ramp you give you access to more Mana then cards that are still cheaper but not quite as cheap as the other cards we've been talking about uh to fill that slot something like our komancer's map is 12 it's two in a white for an artifact uh when it enters the battlefield you search for two lands sorry basic planes and you put them into your hand but then whenever a land enters a battlefield or an opponent's control if that player controls more lands than you you can put a land from your hand onto the battlefield so you do get to ramp and this continues to work regardless of what whether you've used those two lands that you drew right you're still gonna draw other lands in the course of the game so this allows you to keep up with the player with the most lands yeah Keeper of the Accord does a similar thing except for it searches and puts it onto the battlefield if you have less lands than each each player so they have given white ways to draw cards they have given white ways to to ramp especially land ramp you don't have to pay 38 dollars for this effect anymore yeah again this is a very good card still in some decks I'd say it's very efficient especially when you're pairing it with red and you've got things like faithless looting and thrill of possibility and cathartic reunion and you're rummaging and things like this because then you can turn those lands you got into actual cards but again that's narrow kind of similar to that original thing I said about avacyn where it's like any deck you build will not necessarily want a land Tech so if you're going to spend 38 on something for your collection but it's really going to be narrow in the number of decks you can go in unless you already have a big collection it's not efficient to buy a card like this you're way better off spending your money on something like a sort of feast and famine that you can just go in any deck right yeah okay moving on yep I can't believe this next card is 28 yeah it's a planeswalker it's Liliana dread horde general for black Lac for a six loyalty Planeswalker whenever a creature you control dies draw a card plus one create a 2-2 zombie negative four each player sacrifices two creatures negative nine the ultimate each opponent chooses a permanent they control of each permanent type and sacrifices the rest this is a very powerful card I and I think most of the time when it winds up in a deck it's there for that static ability yeah that first class yeah that the whenever a creature you control dies draw a card um and the rest is sort of gravy on it the thing about that is there are many cards with this effect uh that cost significantly less like dark prophecy has almost exactly that wording whenever a creature control dies you draw a card and lose one life and it's on a three Mana it's a black black enchantment so and that yeah that card's three dollars uh three dollars and sixty cents for dark prophecy so you can get this kind of effect cheaper so it's you know obviously you want redundancy and and that in Decks that want to draw cards when you sack stuff but you can get like Airbus Bleak card it does basically the same thing yep it's I mean I think there is some Synergy here that the other well Erebus doesn't allow you to sacrifice creatures on it um because playing Liliana and then negative fouring is like some a thing you see a lot yeah which is like every sack two creatures but when I do it I draw two cards right and it gets you know clean yeah kind of and still has a thing left over people have to deal with you know that is powerful uh so it's the combination adding together right that really uh I think is sort of putting it ahead of dark prophecy yeah yeah but arbo is blue hearted is a really good one because again it does have pay one in black sack another uh creature Target creature gets negative two negative one until it returns so it has the ability to do you know two of the steps right sort of on it to attack a creature and then you can pay to life and draw a card and it's two dollars and eighty cents yeah yeah and that's this kind of thing we've we've printed a lot of and it's like I I really like this card it's body count uh it is an instant with spectacle for black so if you can cast it for a spectacle cost uh if an opponent has lost life this turn but it's an instant so Could Happen whenever it says draw a card for each creature that died under your control this turn and that's this card I think it's like two dollars um and it has it has that same thing where I'm turning bodies into creatures and it happens at instant speed so you can do it in response to a board wipe or uh yeah I've seen it used in that way where they go through some rigmarole and it's not infinite but they manage to sack the same creature or a sequence of creatures like a few times in a row and they're like so I've sacked uh 12 or 12 of my creatures have died this turn and then they're like I'll draw 12. you're like oh my Lord come on and usually there's like a blood artist or something out during doing right and that's damage yeah yeah that's a pretty cool card I like it a lot Plum The Forbidden is also an underplayed one I think uh this this one has snuck up a little bit so maybe it's not as underplayed as I think but it's like 2.60 cents I think for one in a black it's an instant it says there's an additional cost to cast this spell you may sacrifice one or more other creatures when you do copy the spell for each creature sacrifice this way and the spell itself says you draw a card and you lose a life so you can sack six creatures and draw six cards for two Mana right you draw seven right seven yeah you copy it that many times oh my God yeah there you go yeah respects uh midnight Reaper they both have that static when another non-token creature you control dice draw a card yeah yeah so one's another and one's not another but yeah you get it the main difference with grim horror specs and midnight Reaper is the non-token Clause yeah I think you can assemble what Lillian is doing with a couple of cards and often those cards are cheaper CMC six Mana is a lot I think Liliana is still good it is yeah but you can your deck can be you know 99.9 as effective with one of these other cards as long as you have enough other outlets and stuff in there right um yeah and I think that's something that you said is is something that is worth saying is Liliana if you're casting Liliana you should be minusing Liliana yeah um because I've played against it a lot of times where they'll slam it and I'm like I'm gonna lose to my creatures and then they'll make a zombie in fact they're Planeswalker but just get that value out of it it's so powerful you draw two cards to replace the creatures you sacrifice and every real sax two creatures so you just got Ace what eight for one yeah it's and you still have the the extremely powerful you still have the Planeswalker so it's really like a nine for one if even if they just swing in like it's nuts if you spent the 28 on Liliana play it right use the money and play it right yeah all right this next one is the most contentious for sure it is one of the most powerful cards in the format some people could even say claim that it was the most powerful right like it would at least be in the conversation yeah and it's also 200 it is Mana Crypt it's all the way back