Equipment Tier List | Commander Clash Podcast #26

hey everyone and welcome back to the commander clash podcast we're the commander class crew richard seth krim and itomer we discuss commander related topics and today we are going to be talking all about equipment we're going to be talking all about the equipment type in magic the gathering specifically in commander and we're going to be rating them in our handy dandy tier list and uh as usual our tier list ranking uh that we always use for these videos that we try to be consistent about uh we have from d to s so for d it's don't play these are cards we're actively looking to cut from our decks or and if we do see it in our decks we hope to discard it or mill it at sea these cards are kind of average they're mediocre filler cards um sometimes they're going to be showing up in our decks perhaps for certain restrictions like let's say we have a deck building restriction that's a budget restriction uh then we might fill these decks uh with these type of cards finally at b we have uh cards that are very good but they're only good in certain decks or certain archetypes so for example if a card is really really good in spellslinger archetypes but not in other archetypes or the vast majority of archetypes in commander uh then we'd rate it as a b instead of something much higher um then at a we have cards that are really good in a large portion of decks so uh cards that fit in multiple archetypes and are very good in multiple archetypes or just fit in a lot of very different commanders however they're not an auto include in every single deck it's not a card that we immediately slam dunk into every single deck that this this card can actually fit in but then finally at c or sorry finally at s we have the auto includes these are staples format staples that we're going to be running in basically every single deck that cane can run them and we basically have to be convinced uh for a reason why not to run these cards in in in a deck that can actually run them so that's our writing scale hopefully we stay consistent with it and uh we'll see what the results are um so we went through basically all the most popular most commonly played equipment cards and also a bunch of cards that we like maybe pet cards underrepresented equipments and we're going to be discussing our favorite ones the most noteworthy ones that we have a lot to talk about and based on our grading scale as you can see like s is a very high coveted title like a an equipment that that shows up in every single uh deck uh is a very high bar specifically for such a narrow uh card type so we don't actually have a lot of s's we only have three cards that any of us uh picked as an s and only two of those cards multiple people uh rate even highly so we're going to be talking about those two that the best of the best uh equipment uh according to us that we play the most and that's going to be lightning greaves and swift foot boots these are two colorless equipments both of them cost two mana to cast uh lightning greaves uh gives the equipped creature shroud and has an equip cost of zero and sofa boots gives the creature a hex proof and it costs uh one to equip and both of them give the creature also haste um so shroud uh shroud and haze for lightning greaves and equip zero swiffer boots uh hex proof and haste and equip one and our ratings for them lightning greaves richard gave it an s me and seth gave it uh or sorry a seth and krim gave it an a i gave it an s and so for boots only richard gave it an s and then the rest of us gave them a's so we're going to talk about that first richard why do you rate both of these so highly i don't know pure pressure wow what a what a great opening of equipment i automatically think of these two it's the by far the most played equipment and people like auto include them in their decks uh they come in pre-cons and whatnot and i'm not sure they deserve this s status like i'm thinking about it i'm like should they be bees are people overplaying this card which is why i want to discuss with you guys like what are we doing with this and i find myself cutting this you know these cards more and more and you know i play all kinds of equipment right now i probably play more like swords than boots so you know is is this like s mentality like a holdover from five years ago like what are we even doing like we're just getting our creatures wrath they provide little protection people can remove your greaves and remove your creature so maybe you only play it when you need the haste maybe you only play it i i don't know i uh but i'm leaning towards it shouldn't be as highly played as it is i think they're i agree they're overrated i think they are the best equipment in commander but i also think that they're too heavily played i know i personally like i don't think any equipment can be an s i think because you have to have so many creatures in your deck i think just like by definition if you don't have any creatures like you wouldn't play in equipment so that means that you couldn't really truly have an s these cards are really really good i found myself cutting them more and more though i play them index where i really care about protecting my commander or where i really care about haste but i think a lot of people this is just like the first card they add to their deck like every time you build a commander deck you just throw in greaves you're throwing boots you throw them both and i think that's incorrect like i don't think they are that good anymore uh we have so many options we have so many different equipment even now compared to five years ago that i just i don't think they should be considered auto includes for every deck i i fully agree with that i mean i haven't this this is a car that's definitely not auto included i see a lot of people also jamming it immediately i only played and things were like decks where i really rely on my commander so like if i had a card like if i was playing again or something like that then sure otherwise i pretty much don't have it in my deck like i play it in my uh uh whatever the new vampire the rakdos vampire because you do want to keep him around right but yeah like if you're if your deck revolves around your commander like like heavily then then sure maybe but otherwise i just don't i don't play this i am a little bit surprised because we rated it so highly and then immediately when we started talking about we were like actually is it overrated this is good it's good like it's a it's a sweet card but like i don't know if it's like you're including it like every card like every deck i mean this isn't the first card i add to a deck i mean if you if you look at like edh rack and just look at the plane numbers this is like magnitude these two cards are like magnitudes ahead of the other equipment like greaves is 28 swiffer boots is 26 and then when you get to like the first sword it's like three percent and other like really popular equipment or two three percent so i don't think that greaves and swift foot boots evenly should be at the top of the list of most played i don't think they should be ten times more heavily played than like the best sword or whatever like to me that's just like a little insane let me let me interject real quick because uh we've got a lot of comments on this so the way edh rec works is it's all time so older cards will just naturally have a higher percentage because if you built a deck three years ago that was indexed by edhrec it cannot have any new cards in it so the new cards are always underrepresented and the old cards are overrepresented so just a little asterisk when we look at edh rec numbers although i will say if you go to any h rec page they actually have a few filtering options i was actually looking at like the past week so that would theoretically only include decks that people had submitted within the last seven days so if you do a little bit of filtering you can kind of get around that problem a little bit i i think also something that eda trek uh i i've run into the past some inflated numbers is if some of the cards show up in pre-cons a lot of the the decks that that show up that are picked up from edh rec are just people who like copy paste the pre-cons online somewhere to see uh and there's certainly price price concerns too where swift foot boots is like a two dollar card and you know a sword is forty dollars or whatever so that that would also play into it there's reasons outside of like power level disparity between like how many people play soul ring versus how many people play manner crap manic despite you know most people know the man of crypts like a really good card and equal to sol ring or uh but you know the price between manic crypt what is manicraft good i'm gonna leave that in i was hoping nobody your ass knows you still hold by your s unlikely i can i can be brought down but i i do value highly both the things that that lightning grooves in particular does i put it as an s uh initially and i do think it is the best equipment overall uh in the format because uh in index it i i think a lot of creatures benefit so much from haste um haste is like one of the most powerful keywords in commander just because you get like your immediate value out of the creature be it an activated ability or the fact that it can immediately attack and combat triggers or just deal damage and stuff like that um i i think haste is the most powerful creature keyword uh to have overall just like of like the evergreen ones and also uh being able to give something either shroud or or hex proof is also really good especially if there's like a really important creature that you want uh to stick around and the fact that equipped for just zero you can put this like turn to a lightning greaves and then you can play your command or the turn after that and you can just like tap out to do so and you can immediately uh put on your lightning reeves onto it and and go go wild i really value how efficient it is in the two keywords uh that it brings with so i will run it index with lots of good creatures in the 99 that benefit from that haste but i will also just run it in a deck that like even if it doesn't have any other creatures except for my commander if my commander has like a really powerful ability that i want to activate like immediately and i don't want it to be targeted like drowning for example or or like garth you know uh garth onei uh those type of things you don't really need