Stronghold l The Resleevables #19 l Magic: The Gathering History MTG

[Music] what's up everybody welcome back to the receivables stronghold Edition I'm your host Cedric Phillips at Cedric a Phillips on all the things and I am joined by the New Jersey Devil's biggest fan and put potentially a fan of stronghold that is uh Patrick Sullivan at basic Mountain on Twitter how we uh how we feeling about part two of Wrath cycle I am not the devil's biggest fan nor am I a fan of stronghold oh it's gonna be a tough episode I mean there's a lot to talk about and there's some individual designs that are quite sweet in a lot of ways it is sort of the first multiplayer set in so far as there's a lot of designs that even before Commander was a thing people really enjoyed in a multiplayer context okay and a lot of the designs there have a large family tree coming down from them in terms of Commander Staples that we know about today but the set is starting from a rough position which is continuing the mechanics of Tempest buyback in Shadow and lits true and there's really nothing new going on with them it is kind of more of the same same and to the extent that you have good ideas they usually come the first time around true okay those was a old quote from uh Tom Lilly who used to be my boss at a game Design Studio but worked on Magic many many years ago and he said about magic because the game is so old and people have been working on it forever and a lot of very smart and creative people have touched it he said to me once if if an idea was good someone would have probably had it already yeah okay that's that's mostly true yeah is it not not true not for sure but it it you know it is the Peril of new design space it's like you think you came up with something good and other people just miss this all this time not impossible but unlikely strongholds got a lot of here's kind of the runoff of ideas that weren't very good in the first place okay and the set top to bottom kind of has that issue well we got our boosties so that's good news we doing a little crack a pack that's going to come out a couple of days after this episode so someone's gonna get their shot at uh MOX Diamond maybe maybe sliver Queen who knows so that's some exciting stuff but what's more exciting are the facts of stronghold coming at you right [Music] now all right everybody we are here for for the facts of stronghold but before we begin of course we have to shout out our wonderful sponsor Tales of Adventure you can head over to toam magic.com and check out a selection over 77,000 SKS in stock including 80 pieces of the power 9 every single revised dual land and 99% of standard cards for those of you playing in standard RC Qs this season every order placed with Tales of adventure comes with free track shipping UPS next day and 2-day shipping is offered for orders placed before 8 a.m. and tales of Adventure has complet over 1 million orders lifetime so you know you'll be in good hands with Michael Caffrey and his staff if you'll be attending an event that Tales Adventure will be at when you're checking out you can select the event pickup option so you can simply pick up the cards you've ordered right at the event you'll be at you can find a list of events that Tales of Adventure will be at attending on their homepage toam magic.com lastly when checking out be sure to use promo code rebles to get 5% off your entire order Tales of Adventure Eternal lives here all righty let us Dive In stronghold is the 13th Magic the Gathering expansion it released on March 2nd 1998 in papier March 2nd happens to be my birthday on that day I turned 12 dude nice any good memories no think I was sound right I think I was in Middle School sure yeah that sounds yeah 12 is Middle School range before high school that's for sure uh the pre-release was on February 21st 1998 and strongholds pre-release card was a nonfoil copy of revenant with a quote pre-release 298 end quote stamped in gold foil between the creature type and the set symbol now remember last set is when they first kind of started experimenting with this in Tempest with the old dirt cow worm uh can't really say this is much better yeah they followed it up with yet another piece of garbage that has nothing to do with anything in the set yeah heart's in the right place but the execution still a little bit flawed I do like putting the date on there though that's a cool thing because let's if you gave it a different treatment or a different piece of art someone would look at it and not necessarily know where it came from yeah the date on the card signifies that there's an event so if you don't know about pre-releases you would look at that and go what's that dat all about and then your friend can tell you oh they have these firmaments called bre relases so that part I think is really good but it would be nice to give a card that was either appealing or about anything ideally both hey baby steps baby steps moving forward dir crawl worm not great Revenant not great but minor changes and look how far we've come y so there you go uh let's also note that stronghold was released on April 13th 2009 on Magic online with drafts available through April 27th 2009 of course you got to get those old sets on the magic online somehow heck they could release strong hold on Magic Arena at some point who knows when uh it was also available oh I don't think that's true no how are you gonna ask these people to code Lids somebody's job I don't know I mean I understand your point in general that old sets could come onto Arena yeah and people ask for it all the time and you could imagine it happening I'm saying specifically this block is not where I would start where I managing resources over there we'll call it uh we'll call it stronghold remastered it's incredible by the way that list it'ss work on Magic Online yeah what a what an achievement that's some true coding work I presume I don't know that area of the world at all uh let's also note quickly that it was also a stronghold it was also available after the release of Exodus on December 7th 2009 to support Tempest block drafts which I that's that's not for me uh and then a subset of the cards from stronghold were also released in the 2015 magic online only Tempest remastered set with a modern FL uh some of the cards have a modern frame just like we saw in Tempest y so cool so that's all the ways that temp excuse me stronghold was released let's talk about who was designed by we have uh Mike Elliott that'll be your lead Bill Rose and Mark rosewater rosewater is just all over these sets now he's just got his fingerprints everywhere which I don't know I don't have a problem with it but it's noticeable now that uh that Mark is everywhere uh the develop by team is also led by Mike Elliott it's got William joic it's got Bill Rose it has Mark rosewater and it has Henry Stern uh art Direction once again not by suanne hary Matt will Wilson excuse me continues to be in charge uh so that's your team that has designed these 143 Blackboard cards 44 rares 44 uncommons 55 Commons 55 t goes 55 Pizza 55 shakes some people know what that means uh not the biggest set no no just a now we are very much in block mode yeah big small small is kind the thing yeah which again some of you are older out there you guys were there for block mode we were there for block mode now we don't do blocks anymore now we just do like one one Set uh but it has eight different versions of every card so it's hard I mean is one set there's a full block released every three months yeah it's it's nuts it's absolutely nuts nowadays so this is a this is what a second set looks like not that big uh strongholds expansion symbol is the closed Port Cullis of vorrath stronghold that's on theme they started doing so uh in Tempest they got the bolt they got like the cloud with the lightning in it uh this they've got the closed Port Cullis in Exodus it's like a bridge yeah yeah so like they're doing stuff that's really on theme now I so this was a set that caused me I I shouldn't say the set caused me but around this time I took one of my more extended breaks for magic yeah I stopped playing for about a year uh and you know stronghold definitely did that no favors but I remember thinking the expansion symbol was super cool yeah yeah okay okay it's not bad I mean I like I like the work they're doing with the expansion symbols uh speaking of which stronghold is the last set printed without different colored set symbols for cards of different Rarities so when we do Exodus which will be the next set that we cover on this show I believe that's when you're going to see the bridge set symbol that I've talked about but also this is when uh in Exodus when the different colors start so black for common silver for uncommon gold for rare which I think is a huge upgrade to things it's a it's a major step forward yeah so much of of early magic I mean it kind of Dub tals with the fact that the the internet was not a ubiquitous tool for searching for information but you regularly just didn't know what the rare was in your pack and a lot of people buy packs and open them because they want to get the rares yeah so not being able to identify what they are is a struggle especially when Magic's sort of sensibilities about what's appropriate for common what's appropriate for uncommon what's appropriate for rare I would say is a lot more scattershot in the early days so you really just had to go to you know inquest and SC other magazines to find out what the Rarities were you know it was predatory Traders at the store had way more success ripping people off because of all this and um you know making that information present at first glance is a big deal heck even when we do our cracker packs we're not entirely sure oh no what is yeah I've we've opened a couple where I'm at the end of it I'm like well my best guess is it's this six