up to 200 it feels like when did they last reprint it uh what is that it was a double Masters double is this double Masters 2022 whatever it was no it's double Masters because the manual wasn't wasn't yeah the second one it's zero manafort artifacts you can tap it for colorless colorless so it's a soul ring for zero Mana but it says at the beginning of your upkeep flip a coin if you lose the flip Mana Crypt deals three damage to you a negligible amount in our format where we start with double life anyway and I I think this conversation that we that we will have applies to a lot of very expensive fast Mana where it's it's manifold is 43 dollars Mock's opal is 85 jeweled Lotus is 120 um I've even played against MOX diamonds that are like 730 yeah Xbox time and it's like not 700 with magic card yeah not worth it um it's these are good cards and there's nothing that we can say that makes the Morse carts there doesn't even have the claw the the thing I've been saying which is like it only goes in certain decks no it would go in all any deck you want the the thing is like I don't I don't think any magic card in commander in casual Commander is worth two hundred dollars and I think like if Mana Crypt isn't worth 200 then no magic cards are worth two hundred dollars right like if if bang for your buck yeah yeah that's what I that's what I mean because you're replacing one card it's not like you're getting four Mana Crips and your deck is that much better you're you're getting one Mana Crypt and you will see it one percent of the time that's not the correct that's not the correct way you'll see it like 10 of the time or something like that but it just it I don't think it changes your deck two hundred dollars it doesn't change your deck 200 yeah yeah I mean this part is where we get into the realm where it is a little more difficult to talk about because what 200 is worth to an individual person is different is different of course it's different based on what your socioeconomic status is what are the priorities you have in your life you know what part of the world you live in all kinds of factors yeah what kind of magic you like playing yeah but I do agree and I have a lot of decks that don't have Mana crypto in them obviously because a I don't own unlimited Mana Crips but also I have Mana Crips that aren't indexed because Mana Crypt does make your deck more powerful but it is it is one of those things where like it doesn't feel right to be playing it in certain certain pods right right it doesn't feel right to have a deck that has a Mana Crypt in it against people that have you know pre-con level stuff or or even in the six you know low seven ranges of power levels that doesn't feel like a place where it's warranted that I have a Mana Crypt in my deck so I just wouldn't play that deck in those pods so now all of a sudden I'm like well I need decks to play in those pods so those decks don't want Mana Crypt and now all of a sudden Mana Crypt is less useful to me because I can't go in all my decks right it's manicrypt is interesting because you're like it does make your deck better so I I was like okay your odds of drawing a soul ring on turn one is about eight percent right and that's we know the power of of having a soul ring on turn one right yeah you have about a five percent better chance to lose the game it's yeah you'll get murdered because you've been you're so much for it yeah three people decide that you have to die and you have a 10 chance of drawing it by turn three where it's still like an extremely impactful card for you to draw if you add a Mana Crypt or a second piece of fast Mana uh so if you add a vault a vault or something like that your odds of drawing fast mana on turn one jumps up to 15.6 and by turn three it's almost twenty percent so one in five games well yeah you'll have fast Mana inside of the first few turns yeah so that it speeds your deck up like it definitely does it's inarguable yeah like there's just it's it's like a it's a full 10 chance difference right that that you're going to be faster but the thing is like how much do you value your deck going faster because like are you trying to keep up with your friend who plays four pieces of fast Mana then then maybe buying a Mana Crypt is worth it to you but if you're in a play group where like most of your friends don't have Mana crypts then I I don't think it's worth the money I think your friends will be frustrated well and the thing you got to compare this to is not just what this card does but what 200 could do for you in other areas of your deck right so you could buy two doubling Seasons how could you lose [Laughter] yeah but I mean you know you split that up and I I believe most you know if you were to buy 10 20 cards yeah those cards you're gonna draw multiples of them in every single game are more likely to increase the power level of your deck but it does really depend where your deck sits if you're looking and you're like well I don't have 10 cards I could add to this deck then that's when manacrypt starts to maybe become a consideration as far as worth it for the dollar amount but you know if you're a newer player or you've got a lot of decks in your collection spread out again and you have a lot of you know slots in each deck that could be upgraded now all of a sudden upgrading multiple slots will often do more for you than upgrading this one spot and also like it it's just a little bit more fun to have a card that does something be the cool cards in your deck yeah in general yeah I I get it though this card is powerful and I think this is the one that people will argue with the most and they're not wrong no I agree I it I think this has the biggest question mark over it it has to be is it worth this much money to you yeah because like what are what are your priorities when you're building your deck what are you trying to get out of out of this upgrade are you trying to move faster are you trying to make it more synergistic are you trying to make it more fun for you to play are you trying to keep up with your play group um all of those are questions that you need to ask yourself before you buy a Mana Crypt but the thing is yeah it is colorless if you buy a Mana Crypt you have it can go in any deck if you take it apart it can go in another deck that's it'll be good in all of them too it will yeah it goes in all of the decks if any card is worth two hundred dollars this is the one I will say we don't allow it on game nights anymore so if you're playing a game nights deck we've sort of uh you know I don't know if we've ever said this but we we I guess or Shadow banded or whatever you want to say only because we don't believe it generally makes for good on camera games because it it creates a situation where like well if you just happen to draw it like there's nothing yeah about it did you draw did you not and of course every game nights deck would have that card in the deck if they could because right you know we just allow you to use whatever cards that exist like we're not giveness is not about um you know anything except for like we've got a commander build the coolest version of the commander that you would want to build right just use all the cards that exist we're going to track down the cards for you or whatever but we found that like when tends