other creatures in there so i said i i think it's still the best is it an s probably not there's a lot of situations where like there's other equipments that i might want over it you know so maybe maybe it's an maybe like lining grease a and sofa boots b i i would say swift boots is higher rank than lightning greaves for me i was going to say that too i think that like the difference between hex proof and shroud in a lot of decks especially if you're a voltron deck or an equipment deck where you want to be able to load up your thing with a with other equipment or auras actually does kind of come into play to the point where i'd be willing to pay one extra mana to equip it if i can you know get around the the shroud drawback i would say the one mana savings will be more relevant than the number of times you need to target your own creature so yes in voltron you're kind of host but like in all other games like that one mana probably means a lot because you can play your commander on curve and then slap the greaves on it so i actually think yes there's a drawback and you do think about it but most of the time grieves will be better yeah the equip cost is is what like it's such a golf indifference in terms of when i my play experience that grieves is so much better but like yeah if you once you target your creature with like equipment auras spells whatever then lightning greens is just not good right like shroud is is a deal breaker uh but otherwise the boots you're forgetting combat tricks like what if i want to bounce my commander back giants what if what if you want to try it okay maybe not giant girls but uh i feel like the x proof has just always been something i i cared a lot more about than shroud okay so apple's hex proof by the way you can't you can't proud that's true that's can't remove shroud shadow screen doesn't get around though um okay so after this quick discussion uh we initially went uh for lightning reviews me and and richard we picked s seth and picked a would we change our rating after this quick discussion do we think it's a little bit should it go a little bit lower in comparison uh to now now uh i don't think so i i mean i i will stand by behind the a i still think they are good at a large percentage of decks i think i don't think they're as good as maybe some people think but i do think they they deserve to be the most played equipment in there and they are good in a lot of questions yeah yeah like they're they're easily the best equipment they're cheap uh everything like like they're cheap their equip costs are cheap so it's everything you want i'm still on the fence but i still hold my s i think i think if you take like just 80 of dex or something and just throw greaves in it got better uh so no matter what you're doing if you're playing spouse linger it got better if you're playing queen because i got better right so i i still think it's s although that percentage is dropping day by day and maybe in a year or two we will have a different conversation but i think for now you know if you needed to buy secret layer boots or something like i think you can buy it and throw in anything the dog ones like safe yeah yeah i just i i don't know how many of my decks or how many decks out there rather or archetypes out there really care about targeting your own creatures with stuff like obviously for an auradec you're a voltron deck you're an equipment deck uh want her abilities yeah you you like there are often like things that i want for my own planeswalker to target my own creature yeah so um i i don't know if that's a big enough amount of of archetypes or decks represented in in in the format for it to still to be less than an estimate it's either an s or an a i i'm not gonna i'm not gonna fight either way on those i think what about swift foot boots though uh richard you gave it an s and then seth krim and i uh gave it an a do we still hold on that oh yeah same yup i'm still getting a large percentage at x i would say okay all right so ratings we we gave the ratings we pooed the cards a little bit uh but at the end of the day we still came to consensus that these are still overall the best equipments uh based on our criteria of like you know the cards we would put in the most decks um all right cool so we've got we got our our top top equipment out of the way now we're going to jump into the nitty-gritty where there's gonna be a lot of debate and we're gonna we're gonna kick things off uh with the infamous swords possibly the most uh popular iconic equipments ever printed in magic gathering i i think we have to kind of go go over them one at a time but the idea is that each one of these swords they cost three mana their artifacts that cost three mana colorless uh or generic rather and they all have equip two paid two to equip and they give uh protection from two colors each one gives protection from two different colors and then they all have a combat trigger when you deal damage combat damage to a player you get some cool utility ability um so i i think we start with sort of hurting home this is protected from white and green and whenever you deal combat damage to a player uh you ramp out one basic land and you get to blink a creature that you own not necessarily control but own um and i i i see that all but crim gave it a's cream you gave it a b i have a question for you richard because i i i i could have i could have sworn that like when sort of hurting horn came out you were very like low on it like i remember rating it highly and you were like no this is bad i poo-pooed it what changed your mind so i preferred it because it was a more expensive sword the animist and i felt sort of the animus was overrated at the time by now i am convinced that the most powerful thing you do in magic is ramp so the most powerful cards are sort of the animus and sword of hearth at home uh the ramp is more important than card draw uh so i highly rate this because the way i think about the game is slightly different from when we rated it to begin with so ramping is the number one thing you can do i hate it you hate it well it's from the protection from a color that hated crim that's the only reason why i even have it at a b the protection colors are bad those got to be like the worst protection colors too green and white swords everybody plays there's exotic flowers but you're still you're still getting wrath you're still getting wrapped against the white deck so it's not like it's really saving your creature and green doesn't have that much removal i mean compared to like black or red or something i feel like it's weaker removal i'm gonna be real with you seth i mean i think this sword is i'm not that much higher on it than when it came out it's from a c to like a b minus like trending towards the c plus yeah like it's it's trending downwards right like i i don't know i mean i i think this the ability to ramp is obviously good uh and that's probably the best thing on the sword in all seriousness it is that and like uh other than that though i really don't care about this sword the the card itself is is i think the blinking is okay it's good in certain decks right like if i want to play it in like a uh brago deck or something sure like some kind of flicker deck sure that makes sense otherwise i'm probably not really playing this that all that much um and then on top of that i would all the decks that i would want to play this in that would want a ton of mana well i just don't play those decks so like simple as that like i i mean i i just don't see this card as a an a it just doesn't do any of the things i like so it's biased but and it's very but like i think as a as a card the best thing on this is the ramp so i mean it's just better sort of animist really like it's sort of an animus that pumps more and the only downside is it's one more minute of the cast the equip cost is even the same and you get two protection from two different colors even if i'm not super high in protecting against those colors in specifics so i think it's just better sort of the animus the blink mode is that is the like specific deck thing where if you're in the right deck it can be really powerful but any commander deck is gonna take advantage of having extra lands on the battlefield like that is what literally every single deck in the format wants to do and that makes it a pretty clean a for me unless you're three see the thing here is like in three color decks i don't even know if i run enough basics i mean i do but like i don't know i just feel like i this eventually has a ceiling that's crazy we need to do a podcast on why people are are running too few basics like i mean i run like six to seven basics that's enough for this it's a good thing to run out of ramp if you're actually gung-ho about ramping like you'll run through six basics quite easily yeah i mean i think you should this is the only thing that's ramping you like if you have this plus you're you're like in a green deck and you're just cultivating and you have like seven seven basics and yeah either you're in for a bad time but like let's say you're a non-green deck will you really run out of like basics in your deck i mean i mean let's say i'm playing my rogues deck i don't i don't what am i gonna do blink my one of my rogues to like get thieves guild enforcer to activate that's about it really and if you actually got in six hits with the sword and got every basic aren't you winning anyway pretty much like if you add buttons went that well for you like it seems like it didn't right on top of that if i were to able if i were able to like connect six times with any of the other swords well okay not all the other swords uh most of the other swords that one will actually win either a like fire and ice i will draw enough cards to where you're not going to be able to do anything um feast and famine is but like but like like so fire and ice light and shadow and then and believe it or not body and mind i love body and mind wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait no i and i love body and mind i love body and mind body and mind is the one sword that is that you actually don't want to hit your opponent with because it's filling their graveyard and benefiting them it's the one sword that has like a negative comeback trigger we have to explain what body and mind is first though we'll get to it we'll get to it we'll get to it all right let's go to body and mind yeah tell us what body of mind does well of course