Mana 44 flyer yeah that with cumulative upkeep but I'm not sure feels rare right kind of but again not positive uh stronghold let's talk about how it was sold uh two ways boosters and precons 15 card boosters well you know that's pretty simple kind of the same formula we've been seeing for a little while one rare three uncommons 11 Commons and because this is a second set you identify this pretty quickly the base set the first set has different pictures couple uh second set just has one and basically the the smaller sets of the block have just one uh the packs featured artwork from is this warrior angel that is correct Bravo well done uh and then we'll talk about these preconstructed theme decks of which there were four now remember in our Tempest episode that's where Wizards has really taken the dive into making these things that are kind of cool and matter and things that they want people to buy so because stronghold wasn't a standalone set the decks contain both Tempest and stronghold cards uh given that stronghold is checking again 143 cards it's going to be tough to make decks just out of that right I I I think this is fine as long as all the rares people are receiving or new yeah from stronghold yeah okay that makes sense that's a that's a smart thought so let's get to deck number one it is called this is my one of my favorite things about this uh the names of these decks migraine it's a mono black deck uh the migraine deck features an array of fast creatures coupled with discard combinations to gain card advantage this mono black deck is geared toward the more experienced player using a subtle design and potent theme okay mhm the three rares in the deck are in snaring Bridge great mind warper okay and Port Cullis okay so there you go I love just my my my tiny creatures and then snaring bridge deck really coherent fun uh for what it's worth the description is the deck I did not I not make these are on the packaging next up is the sparkler is a blue red deck here we go the sparkler deck combines buyback direct damage with counter spells bringing a lethal Edge to the standard control deck this red and blue deck will be a Surefire hit surefires in quote uh with both veteran and new players alike the three rares in this deck are evacuation Intruder alarm and Reigns of power really it's also kind of weird because in the first deck they're describing different elements yeah and you can kind of imagine if you have any familiarity with magic how that would be coherent okay this is like it me it puts burn spells buyback and counter spells in the same deck it's like why would that why would I be interested in that mix of stuff those effects are deep yeah just I guess the rates are good now here's a deck that you will like the spikes red green deck the spikes deck introduces new creatures that sling plus one plus one counters from card to card giving a player more control over the battlefield as a starting point for more sophisticated decks using Spike creatures this green and red deck is sure to be popular around gaming tables the three rares in the deck are hermit Druid Good Start come on I also like I I also like the uh the insecurity evinced by popular around the gaming tables cuz it's like well that's where you play anyway that's that's just playing the game so you would only mention that if you felt the other decks were really miserable to play with and or against I would agree yeah we promise this is fun we yeah this one is actually okay the rest of these are horrendous uh hermit Dru Spike breeder and verdant touch are the rares in that deck and last but certainly not least least excuse me Call of the the core to white black deck the call of the core deck introduces the core race and exploits its damage redirection abilities this unique white and black deck allows players to keep with core creatures excuse me keep white core creatures in play by redirecting damage to other creatures the three rares in this deck are shaman on core skeleton scavengers and salari Champion I mean skeletals scavengers is a a pathetic rare but it's at least fun in context yeah yeah that that you know that's that works I understand that now wait for it there's one final note here call of the core [Music] Advanced this is a mono white deck a tournament level horde deck must be fast really fast to accomplish this the advanced version of Call Of The Core replaces all black cards with white cards and lowers a land count from 24 to 18 okay is that a deck that was sold apparently okay what are the rares I'd have to go look that up 18 there's no way 18 LS is correct by the way oh you sure about that okay well okay yeah uh oh this is nice you're gonna like this we are I know the deck list is like on the screen and everything uh we're down to 18 planes with three Armageddon okay so that's that's great deck building right there uh so that's step one all right I'm listening okay I got your attention Okay let's see uh rares in this deck I mean I got four copies of crusade can't say that um Imperial Armor that was common or unom okay tithe I don't think that that's a rare okay sure um pretty sure at least Y we got a bunch of bunch of two Twos for two white knight salari priest Warrior on core shaman on core that's a rare order the white Shield that's a two that's a two1 for two infantry veteran yes there you go it's just a Beatdown deck yeah and it replaces all the uh cool interaction with just rates yeah yeah that's correct all right great and cut 20% of the lands out of the deck also correct so which is probably just not correct well you got you got four tithes yeah tithe is tithe is sweet when you're land screwed so you purposely land screw yourself and then you work yourself out of it but yeah uh this is a little fun thing I found this is when they started to work themselves into the theme decks and then also give you the oh there's a sideboard the better oh yeah there's a sideboard absolutely hit me oh okay excuse me Angelic renewal disenchant two pacifism two salari monks a terth three ward of Lights two warmth a silence the fourth gon for opponents with lands that's right R the fourth gon and a light of day for those of you for those of you playing Black creatures that is rough there you go so uh those are your uh the those are your uh your preons as it were and more importantly those are the facts of stronghold beautiful yeah I feel like I learned some things I I do like what they're doing with precons conceptually like they're they're working on it okay so here are the good things four decks with uh various play patterns okay and all five colors represented across the decks true so if you just walk in your store and you're like yeah I play Green they at least have one deck they can point spikes deck I got you yeah that's great the bad stuff here is uh many of the rares are off message unappealing uh or play horribly or a combination to all of them I do really enjoy that uh ins snaring bridge is one of snaring bridge that'll teach you what you wanna you want to do a little creature combat oh are you playing the spikes deck I got something for you yeah you're you're dead you're going to want to move those counters on that one down zero so attack but it's better I do believe it's better to do this badly than to not do it at all I agree so there's at least something there but these are these are really rough I mean it's just it's important to be able to in my opinion be able to give people who are new to the game like here's a deck right it's so hard to build decks right just like here is something to start with instead of leaving them up to their own device is because if you leave players up to their own devices at that point they might just go this is too hard I don't really know what to do so I just going go play a video game instead yep right like something like that so again not the best execution but the idea is good and they stuck with it so also Intruder alarm in a deck that probably has no synergies with it it's just supposed to just lock them out of the game I guess alongside counter spells again idea good execution not so good uh two notes actually rewind that one note I bet some of you are watching right now and wondering what computer is going on here this Patrick's computer yeah I left mine at home I got the big rig hauler yeah this this big old thing so if you like can't see me or like my cool shirt that matches with my hat I get it this thing is gigantic second note facts are done it's lore time so if you liked him making fun of Gerard I got good news for you all right everybody we are back for the lore of stronghold and uh I read your YouTube comments and I saw that some of you happen to enjoy the lore uh that we put together for tempest or more importantly Patrick almost certainly making fun of Gerard in perpetuity until we're out of Wrath cycle I guess until we're out of the weather light Saga this is I mean it is sort of a function of the time I don't think you could really write a character like Gerard in 2024 no the way they you they were able to in 1996 but the we're rooting for a buffoon yeah who doesn't even really have any admirable characteristics except I suppose bravery argu he is extremely Brave um is most normal people do not find that to be appealing even setting aside the whole like race gender construct underneath of it yeah it's still just like this guy is annoying and sucks and gets other people into trouble charge and then other people get him and others out of trouble yeah he gets people captured and then he's you know the leader so he gets all the credit MH the comparison it came to mind to me afterwards uh if if you're a future future RBA fan Captain zap BR again my God we're defenseless like fish in a barrel options my instinct is to hide in this Barrel like the Wy fish okay that is that is I think a a reasonable Gerard template well I got good news for you