to happen is like well at least one person in the pot if they all have Mana in their deck we'll draw it somewhat early and that creates a a thing where they're ahead and everybody else has to gang up on them and then all the games feel kind of samey right the player comes out to an early lead gets either crushed by the other players or is able to twins yeah or is able to turn that into Victory Fair quickly and neither of those scenarios end up being very fun to watch all the time so when we found that the game's got a lot better once we started saying like no more Mana Crips uh in anybody's deck and everyone's equal because nobody can have it yeah nobody can really complain except for post Malone who complain about it a lot but then yeah and then the other thing we said that I should say to sort of even this out and just finish the conversation is we also said if you Mulligan at least once you're not allowed to have soul ring in your opening hands yeah because we found if we allow you to Molly in a bunch you're just always gonna find a soul ring here you're gonna create the exact same scenario right it's fast Mana changes the game game and it really can swing like it can be a coin flip where if you get it that's it you can nobody's catching up at all yeah so I yeah Mana Crypt at your own at your own uh at your own risk wrists yeah for sure all right uh the next one's interesting we've been saying this for years yeah I love this so the next cards that are not worth the price are original Dual lamp they're not worth it yeah so here's the list this is nuts yeah tiger is 378 Tundra 550. I'm assuming these are all revised uh yes scrub land 315 Badlands 432 dollars Plateau traditionally the cheapest 390. let's go to the blue ones volcanic island 950 tropical island 700 underground C 810. Savannah 360 and Bayou 530. these are outrageous prices and yes the lands are good they're good they're yeah of course but I these are this is where we were talking about earlier where like the next best land the closest to this yeah is a percentage Point worse yeah very very yes it's worse like how much how much worth worth is like a steam vents than a volcanic island like the two life is is what is two out of 40. it's something but it's little it's not very much yeah yeah it's in the grand scheme of things it just doesn't really make a difference I mean a little bit you shouldn't shock yourself a lot but like even just let's talk about a basic yeah so you've got like tiger Taps for red and green it comes in untapped it's fetchable it is arguably 100 better than a basic because it just has another because it just has another color yeah it's like two Basics stapled together it's close to strictly even that even just swapping a forest for a tiger that makes your deck one percent better maybe like maybe a percent like it really depends but yeah yeah I don't think in general because you also have to factor in a whole bunch of things like do you have rampant gross in your day do you have things that care about bass cleanse there's a lot of those yeah yeah I want to get back to the triumphs the trilands versus this yes they come in tap they have to but they kept for three yeah so how much better is that than fetchlands fetchlands are way cheaper still expensive but way cheaper and let me ask you a question if you could choose between a volcanic island you can only have one of these yeah either a volcanic island or a scalding Tarn in your deck it's scalding turn right for sure yeah so if you don't have all the fetchlands in your deck you shouldn't even be thinking about because volcanic island isn't good without a scalding turn like if the fetchability doesn't make it like if you if you don't have fetches then it's just a bond land it's just the training center yeah yeah it's just untapped it's just an untapped blue and red Source yeah which it's like as good as a check land if you don't have the fetches first yeah so the fetches without the dual land still get Basics so your Basics still get shock still get cycling lands or what time are you in where you're like if I don't have red and blue from this I can't do anything one you need one of those more than the other right yeah and often it doesn't matter either way you've already got red and blue and you're just like I just need something that Taps for Mana untapped yeah and you can always get the the uh Basic Land with the fetch land as well yeah I think dual lands people look at them and like I have a decent amount from my high school days when I started playing yeah and you'll play a tropical island be ooh trouble ground they think like oh my God that dexa CDH deck and you're like this is my Tim deck right like all I want to do is just cast my spells and play the cards that I love from when I was a kid but right and you just have those yeah but it doesn't make my deck more powerful than yours in fact it's a Tim deck it's not more powerful than yours but because you played an expensive card right yeah so this is like I understand why people buy buy dual lands because they're collectible and they're cool and they're old reserveless it's an investment um so there are reasons to buy dual lens none of them are related to the power level of like or gameplay unless you're playing Legacy um which we're not uh well not not in this podcast um yeah if I was going to improve my chalkland Mana base I would immediately just buy all of the fetches and I and that will improve your deck just as much as as yeah in way more than buying any single one of these a lot of people are like making dual eyes at dual lands and they don't have the fetches they don't have the battle Bond lands they don't have the triumphs and they don't have like the uh the havelands which are the lands that say do you have two Basics yeah and have uh the Basic Land types yeah which are often just as good you you usually get to a point in a game where you've got at least two Basics into play and then all of a sudden things like Prairie stream become just as good as a dual land yeah and you can do that as early as turn three so yeah yeah I I I I understand they're fancy they're worth a lot of money so they're definitely going to draw attention but dual Lance you don't need them at all in fact yeah here's another thing on game nights we just I just stopped I we didn't Shadow ban these people are allowed to put them in their desk if they want to but I just stopped using dual Lance I just did shocks and fetches and just doesn't change anything my win percentage has not changed on game nights and how my decks do have not changed right like nobody's noticed I just stopped playing dual lands and no difference was made by yeah just the price tag at the bottom of the necklace was the only change yeah and I I we haven't mentioned it but I really like the slow Lance that they printed in Crimson vow and um and midnight onto these are the ones that uh if you control two or more other lands of any of any kind they come in untapped so they're tapped in those first two turns which you know you can play tap land untapped land Signet then you're fine uh but then they're untapped for the rest of the game and there's no stipulations to make I think they're great and they're all like yeah you've got so many there's so many you don't yeah you almost almost never play a