because i know by by heart so it's three mana uh you get plus two plus two protection from blue and green uh and then on top of that whenever you connect you get to mill 10 cards and then create a 2 2 green wolf token so now outside of like maybe like i know that almost every deck has some form of graveyard uh like like recursion right which is which is fine but also every deck should be playing something to combat that and when and like in a majority of the decks i guess the decks that i play they're all tempo decks and i love the the feeling of just throwing away my like all my like table and pods like favorite cards and they don't get to play them so like now if they are and then like usually it's backed up by counter spells or a ton of graveyard hate so maybe that's why i love body and mind because i play rogues i play spirits i do all that stuff so it's usually more beneficial for me and especially in my rogue deck it's like my favorite sword and milling i love milling milling is fun even if i'm up against the the golgari commander it's good maybe even that is questionable what's our rating for these what would you give it will you give it grim okay so if i were to give body in mind i'd give that an a i'd give light and shadow and an a i'd be it's just body and mind just buy them oh yeah the card's great there should be a rating lower than d for that card like all the other swords are at least they have some merit to them this one is like not only the worst like the worst by incredible like sure if you're playing rogues if you're playing no deck then then okay then then i will give you that like if your goal is to empty all of your opponents library then it's good but unless that's your plan milling 10 cards for your opponent is a huge drawback in my opinion you're just turning on eternal witnesses you're filling their graveyard with reanimation targets like i don't want to mill you for 10 cards i'm helping you that's like drawing you a card it's like it's like a reverse sort of fire and ice that is drawing your opponent the card i mill your eternal witness i promise you this much if i mill you and your 10 cars and you watch your favorite cars and your win conditions go to the graveyard the psychological damage there is more than enough to make it that than worth enough that's like the reverse like you know you don't play cards that mill yourself because you might mill your bomb right but you may have never drawn those cards right but sure the fact is you could enable all kinds of flashback synergies dredge synergies and but that's tomorrow's problem mill has to be rogues because other mill decks don't have attacking creatures it has to be specifically rogues so it is like super narrow right very good this is actively harming your game plan this is the only only sword i can see that's actively harming i would just equip the sword for a blocker you get like pro green blue and that's it you just like chill and you block i love i mean i do value mill a lot higher so like and i mean like i will play it in non-rogue decks just because i love the sword it's so sweet all right and then yourself and then and then i don't think you you convince the table but oh i i fully i fully don't expect to convince the table i just love mill so i'm here for it all right we got we got five more swords to cover then for sort of feasts and famine i think this might be the one that we've actually reached the consensus on a's all around uh this one is protection from uh black and green so target huge goes plus people sue protection from black and green and when it deals combat damage to a player you have to untap all of your lands and the the target that got hit has to discard a card the untapping of lanes is kind of busted it essentially doubles for most decks it doubles their effective mana output in a turn you know you can on your first main phase you spend your mana doing whatever you know casting your spells then you go into combat you you get that combat trigger you untap all your lanes post combat main fees now you can cast basically double the amount of stuff but it gets worse if you don't have a lot of lanes in play obviously but if you even have you like even if you're on tapping like three lanes like plus three lanes every single turn is kind of busted and it makes your opponent discard which you know is like a little cherry on top but also also it could cause that's like that's actively hurting your game plan what if they discard a card in your grave their graveyard they won't back the difference between milling i don't know somebody's hand the biggest difference i feel and and plus the mode you're playing it for is the like undead have all your land mode like and there is a big difference but there's a reason like seedborne muse is like really popular just like untapping all of your mana having twice as much mana is a really really powerful effect and this gives it to you every single turn which is just super strong like in basically any deck that can consistently trigger it it's also only soared the combos into a win condition you can you pair it with aggravated assault which is i think like pay five mana um to take an extra combat step so if you have fuse and famine and an aggravated assault and you have five lanes on the battlefield or five or lay in second tap for five mana uh you just attack uh you untackle your lanes you activate aggravated assault you get an extra combat step you attack again you just do it over and over again you just win the game the sword is good we don't need to talk about it i think it's pretty straightforward why it's good we have like a million more cards to get through what i want to ask you guys about is why do you like light and shadow an equally useless sword in my opinion so oh okay pro black white game three amazing colors to have pro from cmc three or less from your graveyard to your hand that's so good no no no any any creature no there's no cnc well now do you love it richard did you just answer your question so okay okay so so here's why i think the card's good first you get two good protection colors white and black lots of targeted removal so one of the more relevant protection colors and we were just talking about people like crim filling your graveyard for you with this sort of body in mind being able to get a creature back from your graveyard every turn is pretty powerful it's not quite an eternal witness but i want graveyard recursion in basically all my decks some amount of it and this is a really easy way that any deck regardless of what colors you're in can have a better graveyard recursion the colors the richer game colors sorry yeah like the colors are perfect right like pro black white that's exactly what i want on a sword um and then yeah like the the graveyard recursion is nice the three life is obviously you know whatever but yeah but it'll probably would have wanted that to realize i mean yeah phil might like that but but other than that like it's just the recursion and the colors and the colors alone make it almost like an s okay so richard you have you have sort of fire an ice rink pretty highly right uh sort of certify your nice when you hit you get to draw a card and yeah and deal two damage isn't this very similar like you're you're getting that same effect essentially where you're getting because you're getting your own card every time start drawing cards which help me a make my land drops and you know if i get in three hits with a sword i i can actually get three cards if you hit me on turn three with the lighter shadow you've done nothing because you don't have a graveyard i gained three lines you've gained three life like what do you do right and you need to wait until something hits the graveyard for you to start drawing cards like why don't you just play like one of those like three mana take two cards of your graveyard put in your hand right like it doesn't give that value unless something is there already so and you know sometimes a creature right sometimes you want something else right like a generic card is probably better right so i don't like this like if i have my opening hand it's like the saddest of sad faces after you wrap me i have stuff in the graveyard i don't have a creature to put it on i'm so sad again right like it's just so conditional for five mana to get anything going that it's just not worth right because remember the drop back of equipment is you need a creature right and you need to find mana and you need to equip without getting yourself blown out and then the payback is like get a card from a graveyard like hope crim went to town on me with this sort of body of mind and get somewhere like it's very questionable so so like people yeah i'll go ahead well i i think i think for all these swords i think people are undervaluing the the protection side like giving something plus two plus two is is is not not crazy or anything but it's good it's better than nothing um but giving stuff protection from two colors not only is it like oh yeah i have protection from you know targeted removal it's much more than that it's it's the fact that now your creature can actually get in there for damage like like i i saw in a recent commander clash richard was going off on how bad ragavan is and me when i was when i was editing and i'm like no you're wrong richard because it's like you put a sword on it you put on a sword on it and now suddenly ragavan the whole thing is like the protection's actually super relevant it makes the card a lot better so so yeah you're yeah you are getting a creature from your graveyard each time you hit but you're not just that it means your creature can hit when it otherwise couldn't because you know if your opponent has black and white creatures that are defending now your creature can actually get through there and get that damage in and not only that is it's doing two extra damage whereas before you would be doing zero damage with that creature because it wouldn't be boring which will probably get you through as well but then give you an actual like trigger that does something right it does something it gets back a creature okay so here's my argument then like if you're playing a deck with enough creatures to support playing swords in your deck sure maybe if you like plane equip this somehow like on turn three maybe it's not great but most of the time you're gonna have a creature in your graveyard there's it's pretty rare that someone's not gonna cast a wrath