uh I got I got a healthy amount of lore today this will probably be the largest portion of today's episode so if you're not done the lore you can go ahead and Skip Along to the mechanics but if you're into learning some more about vrath and Gerard and their struggles amongst the the weather light crew uh buckle up cuz here we go and uh I'll allow you to interject as necessary okay okay here we go VRA stronghold hangs suspended by two massive spans of stone within a great hollow Mountain the weather light emerges from a tunnel silently drifting past a series of disjointed buildings that link the stronghold to the Mountain's inner wall as the ship guides to a stop a fortress guard spots it from a sheltered balcony Mia leaps from the ship over the balcony railing and Claws his throat before he can sound an alarm Gerard close behind takes up the guard's sword to Arms CE say when they find her so so far reasonably useful but you know uh resourceful mirie doing the work yeah and Gerard just okay I'll take that weapon I'll take the weapon there you go uh covax and Stark join Gerard and Miriam in the search for their captured comrades and the stolen pieces of the Legacy Stark recommends they check the Dungeons and volrath's inner sanctum the dream halls in route they encounter one of volrath's Twisted experiments which fleas by shape-shifting into a winged angel covac snars with Fury remembering how vrath arranged the killing of his entire family and enslaved their Angelic Guardian selenia he bolts after the shape shifter and Corners it in a large war room when the sech party reaches them covax has savagely torn the wings from the shape shifter's malformed body and killed it Gerard orders him back to the ship but covax replies quote the Legacy may be your destiny Gerard but selenia is mine do not deny me this end quote cova's intensity convinces Gerard but both men are disturbed by this violent Outburst yeah one thing that he can uh uh empathize with is someone being loud stupid and wrong sure so sure dra now we're speaking the same language and dra's like okay fine it's great you can stay yeah uh dard quickly becomes absorbed with the vast war room at its Center is a detailed three-dimensional map which dard recognizes as an aerial view of the domains of dominaria a black shifting wave crosses the domains changing their texture this may not just be a map Gerard thinks but an invasion plan maybe that's the name of a set coming up ah suddenly a projected image of Wrath appears his voice booming quote all forces report to Invasion stations at once Gil VEC returned to the Predator end quote the oparation Fades but Gerard is troubled vor's voice is one from his own past now as we went over previously uh we know that vrath is actually vule Vel uh who was like J's like half bro or something uh before all this stuff started happening so Gerard's like yo I know that voice ascending into the Fortress the party finds an narrow bridge that crosses into the prison Tower and suspiciously doesn't appear to be guarded when Gerard chest it the bridge explodes into life forming ropes and ties to capture any who cross over it frustration building he stalks back into the towers behind them and returns bearing the dismembered body of the shape shifter covac killed Gerard throws the corpse onto the bridge which promptly attacks and engulfs it the group runs across while the bridge is quote distracted and quote dodging its snares before safely reaching the other side you know what that is I Pres assume mhm that's in snaring Bridge yes that's actually kind of cool yeah I think I mean it is the mo the epiphany of like oh it's unguarded that's that's got to be the way to go yeah never never occuring that it's a trap but fortunately fortunately his friend died recently so was able to leverage that well it's not his friend they killed The Shape Shifter whatever covax did some handywork Gerard's like let me use this dead body this bridge will attack that and then we'll scoot on by yeah that actually kind of smart Gerard showing some real uh Recycling and Scavenging skills picks up the weapon arm a friend uses someone who's already dead to distract the bridge that's good stuff good stuff all right so some better leadership uh inside the prison Tower they find car nearly catatonic with emotional Agony his cell is filled with the mogs the brutish goblins of Wrath and its floor continuously undulates causing him to stumble into the creatures and crush them when Gerard finally gets the cell door open the surviving mogs flee into the darkness uh so basically uh K has been uh K's been forced to kill some stuff yeah and K is a pacifist doesn't want to kill anything now Gerard now knows Beyond doubt who vrath is only one person would know to torment K by forcing him to break his vow never to injure or kill other beings so instead of like torturing K by like I don't know like zapping him or something pulling his screws out yeah he's just like no you got to kill stuff it's pretty mean yeah pretty mean by thereby volrath oh here we go they find tangar in another cell one designed to slowly mutate its prisoner the minitar has been horribly disfigured and he moans in anguished Fury for his ruined appearance Gerard hands tangar the sword taken from the guard Miri killed smart quote this is who you are end quote he tells tangar not your horns not your bones your soul tangar gratefully accepts the weapon so uh if you remember from our Tempest episode tangar is a kind of vain I would say but he's a fighter right and he cares about fighting and he's been he's actually been tortured yeah but he's got a weapon now right yeah it's don't worry about don't worry about anything other than your own capacity for violence that that is what defines you there you go more good leadership the band hurry hurrily searched the rest of the cells for CE and Stark's daughter to Cara but they find only the Twisted results of vorra's experiments in a Barren laboratory they finally find Cay imprison in a sealed glass cylinder dard wants to repay the debt of loyalty to his friend but fears that simply breaking the glass to open the cylinder could cause her harm after an unsuccessful search for a release method though he reluctantly falls back on Brute Force to free her so he's trying to use his old brain see because he got trapped by the bridge so he's like there's probably something going on with this cylinder yeah so starts from a place it it seems too risky there's this device that I don't understand it's keeping this person in prison yep it it just seems dangerous to just break the thing open yeah great uh what's not great is he basically looks for five minutes for a control panel doesn't find it and he's like all right I guess I'm just busting it open yeah and what's the worst that could happen besides you know your friend dying which fortunately does not happen uh sis tumbles out disoriented but before Gerard can take her outstretched hand mirie hisses and slashes it open CE shrieks and shape shifts into a mass of biting tentacles which quickly escapes shaken but grateful for Mar's Keen sense of smell the search party presses on to the dream Halls Gerard's a bozo Bozo yeah he's a bozo uh didn't really care about getting this person killed nor had any sense that it was not actually the person in question that's correct that's correct Miry again the saving the day best teammate possible mhm uh as they climb higher and step onto a new bridge a blur from above hurdles towards uh covax it's selenia Miri instinctively leaps forward the dark angel slashes open M's abdomen and prepares to deliver the death blow covax wildly flails his sword at selenia weeping for all he has lost she also sobs as she defend herself then suddenly freezes deliberately allowing one of cova's wild swings to strike home she explodes and a burst a black and white Mana that swirls around covax and forces its way onto his body selenia's Destiny is fulfilled cova's curse is set in motion and he is ultimately condemned for killing all that he loves he collapses onto slen sword and grows pale as death but his breathing continues as fangs push their way through his gums cool that actually is kind of cool cool so he's being uh you know what I like in it too do you ever see Spider-Man 3 no the the one with Venom no okay it's good that you haven't seen it cuz boy would you make fun of it like crazy so this is probably better for everyone but this is like when uh the Black Venom covers Peter Parker he's changing sure yeah okay so we got this solved now so kovax is kind of becoming a bad guy uh Gerard decides that K and tonar must take Mir and covax to the ship and remain there while he and Stark continue to search for CE and Takara Stark's directions and the minotaurs inate ability should get them safely back to the ship so Gerard says k tangar take me and covax out of here me and Stark got this see about that K and tangar work their way to the weather light K pauses he senses the Legacy which can only mean that the pieces are assembled and close by this is far too important to leave behind and so the two separate tangar carries Miran covax to the ship and K follows the pool of the Legacy it's pretty weird to pair K and tangar okay like if I was coming up with little you know tactical Squad missions I would probably not pair the two of them okay because you have this like tremendously violent and skilled fighter alongside a pacifist yeah it seems like there's no way they could synergize I don't think they'd get along very much right so this is actually a pretty good story beat here of having them split up okay sure okay uh K finds the artifacts guarded by the sliver Queen a gantu and Beast that constantly generates myri a myriad baby slivers she rears up to attack but he points the Legacy and tells her that they are part of him he demonstrates how the pieces fit inside him she