game anymore where you really are worried about your Mana base that much like even five colored extra oh yeah yeah you're you're totally good all right a couple more here to go yeah this next one is colorless and you know we'll probably catch some Flack for but it's forexian altar this is a 30 Magic card that isn't a three-man artifact that says sacrifice creature add one Mana of any color it's powerful it's a part of a lot of combos it is um this is my thing about frexian alter is I feel like a lot of people just put it in their Aristocrat decks and just use it as a free stack outlet and then the Mana just Fizzles just floats into the into the night and that's an old way to use it but that's not thirty dollars worth of value like if you're using proxy and alter I think you really need a way to take advantage of the colored Mana because astronaut's altar is seven dollars and most of the time's better and it makes two cups because it makes two colors yeah yeah and more man is usually better than colored man and not always yeah it's I think you just have to be paying very careful attention for why do you have this in the in the deck and how do you take advantage of the Mana and if you're getting thirty dollars we're out of it because otherwise you could just play a visceros here right that's like uh like visors here is an 80 cent card that says sacrifice a creatures cry one you'll always have Advantage Out Of The Scribe this cry one the creatureness of it it makes it good in Black decks and it's a free sack outlet that you paid less than a dollar for yeah if what you need is a sack Outlet then visitors here is what is is probably better yeah I mean in general Dexter one visitors here want a lot of Stack Outlets they just don't want to be caught without one right yeah so I think that might be part of it you've got altar of Dimension here which right yep that card is again often going to be just as good often you're probably Milling yourself because you want cars in your um graveyard or if you're stacking a ton of stuff you could you know deck your opponents I haven't seen a ton of play uh is thermopod uh this is a creature that says sacrifice a sacrifice a creature add red to your Mana pool so it has the same activated ability as forexane altar but it's a single red of course it's five mana and it's on a creature but like if you're really after the colored Mana sacrifice there's other ways to do it and that card is a dollar thermopod Thermo pod I think I've seen him play one time ever yeah uh yeah Henny's another good one that a lot of people like I love you three Mana two two with haste and it says whenever a creature and opponent controls guys put a window counter on it but also says sack another creature and he gains indestructible until Neutron an indestructible Zach Outlook yeah it tends to get bigger over the course of the game like Jenny's often like swinging around for like 10 or 12 later in the game you're like jeez shouldn't let that stick around so long and nobody removes it yeah and it provides the sack Outlet part of it yeah it's very strong yeah I mean this is the one on our list that I personally think I would push back on the most thirty dollars is not like an insane amount if it was 50 or plus I think I might be in more agreement but yeah we're right after we're fresh off of a forexane Ultra reprint so this is sort of as low as this is gonna get and we know it'll climb because it's been 75 plus it was almost 100 before the reprint yeah uh and this is a card that is narrow it doesn't go in every deck you don't just put this in a deck right you know it's colorless yes but it's held back by the fact that you really need to be sacrificing creatures or want to sacrifice creatures to do it but that is an archetype that has a lot of support and yeah you know golgari decks and DiMera decks and orzov decks all there are all kinds like Aristocrats is just one of the most common uh archetypes that exists so you probably will find a home for it and it it is very powerful it allows you to do things that you couldn't do otherwise like you just have boards where you're like well you know how many decks and how many situations have you been in where it's like if I just had two more man I would win this turn well correction alter will you know often give you those two Mana to win that turn um so I think it's closer yeah just give it just give it a firm look because like if you're playing for XC and alter and it's just a sack Outlet there's a hundred one dollar cards that are free sack outlets and if you're playing Francine alter and you you're like I want the Mana and I want a lot of mana and astronauts altar is probably just better but obviously there are scenarios where flexing alter is worth every penny it's just not every deck yep you put this one on here I did you snuck it in on me I did all right the next card is rustic study 45 it's a little outrageous yeah two in a blue for an enchantments whenever an opponent can't say spell you may draw a card unless that pair that player pays one uh generic Mana do you pay the 45 pay the 45 boy oh boy it's a lot of money it's a lot of money and you're in blue yeah there's a lot of ways to draw cards and there's a lot of permanence that draw cards I think I think the big thing about rustic study that that makes it so popular is that you don't have to do anything just pay three mana and and it it draws you cards and there's lots of like Mr gramora is often goes hand in hand but Mystic Remora is only a seven dollar card it's insane that it's still only seven dollars all this time yeah it's crazy I mean it did just get reprinted in Domino remastered but okay well that helps um one I really like is reality chip I run this in almost every blue deck now uh this is a a legendary artifact creature equipment jellyfish uh it says you may look at the top card of your library as long as reality ship is a chat attached to a creature you may play lands and cast spells from the top of your library reconfigure two in a blue so it's a two Mana creature and then if you pay two in a blue it equips under a creature and you can start casting stuff off the top of your library I can't think of the name of that card future site thank you the big blue one yeah uh that does the same thing but that costs five Mana this is an installment payment of five Mana right right the two on layaway then three the thing that I like about reality chip is it's it gives you value by two Mana because you can look at the top card of your library you know when to scry and when to draw you know when to fetch and not to fetch it's a no for good against Craig it's an over yeah it blocks all day uh it's you can reanimate it you can like equip it there's and if there's a board wipe and it's an equipment it falls off and you keep it so there's a lot of positives to reality chip and it gives you a ton of card advantage and selection when it's only two Mana yeah so I I like obviously it doesn't replace rustic study but it is three dollars and does a very good impression yeah uh you have ghostly pilfer on here which I know is a pet card of yours yeah it says whenever an opponent casts a spell from anywhere other than their hand draw card so if your opponent has a reality chip uh you drive every time they cast off the top of their Library every