removal spells i don't think the issue of like this not having a target is really something i'm concerned about if you're playing a deck that's enough creatures to support a sword anyway so i see it as like draw a card sure maybe in the very early game it's not gonna be great several hits with the sword or you paid five mana for any of these swords so it goes for all of these swords right you gotta hit multiple times right so you can't wait until turn six and then expect to hit like three times right like you gotta get in early because the game ends by turn six right you gotta get on turn three and hit three times and then the game ends my turn six come on like not remember you're paying five mana right like you have to get a lot of value out of this right so that's why i you can't put all these conditionals on it like equipment's already dicey enough as is right hmm [Music] you've convinced me enough to lower you but there's no one ever by the way for the supposed a card that i'm drawing cards with or whatever like i just don't play that silent deck that much i i i lowered it to a b because i do think like sword and fire and ice is better feast and famine is better and i put those at a's so i think it's a b but i there's def no way i would put it as a c not mediocre filler i would definitely run it and i do run it okay what about sinew and steel that's another controversial one i like it tell us what senior and steel is while i'm looking for my card minion steel is pro black and red and it deals combat damage to a player destroy up to one planeswalker and up to one artifact horrible horrible slightly better than body and mind but not not by a whole lot better in mind better than light wow dude there's very there's very few planeswalkers in commander so that mode is essentially just a blank in like a big percentage of the games that you play so all you're really getting is protection and blowing up an artifact which is nice but that's not something that excites me or would make me put this in my deck like we said there's seven swords there's a lot of options here there's a lot of competition this just isn't beating out the other options for me i disagree have i have it as b [Music] crim c slightly higher and then d's from seth and richard which d is for disappointed in you why do you like why do you like it tell me well first of all it's in my deck here we go the culture is like there it is okay did i actually run it i don't know if being in a calder deck is a sign and equipment is good oh wow all right you went there all right we'll get to cauldron we'll get to cauldron but sinew and steel i think artifacts are a very very typical thing that you want to remove and this does so very easily every single turn essentially you get to remove one artifact because again protection from black and red means your creature is very likely to get through to somebody um it also it's not it's not uh the the defending player who you lose artifact or planeswalker it's any so you could hit somebody and then blow up somebody else's artifact you don't have to hit that particular person so it's really easy to get that trigger through as long as you have creatures on the battlefield you just equip one of them and you're gonna get that trigger so every single turn you're basically blowing up a problematic artifact and if there is a planeswalker you can literally go artifact and planeswalker and from personal experience playing the neck there's never been a situation where there wasn't an artifact that i wanted to blow up even as it could be a soul rank it could be a mana wrong it could be something much better than that but there's always something that i want to blow up this artifact so the fact that it's always going to be triggering something and getting some relevant value out of it and so easy to do so is nice and then the fact that it blows up planeswalkers is extra nice like if you're up against a super friend's deck and you can't even attack the person because you know they have like a sphere of safety or whatever nonsense pillow for uh super friends says and you can just hit somebody else and take it out i mean i feel like this what this really does is just like ends up making you like annoying the table because you're pulling up everyone's mana rocks every single turn and making them want to kill you like sure there's always an artifact but most of the time aren't you just like oh who's cygnet am i going to blow up this turn and then that person's like all right i guess i'm attacking domer next turn because he blew up my signature for no reason that's valid this is why tomorrow dies right like you need to use it but like you don't run around firing off spot removal on people's mana rocks right like you want to save it for something important and all you've done is just anger people and then you have nothing to defend with because you've attacked your creatures right so yes you can remove an artifact but you want to hold your removal from when it matters and not just fire it off like slowly turn by turn and put a big target on yourself where everyone sees like oh i have an artifact i want and tomer's holding a sword sore sinuous deal can't remove it so i better remove the player and then they kill him right so i think you'd rather just play vandalblast or something and you know make sure you finish the job if you start it right like don't nickel and dime people it's true my rebuttal is you're right i mean this deck has never won and it plays out that way but also uh i i do think it's a valuable card that's why i didn't put it as like an a or an s it's still very valuable in equipment you know what so and also just as also as a rebuttal uh nobody plays sword and light and shadow the boom sword and light and shadow and mine oh it's the pretty one that's even a fantastic wait how many how many more swords we got what two swords left to talk about i think what about sword award and peace have any of those worn pieces uh protection from red and white when you hit someone uh it deals damage to that player equal the number of cards in their hand and you gain a life for each card in your hand so damage and life gain better than i don't think i've ever seen any life better than life you know it would be in there this would be the absolute lowest i would rather no i actually wouldn't i would still pick this over the mill one because it's not actually sabotaging me yeah that's correct yeah that's it it's not much higher someday you all understand what it's like to enjoy the finer things please please wait there's there's one more there's over we got truth and justice uh pro blue and white when you hit someone nobody plus one plus one plus one uh plus one plus one counter on a creature you control and proliferate um is this better than than the last one sort of warranties i think this is also one that's probably in all of our d-tier pile but like well i think there exists a deck where it's good like like attractive or something yeah oh god really but it is it's good in a deck that wants to proliferate it's absolutely fine like like if you're in like a super friend's deck you make a lot of tokens because a lot of planeswalkers make tokens you can write a sort of truth and justice in there especially if your commander's atraxa like you put this on a tracks uh you smack somebody with it you get to proliferate twice in a single turn cycle and you gain even more life and it has like vigilance i think so it's like yeah he's good you are correct if i was playing a proliferate deck then i would probably play this card but i don't think i've seen a proliferate deck in five years or something like it's not a very popular archetype so for me i think it's still like pretty taxes just because in fact what about counter decks plus one plus one counter decks those are incredibly pow popular in commander you wouldn't run into this you get a single counter yeah attracts that i agree with right i think it's like an all-star in that in planeswalker decks but i think those decks are extremely narrow right so when you what do you say too much is that like is that like a a a price range thing or is it too much of a diva that sort of thing five minutes you gotta you got a five mana and a successful combat at sorcery speed is that worth a proliferate any counter let's say you get two hits in with the sword before it breaks even is two counters and two proliferates worth it like i would argue no so like it's just too expensive for like a generic counters deck or something like that you have to really abuse it with planeswalkers or atraxa and even with like atraxa or a super friends deck you also gotta have enough creatures to make it work like a lot of super friends decks i see are like a handful of creatures and like just all the planeswalker and planeswalker support stuff so even in some super friends decks i don't know if you can yeah like gideon and sauron i guess yeah vampire i don't even know if you can support a sword in the super friend stack or not all super friends decks wait doesn't it do something else though it's colorless it's five you get a single plus one plus one counter a single one really that's like but then you know that one proliferate that counter so you get it's essentially you get plus two plus two counters that's like the worst mdfc is it's like a b i think i think it's still good in proliferate decks and and so i i think in merits of b there and maybe it's not good enough for plus one plus one counter at x so it could be a b it could be a c but i i think it's good in plural i'm going to keep it as a piece i'm going to keep it as a baby i'll go i'll go see see c is probably fine do you mind there is a use for it just don't play in a generic deck like don't be like oh i got a planeswalker oh this thing makes a counter like you need to be a very specific deck to make it worth it so we did we just cover all seven of the printed swords i think i think so yeah i think we got them all we did this sort of pauldron war and piece is just bad so yeah horn piece is bad what about the calder we forgot we forgot that one oh god are we talking about do you want to go there seth yeah let's talk the caldras i have them they're all here they're all here seth oh that's the only good one no all right actually sorry that's the only decent one i have i have steamed this that we are talking called your time all right so uh the og called your pieces there are three equipments but the the first one i