understands and responds by summoning her slivers back to her body she's allow she allows K to reclaim the Legacy I mean we don't even get a fight it's also a little weird of having something that sensient and sort of empathetic yeah when the rest of those sers are you know understand sver Queen's kind of like the oneoff leader or whatever but it's a little odd meanwhile Stark explains to Gerard that the quickest way to reach the dream holes is through a nearby Garden as soon as they reach the garden a great Shadow appears overhead and and Gerard drag Stark under a large Plant they stare up at the Predator as it sails by that'll be Predator Flagship for those of you at home hel by griven ill VEC then comes a sudden thunderous barrage of cannon fire close by as they prepare to move on the spikes vicious slug-like creatures fall from above to attack the pair Gerard beats the spikes back into the grass but loses track of Stark after a quick search he finds Stark gagged and immobilized by a tangle of blood sucking Vines as they feed Gerard cuts the weaken Stark free and they escape from the predatory Garden all right Gerard's earning his keep not a little bit here he's doing some good work deeper in the stronghold they find that the tower containing the dream Halls is covered with a series of intertwining balconies but has no main entrance the only way in seems to be through the balconies Stark watches nervously as Gerard struggles to climb the towers rolling flowstone exterior jard reaches the top and pulls himself inside there he is bombarded by spectacular visions that are amazing and horrifying so now we're in the dream Halls which is one of the more important cards in this set right he gonna win some awards yeah at the end yeah this a real card that's going on here so what what what they've done here as we continue to mosy on through there's not that much more left by the way is that um they're doing like a really nice job of like building a world and then making cars out of the world absolutely finally there's so we can go back and look at some of the earlier sets that are kind of renowned for their flavor yeah Legends and homelands probably come to mind those are not really telling stories they're like little vignettes which is fine but in here going through this and it was true in Tempest also yep when you're laying out the story when you're talking about it out loud it's like oh I know a card name or piece of art that's referencing that story it's telling a very compact story through the set as opposed to giving you a general lay of the land and there is a ton of that in uh this set and Tempest and presumably Exodus when we get there so let's keep going uh he Gerard reaches the top and pulls himself inside bombarded spectacular Vision y y y he sees himself in V his blood brother as boys at V's right of passage young Gerard intervenes to save vul's life costing vul is Ascension to Sedar of the war Clan he sees vul's father sadar condo only to witness the sar's horrible death as vul and his forces destroy the war clan in another dream awful shapes combined to make one dark presence that transform and corrupts V bestowing great Powers upon him here among vrath dreams Gerard at last understands that vul wanted his Destiny with the war Clan and was forced to trade it in for this one what a jerk Gerard is V wrath's disembodied voice Echoes through the chamber the ghost of the past are joined by images of wrath's dreams for the future he and his dark armies Conquering the lands and inhabitants of dominaria Gerard tortured At His Feet Gerard calls WRA true name vo son of the sadar who raised them both the thief who stole Gerard's Legacy vas's voice bitterly replies that Gerard was Unworthy of the clan his own parents left him the Legacy and he dishonors their gift by abandoning it refusing even to wear The Hourglass pendant they valued so highly through these do hate each other yeah also uh vth is correct you are an embarrassment he's you know yeah you know when he's right he's right you ruined everything yeah Gerard tells wrath that he deliberately left the pendant behind knowing that it was undoubtedly a secondary Target in V's scheme vrath taunts him it would have been much harder to capture Gerard if he brought it vth casually vows to recover the pendant and exploit its power and promises that Gerard will divulge its location in exchange for a quick death V goes on to mock Gerard's predictability he knew Gerard would come just to say not out of loyalty but because his pride would not allow anything to be taken from him everything Gerard has done from the moment he set foot in Wrath has been anticipated and countered correct when you're right you're right yep at last vreth himself appears wearing a glowing helmet just then Stark emerges from the dream Visions his dagger raised high and plunges it into volrath's back vrath whirls flinging his former friend and Mentor from him he casually pulls the weapon free and throws it down there's a trickle of blood and then the wound closes over vrath faces Gerard again and reminds him of everything that Gerard has cost him and of everything that Gerard will yet lose as vrath Retreats into the recesses of the dream Halls Gerard is set upon by two sword wielding figures a red-haired woman and CE their eyes glow with the same pale energy as vas helmet Gerard moves to strike down the red-haired Warrior but Stark cries out that she is his daughter to Cara she slashes out with her sword Crossing her father's eyes with its tip and blinding him Stark crumbles we got a little bit of family drama now remember this is why Stark is here he's gonna like he's got some other thing going on he's gonna like turn under art at some point and now his daughter's kind of shown up so doesn't have much longer to align with these people before him and his daughter get out of here even though his daughter just cut his eyes so you know going to have to unpack that at home D realizes he'll have to disarm takar while simultaneously dealing with CE who is formidable he is quickly able to maneuver Takara backwards tripping her over Stark as Takara goes down CE rushes Gerard to deliver a killing stroke he parries overbalances her and lands a solid blow to her forehead with the pommel of his sword stuned Cay drops to the floor dra charges out of the room after vrath so he's taking care of this problem now he's G to go get the big bad guy his half bro he finally confronts rra at the far end of the chamber where stairs Ascend to the bridges below as they begin to battle tangar Roars up the stairs sword in hand Play One Way mhm he only knows one thing yeah play one wife fight you together Gerard and tangar press their advantage against the Edon car Gerard Cleaves voras helmet with an overhand blow that sends the villain stumbling tangar Bellows and Triumph as vth Falls but even as Gerard strikes the Fatal blow he sees fresh scratch marks on V's hand and realizes the truth the body quickly changes into the shape shifter that Mary clawed in the laboratory it's not him oh my God it's like Dr Doom and the doombots I don't know the doombots U like little robotic clones oh okay yeah and sometimes the Fantastic War thing they've got Dr Doom but it's just a doombot they just never have Dr Doom yeah okay can we get do Doom so it's a little bit it's also a little strange that so there's the scene above where Stark stabs WTH in the back yeah and the wound just sort of like closes up yeah indicating he's got some sort of regeneration or superpower and then they fight later and it's just they just rein him and he loses like yeah sure he's got no superpowers yeah are you talk you were saying something about Dr Doom I'm just saying can we get him right in a movie oh can we get him right one time big Dr Doom fan I don't I love Dr Doom if you notice this clug alter over here yeah Dr Doom on the Doom blade this is off screen but I've got a Dr Doom inflatable doll up there um big source of inspiration I'm very Pro Dr Doom me too uh Gerard is furious he demands to know how tanar got there uh tangar explains that he tracked Gerard and Stark to his Tower a doorway open briefly possibly an Escape Route for volrath and he jumped through dard picks up volrath's shattered helmet and insists that they hunt for the Evan car but tangar emphatically says no they came to rescuees to say J reluctantly leads him back to the others his rage at vrath barely contain I mean tangar is right tangar is right and vrath is confirmed to be correct here that is that jard is not actually interested in Saving someone as such this is just a way to stroke his own ego priorities are Chang confirmed it's true it's not even just it's not even trash talk or Idol speculation it's confirmed in the next scene uh they enter the dream holes to find that Takara has bandaged her father's eyes the group collects itself and Cay regains Consciousness recognizing Stark is the traitor who caused her capture she angrily advances on him Takara steps between say and her wounded father to defend him but Gerard quickly quells the conflict they must work together as a team or they will never get out of the stronghold alive somewhere below the sounds of warfare howl from deep within the stronghold volrath's voice booms echoing through its Halls all forces engage in Invasion response tactics destroy our enemies destroy our enemies to be continued in The Exodus episode of the rbl what do you think we don't have any code names what do you mean kill our enemies destroy our enemies All Hands report you can't just add some sort of Tango Bravo Alpha C- word so the people or or some way of broadcasting it that's not over a megaphone maybe they would be caught off guard potentially if they thought it was safe to escape no no just loud little little sloppy loud and proud but wrath also plays one way yeah he's aggro yeah yeah he's aggro uh so that's