time they cast their Commander you draw if they cast from impulse draw you draw yeah they Cascade you draw this actually happens more than you think it does they flash back from the graveyard you draw and this is you know a two-mana creature and it doesn't matter if they pay one pay the one you get to draw uh midnight clock Verity Circle also on your list here Verdi Circle I've I've had to hit a hit and miss with yeah it's whenever a creature or an opponent controls becomes tapped if it isn't being declared in syntax or you draw a car yeah I tried it for a while it's not it doesn't actually end up playing that great it does have an activated ability for five minutes to tap Target creature without flying so you can sort of pay five to draw a card and tap something down this is meta dependent I think if you're in like a manadoric heavy meta like I've played in groups where everybody runs lanawar elves and that kind of thing then you're re like reliably triggering it but it's something that you have to check in with your playgroup on certainly I've played games where I play it and I'm like you know check back in three turns I'm like I drew one card off this thing yeah it doesn't feel great yeah if it didn't have the attacker Clause it would be quite a bit better oh yeah that would be insane um Insight is an interesting card you've got on here it's two in a blue for an enchantment whenever one of your opponents plays a green spell you draw a card we love green and Commander yeah like most pods have have at least one green player and if they're playing Green it's heavy green yeah Green is the most popular color by quite a decent amount and yeah yeah I mean I've seen incense and play I've played insights they tend to draw you a lot of cards over the course of the game because your opponent aren't just not going to cast their spells no they have to yeah they're like well what am I gonna do not play so they just they just give in you know they're gonna give you the cards yeah and it's 80 cents um and then of course there's lots of draw based permanents as long as it synergizes the card draw color you can just draw cards there's lots of ways to draw cards and I think there's a lot of cheap ways to draw cards you don't have to spend 45 dollars to do it yeah I do kind of agree that research study is not worth 45 bucks because of the redundancy at that like effect and we always say you know we want you to have 10 card draw spells in your deck if you've got if you're in the color blue getting to 10 will be easy for you yeah because there are so many ways to do it and so there's really not a good argument to spend 45 if you don't already have the aristic study yeah um but if you do have it it's very good it's very good put it in your deck which I happen to have a decent amount of them because it wasn't always 45 but yeah it's hard to argue with the bang for the buck aspect of it yeah it's just a very replaceable card uh as is this next one oh post Malone's gonna be so sad I know this is his game-winning card on uh his first game nights yeah what is it 21 how is it 21 I don't know it's rise of the Dark realms it's uh seven black black so nine Mana for a sorcery put all creature cards from all graveyards onto the battlefield under your control give me everything all of them so something an important thing to mention about rise of the Dark problems is usually you put this in a deck that has a lot of creatures in your own graveyard because you can't really rely on your opponents to have sweet graveyards so usually your graveyard is the juiciest graveyard yeah or you're Milling everybody we are doing a lot of board wipes you know you you've got a plan here hopefully that's like you know my graveyard's gonna be the best one but I am also sort of working towards filling graveyards as I go along right um so a good way to do this that that you can steal your opponent's stuff from the graveyard is command The Dread horde which is only 40 cents uh let's choose any number of Target creature and or Planeswalker cards in graveyards command the dreadboard deals damage to you equal to the converted Mana cost of those cards put them into the battlefield under your control command the dreadlord is ridiculous it's an insane it also gets Planeswalkers it is an insane car it's way better than rise of the Dark Realms and if they were the exact same price I would still say Play command The Dread hard six Mana versus nine is a big jump yeah yeah huge jump and it's basically allowing you to substitute life for Mana which we know is broken every time they do it see boluses Citadel see channels see whatever you want yeah Commander is like really good so just better than rise of the Dark Realms in almost every way for sure yeah uh yeah that's not even an argument yeah it's 40 cents it's great uh this one's kind of dumb but it's fun it's great betrayal it's an enchantment says whenever a creature you don't control dies return it to the battlefield under your control with an additional plus one plus one counter on it on the beginning of the next end step that creature is a black zombie in addition to its colors and types so if you're if you're relying on killing stuff and you're casting a lot of board wipes that stuff will always come back under your control engrave betrayal is a three dollar card that one's tougher though because it doesn't do anything yeah the other ones do stuff but rise of the Dark levels doesn't do anything if they're yeah graveyard well yeah but Josh but it's cool yeah it's cool there's a there's a lot a lot of ones that'll do it time dependent gotcha so something like thrilling Encore is put all uh put into the battlefield under your control creature cards in all graveyards that were put there from the battlefield this turn it's an instance yes Jimmy's gotten me with this a few times yeah he got I was on an episode where he casted it it was crazy yeah and this is a card that you just don't see coming not enough people play it it's five Mana rise of the Dark Realms basically it just feels like that it's the crater hoof argument you don't need everything from all the graveyards if you just get it command of the red horse is the same thing if you just get a lot yeah good yeah yeah and you get five or six things what else do you need growing on chords even better because you're doing at an instant speed which means it's about to be your turn probably and that means they basically have haste uh yeah yeah thrillinger is way better than rise the dark comes yeah where's the dark rooms you do it and then you say go and there's three other players and you think they're gonna let you keep all that stuff no now you're in trouble and you're gonna have to block with some of those creatures uh what I really like is finale of Eternity it's a sorcery that's black black and X it says destroy up to three Target creatures with toughness X or less if x is ten or more return all creature cards from your graveyard to the battlefield so this one you can it's a modal spell where if you can destroy some creatures early in the game or if the late game you can reanimate your entire graveyard and it's done obviously you don't get your opponent's stuff as well but that modality adds a lot and that card is only one dollar and fifty cents 12 man is a lot though 12 minutes is a lot