can't even find it where's the first one i don't even know what they do offline no you don't you didn't put it you didn't put it in the list they've never actually been assembled indestructible okay sword is for mana equip four uh well you're selling it short already what the the shield of cauldron not just gives the equipped creature indestructible also gives sword of culture a helmut cauldron shielded culture itself indestructible that's a big difference i don't want to do this all right all right shield of cauldron the real text here it's a four mana equipment and it costs four to equip it gives itself and sort of cauldre and shield of calder indestructible and the equipped creature gets indestructible so if you do like an austere command you know destroy all creatures and artifacts nah not neither of those get destroyed no good day sir and then the other one is sword of cauldra four-man equipment ford equipped a crit creature gets a massive plus five plus five and whenever it deals com whenever it deals damage to a creature not just combat damage but damage uh remove that creature from the game exile it's so if it pings somehow if you ping with your plus plus five equipped creature exiled gone forever and then helm of culture finally the best of the best it's a three-man equipment equipped to equip creature gets first strike tranquil and haste aka all the best stuff but if you have all three pieces of a cauldron you can pay one mana to activate the helm's crazy ability and you summon the avatar legend cauldra which is a 4-4 and you equip all four all three pieces of it so together with its power it becomes a first like trample haste indestructible nine-nine creature that also exiles when it deals damage you've just wasted so much mana and everything that you you just said wasted a lot of time [Laughter] oh man all of it is moot look all of these things come to those who wait and longer text is better so all of cauldra is like there's just strictly better versions of all these cards printed right maybe not sort of called her that one's kind of unique but like shield of cauldron is just more expensive dark steel plate unless you're protecting another colder piece it's like one more mana to cast two more mana to equip helm of caldera there's an equipment i didn't even know existed till i just looked this up called cherry of victory which none of us knew was an actual magic card that is exactly home of calder except one less mana two equipped and the other problem with caldera is it forces you to play all the other bad colder pieces in your same deck so not only does it make your deck worse by itself it makes your entire deck worse by making you play three bad cards together okay the million-dollar question here is would you play all three cauldre or a sort of body in mind all three calls again body mind and two planes which has more effective value to my deck if those are my choices i'm playing hearthstone [Laughter] wow just know that richard chose the body and mind over the cauldron shielded cauldron is a legit card like people play that non ironically right like you you need like you need more than one dark steel plate you have hammer design you have shield of cauldron and like tomer said you can wrath through and keep keep the the shield but like you know sometimes i build it i'm like should i add the other two culture pieces because i have all my tutors and everything and the answer is always no right but the answer is like you get what you get a 4-4 for all this effort like what is the point right so it's not even like in fact or anything it doesn't like kill anyone right like you still have to hit them like five times after you've done this right so but you get like a 4 4 avatar or something right if if you expect me to defend cauldre as like a top s rank thing you'll be disappointed because our rating for it helmet cauldron ds all around except for me c sword of cauldron d is all around except for me c but richard he's with me here uh a c and for for me and richard and d uh for the shield of culture for for everybody else so yes i will admit the cultures aren't good they're not good all right you wanted to hear that that's you heard it from the source i've been trying to win with caldra for over five years on commander over five years on commander i have a called your deck i can tell you on on one hand how many times i've actually won with cauldra can you guess can you guess how many times can you tell me on zero hands yeah yeah yeah no i actually won a single time and i managed to capture it on stream so i turned into an abridged gameplay uh link popping up on the card boom um so yes i've done it one time out of over 50 games at least at least 50 games uh so no are are these cards good no but they're not like unplayable because they do have cool effects they're just way over costed right like the shield of cauldra is a good effect but its dark seal plate costs one less a cast and two less to equip which is bananas in comparison right and dark so played are you even like blade is bananas in 2022 yeah so it's not great bananas i i i think they're neat all right i think they're neat that's why i give them a nice see if they're still just play this it's sort of body in mind i didn't even buy that one i left it out wow wow just leaving money on the table i do agree that calder is a cool design i'll give you that domer i like the i like the the quest aspect of it so yes it still shocks me that homer hasn't won more often with this thing it's just like somehow you just survived and you have like 30 lanes they're going to slap them all together and like kill someone so there's there's actually a hidden disadvantage of equipment beyond just the car text and i call it the planeswalker problem where if anybody sees you having one of these pieces on the battlefield they will go out of their way to exile your your culture pieces to stop you it's like it's like you know when you play planeswalker and it's not the biggest threat at the table it's like just like a bad it's like a bad planeswalker but everybody at the table will still punch it in the face even if it has no ultimate even if it was zero text even if it was like tibbled you could play tibbled on the battlefield and you could never even ultimate it ever and people will still knock it out same thing with cauldre you play a cauldre piece people will exile it it'll go out of their way they will make bad decisions crim hits you with the body of mind and build a culture piece all three of them that would be good because i have recursion from my culture obviously i'm learning culture of course i'm gonna have a cursion for richard all right so yes we've agreed culture's not that good but it's still very funny we'll move on we'll move on to a card that actually uh a lot of people think is one of the best cards in the format uh even as far as last year the professor made a video dedicated to this card being like super super awesome it's been a staple of boros decks forever but we're not so high on it uh so uh seth tell us a little bit about sun forger oh so sun forager three mana three two equip it gives the equip creature plus four plus zero and then you can pay a red and white and unattach it and you can search your library for a rhetoric instant card with converted mana cost four or less and cast it without paying uh its mana cost so essentially a way you can tutor up instants and sorceries from your library uh for a ridiculous amount of man it's really really like three to cast three to equip two to unattached so it's even half around the battlefield there's five mana to get a four mana spell out of your library rating wise richard's gotta see we everyone else has a b sunfortune's a card that i think is just a little bit overrated i think this is another one of those cards that it seems like a lot of people just like jam in their random boro stacks and just play it for value like oh i got some you know path to exiles in my deck or whatever like that'll be cool i'll tutor them up it's just way too expensive for that i think you gotta have specific synergies a free equipped synergies things like that to for me to really consider putting sunforger in my deck uh even if i got a bunch of spells that can potentially tutor up it's just way way too expensive and way way too slow in 2022 but what do you guys think i think the card's still pretty decent i mean just the colors of boros and being able to unequip the item and then getting any spell is big i think i think that's very very big um i mean why not right like like that that utility is absurd i think like if i see a sun forger i have to kill this thing is it the best equipment i've ever seen no but is it does it deserve the title that it has probably i mean i just i don't think i've ever let a sun forger stick around and then have that work out for me nah i i i mean and definitely in crimson's shoes i i've no i've seen a lot of games where sun forger still takes over the game even even in recent times because what happens when someone plays a sun forger and equips it like you go to try and remove it at that point when sunforge is already equipped uh they'll deflecting swat you uh they'll unequip it search up deflecting swat or uh you try to wipe the board uh they'll hit you off to various protection um there's flawless maneuver if you're trying to wipe creatures boros charm again also protection for all of your stuff all stuff gets indestructible uh you play a big threat they'll have sorts of plaster so the fact that it's basically a swiss army knife for boros decks uh makes it really appealing and once it gets going it's it will warp the game it will take over the game the only problem as seth mentioned is it costs five mana each time you're doing it so it's very slow it gets so much better if you have a way to equip for free which is arden or pure steel paladin i think those are the only two ways that i know off of the top of my head that you can repeatedly just equip and re-equip for free um outside of that though like in slower metas this is always going to be super great but in faster metas like just paying three mana down payment of three mana then five to equip it and unequip it in the fact that you're now going to be the arch enemy at the table until it gets removed it it has gotten worse over time i think car's super overrated seven mana okay before you to get your first trigger so here's the thing there is nothing good to get they're all reactive right