your lore which is basically all right we save Cay we got we got a lot to unpack about how we save CE and Stark is blind now and all this other stuff but uh now we got to get out of the stronghold right that's that's what's coming up next and I think that's what the Exodus story line will be so again if you enjoyed our lore here uh we're learning some stuff about the about the uh about the weather light Saga and just you look look am I a big lore guy no however this is apparently like the big story in Magic well I'm becoming more of a lore person doing this sort of thing I am too because what I really appreciate the storytelling whatever sometimes I think it's better or worse than others okay but what I do appreciate is Magic has made a conscious effort to weave in car design and names and art to communicate the story and sometimes they do it through more General Iz vignettes and sometimes like here it's really narrow really drilled in you know the story about the bridge that's incaran Bridge Y and and there's a bunch of different examples of that throughout the set but I I do appreciate the craft of how do you make the story come through in the cards and that's something that I think you know magic has had a bunch of different ways of doing it and I think the expression here is it's pretty straightforward but the the set is littered with cards that reference the story beats there's a lot of intent here which I think is pretty cool so uh more for you about them getting out of the stronghold and probably going to the eratic portal and I know we didn't see your we didn't see your guy air TI he's busy with the portal and the shadow folk but he's going to show up in Exodus so uh that's it for lore here come the mechanics right after [Music] this all right everybody we are back for the mechanics of stronghold the lore was fun but now we got to get to the encor the LDS the Spikes all sorts of fun stuff so let's start with the affir mention on cores which stronghold introduced these weird creatures that have damage redirection abilities associated with them uh there are five and here are the five Lancers on core Nomads on core shaman on core spirit oncore and Warrior oncore uh your thoughts on The Encore cycle and their damage redirection abilities there is something cool here and I do like the idea of um my creatures are interlocking in a way that's satisfying and allows a lot of tactical decision making I think that's something that the spikes also knock out of the park uh two issues here one is it's extremely onboard tricky um and it's connected to the second thing which is activated costs for zero that are unbounded are problematic they come up for different reasons and you know the end cores were way more to the extent they've showed up and constructed way more about looping triggers yeah than it is about actually doing the thing yep the spikes offensively have an onboard trickiness to them too you can move counters around but it's just so different when it costs Mana you know when your opponent has Mana up you're supposed to sort of tune in of you know I should be paying attention to their cards they have cards in their hand stuff can happen and you're more likely to check in on what they have on the table too and when things cost zero it's just happening with no Shields down and it's infinitely repeatable so there's some cool elements here but and I think I would feel very differently about these if it just you needed to pay one Mana because then it we're not talking about unbounded looping anymore and it really pushes back against the onboard trickiness of them okay uh now stronghold also did bring back some previous mechanics again this is the second set and a three set block so unsurprisingly they're going to try to run some stuff back here so for you buyback Shadow fans uh we got both of those back we also have slivers listd spikes and flowstone to go over but we're going to start with buyback which if you don't remember is a keyword ability that appears on instance and sorceries that provides an optional additional cost that the player cting the spell with buyback May pay as they cast it if the player does as the spell finishes resolving the spell card is put back into its owner's hand rather than into their graveyard today we have 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven8 we've got nine buyback cards uh these are a little bit better than Tempest some could argue white has change of heart blue has Mind Games black has brush with death Lab Rats and mind peel red has Fanning the flames and seething anger and green has constant Mists and verdant touch uh we have different ways of paying the buyback cost as well so go ahead and uh whack some poetic about this okay so well established I'm not a buyback fan this is moving the needle kind of in a better Direction in that a lot of these designs have way more rate nested in just doing the thing up front and not buying it back than the examples in tempus particularly caps siiz and Whispers of the Muse okay it's interesting to me that constant Mists is here because that is a buyback that is not mana and that's a it's pretty easy to understand how you would get there is like fog with buyback is about as bad as it gets if it's just Mana yes it's even more lock outy than cap siiz is there's no hope of me even just playing two cards in one turn so sacrifice the land is well now you can't really do it forever unless you're putting in a lot of work something else is going on that's really cool but it makes me wonder why more of the designs aren't that way once you have the technology of what if buyback costs for something other than Mana so it's something that's a little bit different and also it means that we don't have to worry about it getting bought back in perpetuity assuming that it's sacrificing lands or paying life or whatever you could imagine designs that that do that and because it's set two of the block you would like for things to be a little bit different I'm surprised seeing constant misss that they didn't lean into the alternate buyback stuff a little bit more here there's more of an exus which we'll get to some alltime horrendous designs they're really bad yeah and I think constant Miss is still a bad design because it's just too Lock outy And even so yes you can't fog forever but fogging forever and fogging for let's say eight turns is not that different isn't that isn't that forever though in this game of things um but every time I look at constant Miss I have this load of why was there not more of this in stronghold it would be one thing if you just didn't think of doing it until you got to ex but clearly someone did they did think of it and it would have improved some of these designs quite a bit if they tinkered around what cost that were not just Mana the only thing that makes sense to me about constant Mists and trying the different buyback costes maybe they were just like hey proof of concept that we could do this look I'm not saying that's a strong argument no I think I think this is I my guess is that constant Miss is the closest thing you can do to having a buyback that is Mana without having a buyback that is Mana okay okay like s he lands and pay man sort of analogus they are somewhat on the same track but I'm just sort of speculating all right we are moving on to Shadow which is a keyword ability on creatures that serves as both an evasion ability and a blocking restriction only three cards would Shadow this time around white has salari Champion blue has thalos deceiver and black has dothy trapper now I ask you why do we have so few Shadow cards this time it's very weird unless they feel that um Shadow is more flavor-wise appropriate for the world of Tempest than it is for the very narrow subset that's being shown in stronghold okay again uh I think this mechanic is pretty bad but these are steps in the right direction okay the design that one of the designs that bothers me the most intent this is doy Slayer it's like must attack and it's like yeah had no what what else was I'm certainly not blocking with this thing it can't block anything so moving a little bit more into attack triggers and uh if this attacked and not block blocked which is the case in the instance of the blue one okay so it's moving it away from just like yeah this is just two two unblockable for two and a little bit more about you know tactically doing stuff or bump pumping your other stuff or whatever I really like the suti champion a lot too because it kind of plays well with non- Shadow creatures in a way that the other Shadow designs don't because a a part an issue with Shadow is that once I have some Shadow creatures in my deck I kind of want to be playing nothing but Shadow yeah you either want all Shadow or no Shadow because you're just you want everything to be unblockable in the case of the champion it's like okay well now non-shadow stuff might be big enough to get through things in combat it still works with the shadow stuff it's generic enough that it this is just whatever okay but I think it these designs are I'll say this they are vast improvements over the shadow designs in Tempest I agree with that yeah yeah yeah they they they tried some stuff here instead of just put Shadow on a tutu you know wow yeah really must attack huh that's right although that card Dy Slayer does involve one of my favorite ptq stories of all time okay okay um which I was at the tournament but this was not my match of someone beating mind slaver loock with Dy Slayer love it cannot mind slaver your way out of that one sorry sorry take it take two more take two more pal love that so I guess there's that uh let's go over to slivers once again these are cards uh with the creature type sliver they have the ability or inability or characteristic that they share with other slivers each sliver shares with all slivers in play these are