okay you can do some cool stuff are we talking about living death yet living death yeah because that's the card I think of when people are like rise of the Dark arms on what are you playing living death though yeah it seems like a lot better I mean you have to do some sculpting yeah because they're gonna get their stuff back too but like you said you know you have these cards in your deck right and any deck that wants rise of the Dark Realms would want living death even more because like it's Milling itself it's sacrificing its creatures yeah and it's going to play the game correctly to get into the position where now I cast this and they lose everything you get almost nothing and I lose almost nothing and get everything yeah it's living death is just an insane card it's only 5.5 mana and it's uh we have five dollars uh they've repented it a lot it's extremely powerful it's yeah it's often the card that I find myself like oh God I hope they don't have living death and they always do there's just a lot of board states where you're like if there's a living death right there's a living death I'm screwed because I'm ahead right now and they'll just it'll immediately flip it and then I'll I cannot win yeah yeah even like to the living death is so good that I like Twilight's call and Twilight's call is bad it's poor black black for a sorcery it says you may cast Twilight's call anytime and you could cast an instant if you pay two more to cast it so it's six Mana sorcery eight Mana instant each player returns all creature cards from his or her graveyard to the battlefield yeah so it's like before before you untap I'm going to reanimate my whole graveyard and now you've untapped and they have haste like that's so much more powerful than rise of the Dark Realms way more powerful and that's eight Mana versus the nine yeah uh the instant speed version obviously the six Mana one is is fine um with these cards uh SAC Outlets are very important yeah because see Twilight's called good with forexia and Arena it is versus yeah because you're like oh cool I want to get all the cards I have on the battlefield at the graveyard before I do this thing because they're gonna come back reuse all the etbs yeah yeah okay yep and if you're very interested in stealing some stuff from your opponent's graveyard you can do that as well like ghoul's night out I think is an underplayed card and a cool name yeah it is three black black for a sorcery it says for each player choose a creature card in that player's graveyard put those cards onto the battlefield under your control they're black zombies in addition to their other colors and they gain decayed so they're not great attackers but you're like a best creature from your graveyard best from yours best from yours best for mine bam that was five things primordial is another really good one with an ETB similar effects yeah yeah so vocal often is like play it sack it reanimate it and you're like oh crap oh my God yeah so lots of effects you don't have to spend 20 on this one rise is just bad it's worse than sepo girl it's worse than Google's night out even if they were worth the same amount of money living death it's worse than that like just cheaper is better in this case okay all right uh two more to go yeah uh this one I bought when I was a new player and I don't think it was a great investment for me at that time uh I bought a strip mine for twenty dollars it is currently 14. it's gone down it's gone down apparently more people realize that it wasn't I know not really uh it's also Wasteland wasteland's a 25 card uh I remember when waistline was 100 so yeah Wasteland they have reprinted yeah so like I bought strip mine because I was like oh it's a removal spell for lands and it is and it is but I could have bought ghost corner for 50 cents yeah and the ghost quarter does a similar thing but instead of destroying any land it hits a non-basic land and replaces it with the basic so it's a land removal spell that will like get rid of a Target land and won't put your opponent behind it does put you behind so there is downside to ghost quarter yeah the thing about Stroop mine is you're one for one with one opponent we're down to the other two yeah but they don't get a land so ghost quarter puts you down one and everybody else is the same yeah uh demolition field is a newer one which does cost two minutes it's happened sacrifice but you and the a person who's Landing destroyed both find a land so you're even on lands yeah you've just spent three Mana to remove the dishes I mean it does matter the extra two Mana does matter but it doesn't put you down a land so it doesn't feel as bad to to pop it um and generally like you don't here's the thing you don't generally want to pop your strip mine yeah you because you're down the land you you what's what's the what's the inverse of ramp what's the opposite of ramp you pomard you did ramp it backwards okay that's how I got there the old pmar yeah so yeah and you generally don't want to do that so you don't end up doing it people hesitate so much yeah listen if you see a guy's cradle like just do it it just get it out do it right now I got Nick those cabal coffers get rid of them yeah you have the answer use the ink moth Nexus I learned that lesson the hard way yeah so that's what I like about demolition field a lot is that you don't feel that same hesitancy because one yes it costs two men but once you do it it didn't cost you any board position it's done I have the same amount of money I had before yeah I just got rid of a problematic thing right and it didn't even really cost me a card it cost me some Mana right and that feels pretty good so I actually think demolition field is a decent amount better than strip mine even though technically not because it costs the Mana but yeah just from a mentality standpoint you're way more likely to use it which is usually the right play yeah yeah so like strip mine is the is the kind of card where it's like I bought a jackhammer to do a Hammer's job where like strip mine can be used as land destruction and you replay strip mine and to strip everybody's lands but I was new to Magic I didn't know you could do that right I'm not playing yeah I'm not playing Crucible strip mine I didn't I didn't know that exploration critical strip mine yeah I knew I had to be able to remove lands so I bought us through mine which said remove land and it's good card like you're not you're gonna find a home for it it is it's gonna play in a deck it's gonna do what you want it to do I like to have one of these type of effects at least in all of my decks I'd like a couple yeah exactly but streamline doesn't have to be filling that spot because right if you don't have demolition field on the deck don't spend fourteen dollars worth of mine for sure yeah I had to spend a dollar get a demolition field it will go it'll go in a lot of decks all right what's the last one one more it's Wheel of Fortune come on down that's a different one yeah yeah he doesn't say come on down yeah you're already there you have a catchphrase no you're eating light uh spin that wheel wheel oh yeah there's a bunch of people yelling it yeah it says its own name all right it's tuna red for a sorcery everybody discard each player discards their hands and then draws seven cards this is a 330 