they're all either removable or indestructible there's no boros instant to just randomly draw cards right so you run into the sword of sinew and steel problem where if you want to get value you got to just randomly start snapping off swords to plow shares like for no reason right rather than holding it like if there was a four mana draw three instant in borrows then i could see some actual point to this but like just remember seven mana and a creature before you get some value and then you gotta fill your deck with all these random toolbox instance for no reason and you know how i feel about spot removal now you gotta run a product because they're amazing you're right but you love like you love like boros charm and stuff like one are you gonna run sun forger with like one path to exhale one barrel's charm right like it's burning how many times how many targets do you need for it though i think like five this is a relic of the past where you were desperate and you would pay eight mana to draw a card in boris right but that time is long gone we can now draw lots of cards in boros it's a tutor it's a tutor that you cast immediately i mean with the two ones no it's not always removable though it's protection i mean even with you describing the best even when you're describing the best case scenario tomer like what comes to mind for me is like please do that like i cast a lightning bolt on your thing or a path on your thing and you're gonna spend five mana to get a boro's charm to like keep your thing alive that seems like a really good trade for me like sure maybe your thing didn't die but i'm kind of just time walking you you're spending five minutes you're gonna do that every single turn and then get a deflecting spot and like do that again like is it progressing the game enough for it to really be good or are you just like spending your entire game keeping your sunforger alive to keep your son for sure alive to keep your sunforger alive like okay i have a question for you we're playing commander clash next episode of commander clash i'm playing a boros deck and i put down a sun forger how do you think the rest of the table is going to react i i will be willing to bet the rest of the table will be terrified and be scrambling to find answers for the second here's the thing tomorrow you will die there's a difference right if you played something that everyone was terrified of and you could fight through it that's worth right but you will play a sun forger snap off one path to exile and then die of miserable death if it's not strong enough to warrant the hate it takes right you can also get but what about you get like uh you get like a chroma's will or something and you just alpha strike because you got your sun forger and then now they'll hit you like right afterwards like you know what i mean like it's it's scary but it can't when it's like playing half a combo piece like theoretically scary but you didn't finish the job so you just die but none of these equipments just finish the job all of them are scary because they're all incremental value legends i think people are unnecessarily scared of it like morph style because it's the fear of the unknown like i don't know what you got on your deck so i'm just like super afraid of of the unknown but when you actually you know what if you think they're the possibilities of what they're getting it's much less scary than than than it actually looks i think but i'm sorry krim go ahead when you put in the context of equipment i think it is very good i i like like there's obviously better things to be doing but if you're an equipment deck you know you want to be doing this right this is one of the better equipments you could be getting and we should make sure we're not running an equipment deck like you have pure steel paladin and stuff you wouldn't no because even when you're like hard and broke on your deck with useless instant so i would actually play it in like a spouse thinger right like a um the boros guy the the minotaur dude you know what i'm talking about yeah oh oh uh yeah like where you're naturally running like a ton of instance for some reason right but like i would not put this because i have to dilute my equipment with like instance and why would i do that right i would just play more equipment right i'm not desperate for cartridge i have secret rendezvous i'm this is like the free this is like the fifth equipment that i add into any boros equipment deck that takes seven deck slots though tomer you guys then start adding all the instances right and and we should make it clear this has been a pretty harsh conversation but we do mostly have it rated as b so i don't think most of us are arguing that this is like an unplayable card richard has a c which is average the rest of us have his b's which is good in specific decks so it's not like we're all trying to say like sunforger is horrible but again if you go back to edh rec this is the fourth most played equipment greaves boots skull clamps sunforger this is this is that seems a little hot if you're in boroughs people just put it in there as an as a auto include and i think the entire table can agree that we wouldn't do that like yeah i think i think me seth and krim are like we'll put it in in equipment decks because again yeah if you can free equip it and you have those shenanigans then i like it a lot but just don't originally borrow because you're like oh i got a few spells in my deck like no i don't do that yeah yeah all right fair fair we consider it overrated uh but still good in certain situations um next up what do we got karim what do you want to talk about so up next we've got let me see here pull up the tier okay so uh then we have the explorer scope which i why is this on here like elmer really likes it why is this one no like okay all right one man whatever equipped creature attacks look at the top part of your library if it's a land card you put on the battlefield tapped equip one why is this on here i swear it's good so tell me i'm gonna look at is tom teller why don't you read this one because clearly you like this card i think this card is kaka do to water i would not play this anywhere near my deck all right that's man of grass yeah this is man of crap seth and geez i gave it a c this is this is a magnificent card i was printed as a common if you believe it or not i do boring house believe it it's a one minute equipment only one to equip so two mana total investment to get it on to your first creature uh whenever equipped creature attacks you look at the top card of your library if it's a land card you may put it onto the battlefield tap it doesn't have to be a basic land it could be any land on top of your library put it into play boom tapped my my argument on why i think this card is good is it literally has to trigger a single time where it becomes a colorless rampant growth plus plus because it can hit any type of land not just a basic land rainbow growth two banana you get one basic into play explore scope two mana as soon as you flip one land and put into play it is now a ramping group anything beyond that after you attack more than once the value can start going insane if you get two lanes off this it is crazy good the fact that it's so low curve is super good yes okay so the the blind flip ratio i don't know you have you have like 99 cards you have like 36 lanes what are the odds that you're gonna flip it at any given time probably low what are the odds that are you flipping into two turns probably pretty decent but i like you you need multiple terms however there's a lot of decks uh that you have top deck manipulation for if as long as you can start seeing the top part of your library like you have like uh you have an auger on them you have whatever whatever thing you have to check the top part of your library a future site type effect uh it gets really really good in those decks in fact they printed a band's equipment commander specifically for that that people don't even remember because you know 2021 is a blur it was like galia of the something something where you get to like look at the top card your library and it's all about it's advanced equipment and it's all about looking at the top guy of your library and cheating auras and equipment off the top of your library into play so it's basically like a future site for auras and equipment so you can like remove an equipment from the top of your library see that land and then immediately attack and there's like brainstorm and sort of stuff like that that make it even more and more good so in any deck that like has top manipulation explorer scope is like a half-price sword of the animus that could also hit non-basics and i think that is really sweet it's really cool all right and it's one mana one main investor you could put only one run i mean my question would be like is it really worth it even though it's a little bit cheaper over playing yeah something that guarantees you're going to get a land like sort of the animist or a sword of hearth and home that we were talking about like do you really want a 33 chance of getting a land when you could just play a very slightly more expensive equipment and get a bunch of other upsides like pumping your creatures and yeah you're gonna get to get a land this doesn't even do anything to the creature right like it's just literally if it attacks it just attacks you don't need right right if it attacks you you get a you gotta land maybe maybe so i'm pretty torn on this i'm between like it's the greatest card ever like tober or it's complete other trash and i'm not sure which is why i wanted to hear what tober had to say oh i put it as a b i didn't say it's the greatest card ever all right i think the b is like you're sticking it in generally it's very good in specific archetype but not a lot not the majority of archetypes b is in the top deck manipulation index dunk but i feel like it's probably the c to me but not many non-blue decks can manipulate the top of their deck easily and and if they did they don't want to just like they don't want this right like i feel like this feels like a wasted card slot but you are ramping and you can ramp non-basics which as we go after a conversation when you run out of basics because you don't have that many basics in your deck you can actually ramp with it the problem is you need to get in early with this and like what are you getting in early with like it's very hard like your worst case in europe it's a