the early ones so Tempest stronghold Legion Scourge time spiral planner chaos and future site they were hooking up everybody both yours and mine while slivers later only affected the player side of the board so in Magic 2014 Magic 2015 modern Horizons Commander Masters my slivers only impact me so you can see some noticeable differences on how the cards are actually written out but the ones here in this set they're helping out of everybody sliver uh there are six of them there's acidic sliver crystalline sliver busted hybernation sliver busted also true spine sliver uh boy I don't know how to say this one vict uh you think that is I I don't see the word vi t l vitual all right vitual sliver I think that does that mean tasty little maybe I'll Google in a second last one's sliver Queen I I don't I'm not familiar with that word is that but if it's the green white one I is assume it's I want to learn myself a little something here all right let's check it out viic uh where's your backspace the biggest computer on Earth yeah you got the big Rick yeah my God uh food or Provisions oh I was yeah yeah you were some context clues but you were right on not bad well done okay I've never seen that word before magic is a great way to learn new words is a really under like appreciated aspect of the game it was it was legit helpful for my vocabulary in extremely for me yeah and still is today I just see some words I've never seen before so this was the green white sliver yeah okay it's like kind of fat there's some food in there big old boy also you sacrifice it and gain some life okay yeah sweet anyway these multicolored slivers and uh maybe the most maybe the most important sliver magic history sliver Queen it's up there um maybe not in a a tournament sense but Al although it did have a little bit of burn there yeah from time to time um these designs are so great they continue to be really good slivers are naturally a multicolor experience yeah gold slivers they give you some definition but are also just really good on R if you're doing the sliver thing incredible some of these are really busted though the blue ones are just outrageous so hybernation sliver is really good I know that and I didn't play during like when you could play uh there's a deck that I don't know how well it did in like Pro Tour so counter slivers yeah is this like a Grand Prix deck or a pro tour deck I people play at the pro tour I played against this in pq's from to time okay uh basically I don't know if we're ever going to record a video with it in the receivables tournament Edition uh but hybernation sliver and then crystalline sliver is just oh boy yeah what a card yeah these what a card so the the sort of the core of this deck was you had the merfolk experience of yeah I play with force of will and some other counter spells and I'm beating down quickly and things are evasive but your creatures are individually way stronger than the merfolk are it's kind of changed over the years because they've made so many merfolk lords that they are kind of sort of slivery now yeah the whole deck is just LS basically yeah there's not that much definition but back in the day um these were kind of the first time that that sort of experience showed up uh in larged volume in a tournament sense uh listd time so nice they did it twice uh listed are cards that have the ability to become an aura targeting other creatures representing melding with the host thematically cool execution not great uh one in each color white has calming licid blue has gliding licid black has corrupting licid red has convulsing licid and green has tempting listen cool names I can say that it's also a little rough that these are basically creature keyword LDS that themselves don't have it it would be so much easier to understand these things if it was like oh yeah the there's a there's a wind Drake and it gives flying okay fine kind of get what's going on there but all these are gry ogres yeah which really hurts the memorization part it's actually a really good part but you run out you just run out of space on these things yeah so if you see the if you see like aicd between us right now yeah the the card has just a lot of words on it yeah yeah and they all do yeah it's an intense yeah yeah I mean magic nowadays would just not spell out how the card works that's true they would just go elicit Target creature yeah then it's up to you you have to go find the rules insert or whatever yeah it's funny because that's actually definitely what they do yeah uh spikes that's why I'm worried it's like would they ever consider bringing listd back well the way they play with fast and loose with the text boxes now yeah that's true the issue with the lists are not that they're too complicated it's that they're too long yeah and what if we just didn't describe what they did yeah okay simple somebody from Wizards watching this don't get any ideas uh spikes they're cards that are uh green z00 creatures with quote this enters the battlefield with a number of plus one plus1 counters on it end quote end quote two generic Mana remove a plus one plus one counter from this put a plus one plus one counter on target creature end quote last set we only had one it was Spike drone uh this set we got five we got Spike breeder Spike Colony Spike feeder Spike Soldier and Spike worker uh you love to spike drones so there's no way you don't love these yeah they're great um they're impact in competitive constructed was a little bit rough because they just play so powerfully alongside oath of Druids but people also just played these just on rate I mean a very common setup for o the Druid decks was a spike feeder and a spike Weaver okay so you can't get burned out you can fog for the rest of the game and the creatures can just kill themselves whenever you want them to so you can just keep othing if that's the thing you want to be doing okay but people also play these cards I mean feeder was just a card people played on Race I hav even played Spike feeder before it showed up in modern in recent years as part of the combo with the white God yeah like birthing B deck yeah yeah yeah yeah um and you know Weaver is not a weak card against the red decks yep um these are super fun and cool and I really love that they synergize with other cards that make plus one plus one tokens and also you can play these with cards that don't care about plus one plus1 tokens and just play it for you know moving counters on your Treetop Village or whatever still cool yeah they are really cool I I I I would like to see these come back I don't know what world it would make sense for it to happen but I think they could just do it I mean you can they've done mechanics what was the um trying to think of the blue green mechanic from one of the rabica blocks moving that graft graft yeah yeah so they they've messed around with some of that stuff I think you could just do the spikes okay there's nothing wrong power level or play pattern lines with it um I don't know if that's something they would necessarily want to do but I don't see why it would be off limits okay uh last man maybe one could argue least is flow Stone cards that Grant plus one minus one or a multiple thereof uh we got three in this set we have flowstone Helen flowstone merer and flowstone shambler uh red cards obviously and yeah you know just a little plus one minus one there's also like flowstone blade which is Ora but yeah this feels a little bit definition for the S of definition for me okay um you have the The Encore stuff going on in white you have the spikes in green you have Shadow really heavily featured in blue and in black and this feels like well Red's got to have something going on that people can identify I think that this plays just fine the cards are not super appealing but they do play relatively well I appreciate that as far as onboard trickiness goes they're very unlikely to have a result in combat that's my thing is my flowstone creature is not dead and your thing is surprise dead yeah that' be tough to have happened it involves walls basically that's the only way it really comes up okay so as far as onboard tricky creatures go I think these play better come with less downside than a lot of them do now normally this is the point where I would uh I'd play a game with Patrick around creature types but unfortunately folks uh there are no new creature types introduced in this set so no games to play so it goes yeah round town maybe an exodus but uh you know we'll of course play the game as often as we can when sets do allow uh but what that means is that we're done with the mechanics of stronghold so we're going to take a short break and when we come back uh we are going to dive into a couple of Cycles here on the receivables all right everybody it is now time to dive into the Cycles portion of stronghold but before we do shout out to our sponsor of the segment Brian koval's YouTube channel Bosch enroll head over to youtube.com/ BOS enroll to watch Eternal constructed specialist Brian Koval play a new Eternal deck every single weekday with over 1,000 videos in YouTube archive if there's a certain Eternal card or deck that you want to see in action Brian has almost certainly played with it and there will be video for you to watch of it best of all Brian is outrageously good at Magic as he's a scg tour Invitational Champion a Grand Prix champion and an eternal weekend vintage Champion youtube.com/ BOS androll where magic history is played every day all right everybody stronghold has three Cycles compared to Tempest I think they had nine or 10 so we don't have a ton here and the first one we've already gone over so we'll just run through this here real quick it's Lids each of these common one one licid creatures and a Mana cost of one in a color and the ability to turn itself into an aura enchantment attaching itself to a creature or back to