card um and it's a reserve list card from alpha that's why yeah and it's very powerful and it's very popular in Commander um and it's very replaceable there's a ton of things that do exactly this there's lots of things that that discard your hand and draw that many but there's plenty that discard your hand and draw seven which is usually why you would run a wheel uh I'm a big fan of Wheel of Misfortune it was one of my favorite cards that was printed actually you're a big fan of it I actually like it yeah I mean it's good it's a mess that's the part I'm not a big fan of it's easier to it's easier to explain than people get their credit for it we all pick a number the highest takes a damage and wheels the lowest doesn't wheel what about the other two people everybody else Wheels okay done that's it everybody understands you play that once on game nights that I think about never make the comments where that we played it wrong never again definitely played it right yeah yeah it's but it's a it's a replacement for Wheel of Fortune that they know that this that we needed and they couldn't do a direct reprint of Wheel of Fortune yeah it is less good because you can choose basically not to wheel which is not always the option you want to give your opponent although from experience my opponents are very bad at knowing when they should not wheel which is almost they should almost always a wheel you should almost always wheel yeah but but usually one person will pick zero and I'd say like at least eighty percent of the time they're wrong they they've got four cards in hand but I like my cards but any seven cards in your decorating can be better than the four you've got you're just up three cards so it actually ends up being better than Wheel of Fortune because my opponents will misplay we'll misplay it yeah so that's an interesting thing I also really like it in Decks that care about damage because uh some people who haven't played the card before will be like eight and they're like that's too high for sure yeah you never have to go over five really five is is sort of high uh yeah there's reforge the soul which is the miracle version of Wheel of Fortune that is a good card but I found it to me not as good as wheel of much Fortune because you five is really too much to be paid yeah unless you're miracling it yeah I put Volcan Awakening on this list that's a good one yeah which is an mdfc yeah so it doesn't even take up a slot in your deck it's uh a little bit more expensive than I think some of these but it's not 330 dollars yeah yeah uh one I really like that I that you have a little bit of control over is imposing Grandeur it's each player May discard their hand and draw cards equal to the greatest Mana value of commanders they own in the battlefield or in the command zone so it's five Mana but if you have like like if I had run this in in chiscoria it's discard by hand draw nine and it's five Mana to do that but my gosh that's a lot of cards yeah so yeah if you have the high the high Mana commanders and you know your like opponents like to play at three or four like this is just for you now you're not Wheeling your opponents as much as you normally would be so I think this card's a little underplayed five man is a lot but and there's a ton that we're not even mentioning yeah and there's ones that aren't even red there's windfall and things in blue oh yeah they're in blue there's tons yeah so the wheel effect uh is it's very good and very powerful uh but you can usually get it on other cards and it's nowhere close to this amount and you can have full on Wheel dedicated Decks that do not have Wheel of Fortune and are basically the same power levels as the ones that are because yeah it's that law of diminishing returns if I have 10 things in my deck that wheel me the difference between having an 11th or not is not very big right right because it's just what not nine percent increase or whatever so yeah so it's not even you know it just doesn't increase the power of my deck that much for that for that amount of redundancy if there were two in I-93 that's the Mana situation right now it's a little bit different yeah now now the money starts to make a little bit more sense but 330 dollars is uh extreme and I think we're gonna see more wheel cards like this is a thing that they're going to do I we have plenty they love printing them though yeah I feel like they made a bunch of wheel decks and commanders like braylon's or bras and yeah what was what's that is it one although I think it's technically comprised Mario that like when you discard a card draw a card real real yeah and they made a ton of these Locust God and everything and I think they realize like oh crap there's too much of this now and we've made too many wheels and that makes snakes too good and wheels are not great play experience for your opponents because imagine that game we're on turn three you wheel and they just wheel into no lands or whatever and like that happens sometimes so yeah I think I don't know ton more wheel stuff but we're already at way more than critical mass we're fine we're fine yeah we got plenty of wheel effects you can spend a dollar or two dollars or five dollars on these and you'll be just fine all right let me ask you a question yeah by the way we didn't put this on the uh yeah so I'm putting her on the spot but sometimes you come up with good ideas on the Fly I don't know if this is a good idea we'll find out uh of all the cards we mentioned on this episode yeah what do you think is the most egregious is the card that is the most like hey don't spend money on that I mean I it's hard to argue with doubling season but Ying I don't know no no no uh mine's Imperial seal I think that card is bad I don't think tutors make your deck more fun and it's almost a hundred dollars uh in doubling season at least if you buy a hundred dollars if you get to have a doubling season if that happens you do have a ton of fun like that is a big board true but I mean it has to happen you have to play it then you have to do something afterwards and a lot of times you play it you go you cast the thing and they go cool in response I'll remove the doubling season you don't even hit the double oh Madness yeah I'm one of those two I'm tempted to say original duels yeah because they're so expensive and add to the power level or your decks so little yeah like I have noticed no difference literally no difference over the last couple of years playing decks on Game Nights with no dual lands versus the first few years when we allow dual Lance him my decks I never once think well boy if I had dual engineer it'd be so much better better it it makes no difference I mean if somebody goes turn one volcanic island you're like okay it doesn't matter I go turn one you know whatever shock land a lot of times I put it into play tap because I have nothing to play Same yeah exactly so I I really think now there is the aspect where they are on the reserve list and therefore you know they're an investment because one thing about doubling season is if you spend 100 on it next year they could reprint it it'll be worth 50 for a minute yeah but it's gonna go back to up to 100. it always does yeah but okay what do you think is the one on the other side of that yeah is the closest like if I had to spend money