rapid growth on turn five is terrible right like you don't play dragon man like you you need it on turn two but you can't get this on turn two right so i don't know you just slap it on swing with evasion you don't know what you do if it's a later game then you should have some sort of evasive creature that can get in there like i consider good if it like does something for two turns so i get two two attacks i get to ramp one card but it's like turn four or five at this point like was i happy casting you're just talking about how much hurt in home the best thing in the game is ramping blah blah blah but hearth and home does a lot more than that guarantees it to get your first investment out of it this is two mana i don't know i i think c still i don't know i i want to play with this more i think it has potential i think it is clearly under photographers baby like as soon as cartographers talk turns off it's even better because then you don't have to spend that mana on recasting it and equipping it again the other thing i don't like about is upgrade i think this gets worse in the world of mdfcs too like i know i play a lot less actual lands than i did a year ago uh and if you're playing you know six or eight mdfcs and only like 30 ish real lands you're you're kind of shifting the math meaningfully away from randomly spinning into your lands with this as well so that's something else to keep in mind i don't think people run eight plus mds like you suck i know okay sorry i run like five around like two maybe that's ah they're wrong there's like four there's like four i'm i'm keeping it as a b top deck manipulation decks let's go taxos let's go all right uh what spice do we have left uh oh okay all right let's talk about let's talk about car we can all agree is is pretty darn sweet not quite grieve's level of ubiquitous but uh shadow spear uh we were talking before the podcast started that shadowspear is it's pretty good i don't know what we rated it as what did we rate it as do we rate it we have the a's for the rest of you yeah i i i think this is the closest number nine on the list uh near the near the top oh okay okay so shadowsphere it's a one mana equipment one minute legendary equipment equip two equip creature gets plus one plus one and has tranquil and lifelink so two nice keywords in a little boost and it has an activated ability proven to your opponent's control loose hex roof and indestructible until end of turn but the nice caveat here is that you can activate this ability without actually equipping your equipping a creature with it so this can just be a one you pay one mana you put this thing on the battlefield and then whenever you need to remove uh hex proof and indestructible from your opponent's side of the battlefield you just do that it doesn't have to have a creature attached to it so it's even it's even more reliable than most equipment but then when you you equip it onto something just two mana you equip something onto it plus one plus one trample in lifelink uh seth crim and i all gave it a's richard is a little bit more conservative he gives it a b s card's insane this might be my like number one non-greaves boots equipment in the entire format like i actually think this is i don't believe any equipment can be a nest here but this is about as close as you can get to an s tier and as we were like doing this i realized there's like a bunch of popular equipment that are just way worse versions of this like we had behemoth sledge on our list which essentially is the same thing except you can't do the hex proof shenanigans and it's three mana cast and three to equip and all you get is one more plus one plus one on your creature this is just like invalidated locks it on war hammers like so many past equipment i think you can just play this in every deck i really am firm believer that every deck needs some amount of life gain uh and this can be your incidental life gain effect and if you're playing a crim deck i'm sure that getting rid of like hex proof and getting rid of indestructibility is actually like a pretty big thing i would assume right graham yep that's why i love this card i when this card was spoiled right i knew i bought tons of this so i'm very happy i have a ton of these cards because i thought this was just an auto include in every commander deck with the amount of things like heroic intervention and me just wanting to stomp out like all the veil of summer players and all that stuff right so like like my hate for hex proof has made me uh really appreciate this card and indestructible so those type of boots are ruining your day yep yep this card is just good just like seth said you can just leave it on the field and and on top of that with more decks starting to play urza saga in in their like decks this is something you can get up with urza saga yep having an answer to like boros charm and stuff is also like real nice so guys i like it like this so richard you just don't like it you're just using it i don't even have to i i think of all these believing creatures so obviously you need big gross green creatures to slap this on over else you're not putting it in your deck like what do you think reason you play locks in warhammer is because you're playing like creatures that will have double strike and whatnot where that that pumping is relevant right so that's why you would play stuff like that right this like the active is available on the land uh the losing hex proof part if you want the indestructible part like like i don't know like using this to combo with your spot removal seems super weak especially if you have no purpose of this in your deck right like just play merciless eviction or something to do effectively the same thing so i think but this merciless eviction is six mana yeah but this is a two card combo right this is the atmosphere and the spot removal right no this just it exists and i can turn it off like example if seth has a removal spell hey i can help you remove that creature if you and i'll pay the one right you can just play the but the land doesn't remove indestructible i don't know i think that's a lot to play big green creatures you can't play it in like grix's control i mean i know krim will but it seems weird to me right well it's better if you can utilize that lifelink like you really want to utilize a trampoline life link but like you equip it to like a 3-3 or whatever you get some you get four life gain action each turn and you still have its utility like yeah all my all my decks still have a creature right because the creature is the commander so there will be something i can equip it to and as i had mentioned it's a urza sagas target so it just says so much for so little like yeah it really does like it's such a low mana cost and it does so many different things and a lot of them are like at least somewhat relevant in all games i i don't think you gotta have big green creatures to make it good but i also am not quite in crime mode where i would just like play this in a creature-free deck just as like a spell to get rid of has proven indestructible but i think if you can gain a little bit of life with that even that is worth it with the additional upsides all right so richard has historically been uh one of the hardest uh most conservative people in terms of raiding all the equipments but coming up next we have a card that he actually gave an s he only gave three s's he actually gave more s's than everybody at the table but he on average he writes lower uh than in the moses but this is the third ass richard tell us about uh this coveted uh third s ironically i play the most equipment here by the way uh but the one equipment that deserves to be in every deck and i'm actually dead serious about this is dowsing dagger and the true definition of s is you will warp your deck around it to make this work i will stuff more creatures in my deck to get a dousing dagger to flip right and so dousing dagger if for some reason you don't know what the greatest cardinal magic does is a two mana equipment when it enters a battlefield you give a player two zero two defender plants equipped creature gets plus two plus one uh when it when the equipped creature deals combat damage you flip it and it becomes a land that taps for three mana of any color and equip is two so i believe you should play more creatures just to get dowsing dagger to work if you don't have enough creatures right if you have a commander cmc3 or less this should be auto include if you have a commander with evasion this should be auto include uh you should play mana dorks cartographers hawk whatever you need to ensure that you can stagger and hit someone right that is far better than a signet that will get wrath away right like your dork can die in the wrath but he flipped the dousing dagger he did his job good enough right so i will warp my deck just to make this dagger work i'll put stoneforge mystic to fetch it up i will you know play i've never seen you have to actually tutor it so i don't know he's just happening how do you do that i wonder why it's so good yeah maybe if i could have it turn two guaranteed every single time i'd i'd run it more often it's perfect late game right is it i mean three extra mana is always helpful uh i i mean you have sold me on this card if you had asked me about this card before you played it uh so many times over the last couple years it probably would have been like a c or something and i wouldn't really thought through i would have been like oh it's great if you're trying to like give your opponent's tokens and then kill them for value or something which it is but you have totally sold me on this being an a like i'm not as cyanide as you to the like warp my deck add creatures to my deck to make my dousing dagger flip but if i got a reasonable enough number of creatures i think this is like just an it's just an auto include because the backside in three extra mana is so valuable and you've proved that like time and time and time again on commander clash you've definitely gotten me to like increase my rating on this it is a b as opposed to me playing it like as like a c like can't even flip it because he doesn't believe he can't deal with it unless they have a strip mine and if they try to deal with it you have just as much mana as it's like you gain the one mana per player right so you have the mana to fight back against the table at the same time right so and then most people just ignore it right they're like oh