its normal State calming licid gliding licid corrupting licid convulsing licid tempting licid we do that in case you skipped ahead to this portion of the show and weren't here for the mechanics so we got you covered now what we haven't talked about the other two walls real quick note on the Cycles here yeah there's so many in Tempest and so few here yeah and you may wonder why and the reality is that when you're talking about sets this small it just is a ton of space oh for sure I mean five designs is the 3% of the total set M when you're talking about making 300 cards then you have a lot more wiggle room for cycles that maybe aren't necessarily carrying a lot of weight but tell a certain story or it's just kind of a pet project of a designer whatever but once the set gets much smaller it's harder to fit the stuff in yeah yeah because I I assume that the set which this one has I think it's 143 cards like is that that's that's like when this is happening that's a rigid number right uh typically yeah like you can't go like can we do 148 like that just doesn't happen probably I mean I've I've I've worked on sets where there is some wiggle room and some whether it's not it's one of those things where if you do it early on typically you have you can change around the numbers a little bit but once you get to this point later in the files life or whatever you want to call it uh printing sheets become a huge externality on uh adding or subtracting cards CU usually it's balanced by the the sheets and uh keeping the Symmetry if you want it among rares uncommons and Commons typically means that you have to add and subtract in multiples of three rather than just one okay which is makes it another tricky thing so I would guess based on my working experience early on we're projecting 200 cards but maybe we want to do 190 maybe want to do 210 depending on our our budget or what we're trying to do and if we catch it early enough we can get a done but pretty soon thereafter it's the number is the number and we can't really Tinker with it well I was going to go to walls with the second cycle but let me get the Allied color slivers out of the way because we went over those in the uh mechanic section as well so each of these uncommon tutu sliver creatures are converted Mana cost two require to like colors of Mana to cast so crystalline sliver not your white blue sliver hibernation sliver is your blue black sliver acidic sliver is your black red sliver spine sliver is your red green sliver and uh again victual little sliver is your green white sliver yeah so there you go all right now back to the walls this is our third and final cycle each of these uncommon wall creatures has a Mana cost of one in a color cannot attack and uh they have one other ability so walls had traditionally been shunned by tournament Players but the stronghold walls were strong enough for tournament decks wall of blossoms in particular became a core part of many decks as it provided green with card draw which was rare at the time so uh here's our five walls very quickly wall of essence wall of Tears wall of souls wall of razors and the aforementioned wall of blossoms now I know that wall of blossoms was a tournament card but is this uh is this little factoid that I found here true that these walls were good enough for tournament play it's overstated in the case wall Blossom showed up all over the place I think the white one was a halfway decent cyborg card but compared to things like warmth and light of day just the The Tempest ones are just so outrageous that there is no reason to go to options this modest okay uh I think this is a pretty cool set of designs generally speaking as far as walls go it's a little rough to do five in a set that is this small it's also a little rough to do Rolling Stone a beloved casual card in a set where four of these can't attack right only wall of razors plays well with rolling stone that's a good point yeah so I didn't think about that it would be nice you know I I don't know how you're supposed to balance these but oh wow look at this cool card I just opened let me find the other walls it's like can't attack can't attack can't attack can't attack but imagine if they could put some LDS on those things you can then what get your wall of swords out wish I had a sword right now in my hand but I don't uh those are the cycles of stronghold again nothing really exciting we went over two of them in the mechanic section and then walls alongside Rolling Stones so you know nothing nothing crazy going on here but good news the trivia section which apparently many of you liked during the Tempest portion uh it's pretty beefy it's not as beefy as Tempest but we got some fun stuff to talk to you about right after [Music] this all right everybody it is trivia time here on the stronghold episode of the rebles now as I mentioned our Tempest episode had a very beefy trivia section and we have decided to bring some things back from that one like stronghold and its six reprints Cloud Spirit first printed in Portal actually all of these cards are Craven giant serpent Warrior spined worm tidle Surge and venerable monk so nice they had to bring him back I actually don't mind going through the portal sets to just find workmanlike Commons for draft or whatever seems fun appropriate and all lot of these are designs that are appealing and play well there's no reason not to do it who's it harming right right it's all whatever and also that the the rare times that someone's portal card becomes tournament legal it's happened a handful of times that's got to be cool it's cool yeah I mean I remember playing with portal volcanic hammers in red winds for a little while and you know the the fact that those cards are not tournament legal is a pretty big black eye in my opinion so the times where H none of these none of these cards are really tmin Staples but you could imagine if they were be like oh cool now my portal cards actually are playable again yeah okay uh let's move on to banned and restricted cards from stronghold well it's our first mention of this second mention technically a herid druid yeah uh was banned in the First Legacy ban list in 2004 and is still banned today in Legacy just not allowed I just hit my mic sorry I'm not allowed this is another this is much like scroll and will win an award later on for me okay which is there's so much complexity and unappealing nature of this card off you skates it's straightforward busted purpose yeah which is if you have no basic in your deck flip your deck over yeah put it right put it right in the garbage right and you're probably G to kill him somehow yeah uh I mean it works you know you can do like you know dread return lab yeah no there's no world you could make this card legal now yeah I mean I played I played in a protour where her jid was legal I did not win very much interestingly enough my deck my deck contained Spike feeder and Spike Weaver so we were both playing with a heavy sampling of stronghold cards but herad Druid was better than the spikes uh MOX diamond is the second card to mention here it was banned in vintage in 1999 but unbanned in the first Legacy band list announcement in 2004 uh you can play MOX diamond in I think everything you know like Legacy vintage obviously you can play Legacy it's the land I think it's restricted in vintage and and just legal in Legacy I'll do a quick check here do a quick check be shock if you could play four of these but I guess it's possible uh in vintage I just have it being as legal on okay cool I mean it's a format that doesn't play that many lands no understand the the reason why it wouldn't be I just assumed that all the Zero Man acceleration got restricted at some point yeah sure okay uh really powerful card gonna win some awards later in the show no I mean to me it's just my only real note on this card is I don't know someone in someone on the designer development team was like man I miss moxes is there a way to make a MOX that's not overpowered and kind of well we talked a little bit about this in the Tempest episode two of the medallions and trying to capture the magic of the moxes is not limited just to the moxes ma magic over the course of the you know let's call it Ice Age 4 we're trying to how do we do the fixed version of X Y and Z okay brainstorm versus ancestral where you call lion ey diamond versus black lotus time warp versus Time Walk trying to give players a taste of it and leverage the fact that people had an understanding of these effects uh being powerful diminishing returns versus time twist and Alliance is another example of this so I appreciate this for the same reason that I appreciate the medallions which is it is not strictly worse yep the fact that it makes five colors means it's just different even though this is clearly less powerful overall than any of the original moxes I what I appreciate as like a theory here is the issue with the moxes or part of the issue with the moxes is having multiple in your opening hand is just too much yep and this is pretty naturally gated in terms of how effective the second copy is still has moments in Legacy where you know oh I have two moxes and a LOM and now this is so sick yeah so it's not zero on that front but it does mean in the like the normal use case the second MOX di in your draw is probably not helping you very much yeah I would agree with you the first one's really good yeah but then yeah the second and third and fourth ones are much worse it maybe they're still powerful but they're way worse than the first copy yeah which is not true of MOX Sapphire and friends yeah uh last card to mention here is dream Halles which was banned in 1999 in multiple formats before being unbanned in Legacy in September of 2009 uh I do remember dream Halls being unbanned uh most the memory that stands out to me is Chris vanmeer mushing people with like mono