on one of the cards that we talked about today what would it be mine it feels like a boring answer but I don't know yeah it's one of the colorless ones it's Mana crypter for xan altar probably because if if you like like Mana Crypt just goes in anything and you're like you'll find a spot for it in a higher power or something yeah I like Francine Ultra I think because if you need if you want a forexane altar you'll pay 30 bucks for it like for sure and 30 is one of the lower end cards right for the price on the whole list yeah for sure okay it was a trick question because the answer was risk study all right everybody to the listeners you got me do you agree with our conclusions which Commander Staples do you think aren't worth the price tag are there any that we talked about today that you're like no you guys are crazy those are totally worth the price tag yeah what other cards would you put in their place if that's the case make sure if you want to get yourself a Wheel of Fortune a Mana Crypt a doubling season aristic study of land tax anything at all card kingdom.com command that is a place to go to get your magic product singles anything at all your magic players you're gonna buy magic cards anyway you may as well use our affiliate link when you do because you'll be simultaneously supporting the content you enjoy while getting the cards that uh you know probably the replacement cards that we talked about today are hopefully what you're going after but again like we always say Card Kingdom is really really great because they have a huge inventory they're going to have all the cards that you're looking for and they're going to package them all up into one tight little package and send that all at once to your residence your place of business whatever your mailing address is card kingdom.com command we'll get it there yeah and once you have those cards in your hand you're gonna need to protect them go to oldpro.com command to pick up the deck boxes and sleeves and binders and everything that you need that will keep your cards safe and pristine especially if you invest in some of these more expensive cards you really want to make sure you're investing in that protection as well and Ultra Pro has some of the best quality pieces that you can pick up to protect or organize your collection make sure that your little cardboard squares are maintaining some of the value that you've invested into them they also have all of the official magic licensing so if there's a piece of artwork that you really like or you really connect to you can get it on a play mat you can get on a deck box or sleeves always keep an eye on their website because they've got a ton of cool art cycling through there including secret layer drops that um and go very quickly they are limited drops so yeah you definitely want to pay attention if you get on their newsletter though they'll send you some morning and notifications about when it's going to happen sometimes yeah they're very very cool um okay now it's time for the end step yeah we talk about something cool outside the World of Magic Rachel do you have anything cool to talk about oh God it's been so much magic lately yeah we just got back from uh from Philly okay here's one yeah so in Philly yeah Philadelphia one of the things I don't know if you saw Game Nights Live yet but uh one of the things Philadelphia is most known for is cheese steaks yeah and uh we did a cool thing where there's these two places that are kind of most two famous places in Philadelphia four cheesesteaks I know Philadelphia residents um you know they're like those are tourist traps and you should go to and then they'll name off each one of them will name a different place yeah but it's eight miles from the hotel and you're like yeah I can't get to that Pat's and Gino's these are the two places and if you watch like uh Philadelphia Eagles football game they'll always do a story about passing genos you know it's just I've seen them on TV over the years kind of like any any sporting event that's happening in Seattle you're gonna see them throw that fish at Pike's Place Market and there's yeah so anyway a bunch of us got to go to patch one night and then Gino's the other night I don't know if you've got to have both I didn't I had no Philly cheese sticks oh my gosh not the whole time no okay I didn't eat a whole lot though I was really bad no that's good to not eat a whole lot I ate way too much I was really bad yeah that's what I felt about it what was your conclusion okay well boy I would probably get yelled at yeah but yeah I had both of them and um there was like five or six of us that went both nights yeah there was bigger groups with nice but the five of us or six of us overlapped and I think the consensus Among Us was that we liked Pat's a little bit better than Gino's yeah I listen if if he disagreed I know a lot of people from Philly were when we went to patrol like you should have gone to Gino's and if I you know when I posted about genos they were like Pats is way better so see it's they were both really good I gotta say that first of all yeah the cheese whiz and stuff oh yeah yeah oh man it gives me the ice I see it and my stomach is just like you will die it was uh like I have such a delicate tummy I can't handle anything so I was like if I have this for lunch I will not be able to function at the rest of the convention and let me just say you that would have been the outcome yeah yeah my stomach wasn't super happy but I you know I yeah got through it yeah that's so fun so that's what I would say if you go to Philly I would try them both and just let us know yeah which one you prefer and if you're from Philly let us know that we went to a tourist trap and that's not where we should go I get it uh yeah or which one you like better next time next time when I have when I have my evenings for being off yeah they're like wow tomorrow off yeah yeah I can just like chill in the hotel the rest of the day which wasn't the case when we were there all right let's go to the cleanup step and say thank you to our amazing team here at the command Zone thank you to Craig Blanchette Damon Lentz are there metacroft lady danger Manson lung Josh Murphy Jake Boss Jordan pridgeon Sam Waldo Rob Galati Jamie block Mitch Trafford Evan limberger Gabriel pozos Megan Yip lyric LEM and Jimmy Wong thanks for listening guys all right everybody thanks for watching I'll see you next time peace [Music] thank you for your attention for further inquiries send an email to commandcast rocketjump.com or ask us on Twitter at jf1 and at Josh Lee Kwai see you later alligator greetings humans

Channel: The Command Zone

Views: 475,921

Keywords: video game high school, ted wong, vghs, wong, jfwong, jimmy, magic, the, gathering, mtg, magic the gathering, strategy, game, trading card game, deck, tactics, commander, general, elder, dragon, highlander, politics, josh, lee, kwai, cards, Card Game (Game Genre), command, zone, podcast, the command zone, edh rules, mana, mana bases, Game Knights, GameKnights, gameplay, rachel, weeks, staple, doubling, season, crypt, dual, lands, money, cash, 40k, lord, rings, march, machine, aftermath, wizards, coast, brawl, historic, pioneer

Id: BTsMQiKb8jA

Length: 110min 18sec (6618 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 07 2023