i can't strip mine it move on i also like how well it plays with like vasuva and thespian stage like usually if you have dowsing dagger in your deck i highly recommend if you're running dagger run thespian station and and vesuva just because they basically net you two extra mana on your on your lane drop for a turn that's being sage copies it on the flip side vesuva copies it on its website and it's like vote for commander like because you can choose a player to give the plants to that already has blockers or whatever so in 1v1 games it's actually super hard to flip but in a commander game it's actually pretty easy to flip if you try a little bit yeah i just i want to put an s but like it's it's very good if i have creatures that have evasion i will put it in and it's one of the highest rated equipment that i have and i have it in my culture deck yay it's a special promo version so much glare but tomer i don't even have a promo dousing dagger wow wow fake fan there's there's one other equipment on our list that i just have to know if it's in your calder deck because i feel like there this was like some infamous moment with this in the past time commander clash do you want that that card that card's world slayer uh world slayer world player if uh if you don't know what the world slayer does it's a five mana or wait i'm sorry it's a it's five minutes to cast in five mana to equip but when the equip creature deals combat damage you destroy all permanents other than world slayer we all kind of hate this card i think we literally all gave it these except for you tomer who gave it a rather robust bee uh sell us on this world's lawyer why why is world slayer good and is it so we've all seen and we've all respected the armageddon right we all understand that armageddon can close out games when properly utilized world slayer is the next level of armageddon not only does does it like not only does it remove destroy all all lands uh it destroys everything but world slayer so picture this if you will you got a world slay on the battlefield you have a single indestructible creature just any any indestructible creature will do you have you put the world slayer on the indestructible creature you swing in yeah deal combat damage and then boom you won the game you have an indestructible creature a world slayer your opponents have zero permits on the battlefield what are they gonna do the best thing they can possibly do is go like planes swords to plowshares go and then that's like the worst case scenario but nine times out of time not not even nine times out like 99.99 of this time they're not going to go planes sword supply shares uh uh the game is over no once you actually connected with it and you have at least one creature on the battlefield you won the game so this card is like a staple in uh for example zergo helm smasher that's the one where like it saw the most play where zergo is um indestructible on your turn it attacks as a 7-2 you put this on there you go bam and somebody dies but there's a lot of indestructible creatures now and there's a lot of cheap ways of making yourself indestructible like if you can if you can world slayer and you know in response boros charm to the trigger or to various protections to the trigger or flawless maneuver to the trigger you get what i'm saying uh it's really easy to set up a a situation where you win the game and also it's so boss it's so cool you you world you slayed the world you slayed the world all right it was in middle school when i saw this card and i definitely i fanboyed over it it was like such a cool looking part you can't be mad all right i've never heard somebody get salty at the fact that i i won the game with a world slayer you destroyed the world with a sword like you just stabbed the earth and destroyed it it's so and it's just like it's just like a lone it's a lone sword it's stuck in the earth and you know what happened to the the earth or the the thing in the sky it got a world slate this is the second coming anyway i i had this as a as a pretty hard d but did i sell you on it yeah i think you said he must deal combat damage i think he's looking on it on it being a c like d is like don't even ever play it but i think there are no situations where where you can play a world slayer i'll tell you not many but there's a few all right rounding out the list is one final card that we all agree is at least playful that's our criteria here that we can agree on it's playable uh crim tell us about skull clan all right so skull clamp uh if you don't know what it does it's a one mana quip creature gets plus one minus one uh when this quip creature dies or is put into a graveyard draw two cards and it costs one to equip this is great i think i think this is just something you can equip onto a creature that even it's not ideal right like that i just equipped this to like a 3-3 to make it like you know a 4-2 but it's nice to just have something to wear if a creature dies you get to net some cards out of it but it's at its best when you have like a token deck or an x1 loaded deck an aristocrats deck where you can get the benefit of like having your creatures die and then getting something from it and and then on top of that drawing two cards yeah so i put it as an a richard seth and cream put it as b's i think i i i put it as an a because literally if i have any deck that has like 15 or more creatures if i put skull clamp into that deck i think that that gets better i don't i don't think there's any exceptions to that like if i have like a decent amount of of creatures to equip it it i don't need to sacrifice it i don't need to be a token deck i don't need to worry about its toughness i just i just clamp you know it's it's one mana one man it's a cast one man it's equipped so it's two mana and then the first time a creature that is equipped dies you get two cards that's already like you know a sign in blood or whatever once you do that a second time uh then you're in you're in value town um and it's so easy to do it so i don't know i think it's it's a solid a okay and it gets better obviously yeah i mean i really only play if i can kill my stuff like if i'm sacrificing if they're x ones i don't usually plant in just a deck with a bunch of big creatures trusting that they're gonna die i mean it is pretty convincing that like if you draw even two cards with this that's not a that's not bad for two mana and if you draw four cards that's like insane for two mana so maybe i'm underrating it slightly and should be playing it more often because you don't need to trigger it that many times like obviously the games where it's super exciting is when you like have a bunch of tokens and you like equip equip a and all of a sudden you went from like one card in hand to seven cards in hand and you're feeling really good about your skull clamp but even if you just draw a few cards over the course of the game that's still a reasonable amount of value this one i'm torn on i wanted to ask you guys would you play this without explicit synergy so kill your own stuff and tomer says yes i haven't been but tomer might be winning me over a little like that like i played like this is like a sun forger where it's a hold over from like the desperation times like you played mono white you had nothing to do so you clamping on the sun titan and then you hope someone kills sunshine right like it's unfortunate cost a lot of man this is your you've invested two mana and a card to to hope to draw two cards if you have zero synergies and you can't kill your own creatures two mana i feel like i love you to do that i feel like in 2022 maybe in red but all other colors can draw cards so we don't need to skull clamp big creatures and hope for the best like we need to just go with that you just skipped over white i like it white white can draw cards i'm ready can't draw cards i never heard anybody say right i don't think they draw cards but that's what do you want cass and eggs yeah i don't know how i feel about i wonder what the viewers think viewers do is this card overrated should we play this if we can't sacrifice or have x ones that one i'm not sure on so we all agree it's at least a b it's good in index that can abuse its ability but is it is it even better than that yeah i think that's an interesting question this thing was like a true nightmare in standard oh yeah for sure and bailey and most other 60 card formats it was like miserable maybe maybe maybe 22 magic it's it's a lot lost some luster but i don't know although it was banned because of ravager so it was in his deck that could sacrifice stuff like that was like the the synergy so and it was loaded with ways things that could just die from it right and then trigger the modular like move things around easily without ravager do i'm right between b and a i you i you could swing me either way too i don't think you can be an s but it's somewhere between b and a for me it's still a b for me all right well uh we covered basically all the really interesting stuff as usual we're going to keep um our fullest we cover we we rated like a ton of equipment so we didn't even mention here but these were the ones that we picked out where like we can have the most interesting conversations in about the span of an hour and a half so if you are interested uh we'll have links to that um uh along with with the podcast wherever you're listening to it or slash if you're watching on it or or what have you um so i hope you enjoyed our take on equipment as always we come in with different perspectives different play styles how we view the game um we just try to make sure that our our uh philosophy and our perspective are consistent with our grading that's that's our number one concern um so hopefully we did a good job on that hopefully it was entertaining maybe maybe maybe you learned something and also if you uh have a different take and you want to teach us something uh leave leave a comment uh reach us at uh on twitter you can tweet us at clashmail um to to give us your thoughts directly we always read those as well and that's it everybody if you like this show by the way you can always like and subscribe uh buyer and merch mtgoldfishmerch.com thing is popping up now all that good stuff and until next time friends see ya

Channel: MTGGoldfish Commander

Views: 73,891

Keywords: Magic the Gathering, MTG, EDH, Commander

Id: NfWHBdilVDs

Length: 83min 59sec (5039 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 18 2022