blue show Intel that also had dream halls in Legacy mhm I remember that and it had this is when it could play dig through time and just a bunch of can trips and stuff and uh maybe it played Hive M maybe it didn't I really can't remember but I remember CVM mashing some people with that uh dream Halls during your time really good busted completely busted not even close to okay yeah figured um another card that keep an eye out when we get to ur of saga yeah sure because dream Halls where go with time spiral and I want to keep an eye out on that one oh you sure it's a weird feature think of these of these uh wrath and Saga blocks that where rosewater was uh much heavier influence on the development side because there's two key features here okay that you would assume are at odds with each other but sort of demonstrate the same thing one thing that the one thing to love spells that are free dream Halls is just everything is free for the rest of the game and then you get to Saga block and the cards that untap your lands are free or sometimes better than free yep so on one you have one tent pole which is free stuff and then you have another tent pole which is Lance that tap for eight Mana yeah and it's like I could kind of see really liking one or the other but you really don't need to do both the same time anyway I digress or do you uh here's our one piece of random trivia the only piece of trivia I could find is that Dan Frasier's brother and mother posed as alamry and the Oracle on VEC respectively for the art on the card Awakening cool no no cap just cool all right notable cards it's here to stay I see you YouTubers I see you patreons AKA Jackal pups and it's here to stay so notable cards kick it off with white this is funny this is the first card I'm going to mention this is the last I did to this episode the card bandage M you know what bandage does I think it's a is it a can trip prevent one or something single white prevent one draw a card yep uh do you remember the deck parfait in Legacy uhhuh it's model White model white control with scroll rack and uh LX yeah i' played these so you could uh beat Goblin Lackey sure it played like two copies of this card sick cuz like you had four Swords but like you just need a little a little bit more so if they had like a turn one lacking and they like hit you you're like bandage it think just draw a card find a solution to this stupid card because that's how good goblins was when Legacy kind of first started in a meaningful way back in the uh like 2000 like 200 like 2006 2005 somewhere around that time so uh I remember that sacred ground any memories well this is this is like pyramids except it actually works yeah that's true that's true I have a vague recollection of being in sideboards but I could be making that up it was in sideboards I'm not convinced it was ever good sure but it was a card that people it's a card I know I played in sideboard when when I was like okay competitive magic two Manas you could actually do that before all your lands get blown up yeah yeah in contrast to pyramids which is six mana and then two to untap tough and then their land destruction deck is screwed that's right that's right uh we're goingon to move on to Blue now we've already talked about dream Halls anything else worth noting here uh yeah it's just super busted and people don't really know about it because it just got banned so fast yeah but yeah this is a it's a weird one to put so many power points into uh any evacuation stories um evacuation stories is this card legal in Commander um let me check let's see what scryfall says scryfall says yes okay a little surprised about that I mean it's a card I occasionally played in sideboards when I wasn't very good okay yeah yeah purpose yep uh but then you know eventually they just made hibernation and the people you wanted that sort of thing against were green players it's possible that card would have had uh a pretty serious purpose if it was legal during Rebels okay okay uh Intruder alarm uh very fun um no it's a cool design it is a cool design I I think that the thing that you're supposed and it doesn't it does facilitate some level of looping so it's got some of the unbounded trigger issues that the um and core and a lot of the other stuff in the set do but this is a fun oh you can there's a lot to think about there uh and then the last card I have here in blue is Mana Leak which just just a good card that I so they made a new version of it in no more lies which is white blue Mana Leak it's a white and a blue it's a Mana Leak and then like if you cter the spell it's exiled yeah a long time there's a long Gap between when a man League style card was legal and standard when it wasn't they did stuff like I don't know quench a bunch of other uh runes snag much other stuff because they it seemed like they purposely didn't want man to be legal and standard it's like kind of back now so my opinion on man Leake as it pertains the standard is that it's not it it's it's too powerful slash the incentives are too bad to do but not by very much okay I think that you know know they have a a whole history of counter spell Mana leaks that counter for two or four under condition plus kicker run stand being one that you just mentioned um I think that once you're talking about a blue and a white to cast versus a blue and a colorless totally fine to do Mana Leak Plus at that point Y I think that when you're talking about blue blue instead of blue one Mana Leak again would be a totally fine thing to do okay so again not off by much but I think this implementation is just a little too easy to Splash and it's like well no one's really building a cool deck that involves this it's just kind of about knocking out game actions yeah but once you force someone to play a second color then uh we're we're talking about a real opportunity cost it makes it way harder to cast the second copy in the same turn which is a something that Mana league is very easy to do relatively speaking so I can appreciate just not doing it but doing variations that are like 90% of the way that with slightly better incentives um because I don't think Mana Leak is over by that much uh we're going to move on to Black cards now my first one here is grave packed this is another one of several cards in the set excuse me that were multiplayer cards before Commander was really a thing it's one it's one of the bright spots about stronghold is there's just a lot of individual designs that are really sweet in a multiplayer setting and even if Commander is a relatively recent phenomenon in Magic's history people playing multiplayer is not played all sorts of pickup games and uh this card um Awakening uh Intruder alarm there's just cards with a a cool multiplayer context in the Set uh next one up is mam um beloved casual card it really is this was one of the cards when I first started working at a card shop that it was like a money uncommon we couldn't keep in stock etc etc very light in terms of a tournament resume except for the brief moment in time that you could play memory jar in standard oh want to repeat play memory jar in standard well how many copies just one four oh you know Grim monolith will Takei and T Academy and you know whatever was a that what's the worst that could happen anyway megram was the preferred kill because it it also just means that your uh memory jars deal 14 uh this is the memory I have of this card uh is super casual you know it's a card as mentioned like at your local store just was never in stock never in stock you know cuz people are just like I like discarding like you take damage I make you discard that's cool uh but one of the things that always stood out to me is that no one pronounced it the same as somebody else yeah mrim megrim mcgm mcgm yeah just however they want to pronounce it they could pronounce it and you know I'm not I'm not here to correct anybody so uh and then the last black card I have let me make let me check the old list here uh I've have stronghold assassin sure uh I have a memory of this because it is from the it was in the deck that I won my first Grand pre- trial with black green can't remember the exact standard format but black green oversold Cemetery oh yeah uh just you know here to slice and dice up some creatures and oversold Cemetery you need stuff in the bin to turn your cemetery on but yeah you get it you get it also oversold Cemetery one of my favorite cards ever oh yeah and that's a just a perfect gari deck because people people who love golgari there's this experience that I have with them all the time okay where they're talking about the cool stuff in their deck but they're literally just reading the text box of each card yep it's like oversold Cemetery well when four more creatures etc etc bring it back because a lot of these a lot of these synergies let's say are not subtle well you see oversold cemeter I need four creatures in the graveyard an undead Gladiator cycle so that's just that's three more to go and cycling just puts it right in the graveyard right there pay the Mana and then you discard it and draw a card that's how that works got it in graveyard yep just kind of going off love golgari Synergy people love it me too it's nice that people can still get so much satisfaction around the nuts and bolts it's funny because in my youth that that I was that guy oh every everyone was that yeah person I was if you like black green you're that person a lot of black green players in Ohio when I was growing up uh let's go to the red cards uh I'm going to start with fling yes another favorite like yeah design actually had has something of a tournament resume alongside cards like artbound ravager and AOG I'm gonna argue too some of the well whatever whatever uh some of the best artwork in Magic history yeah this dude with his butt just sending that goblin super fun card yeah fling's really fun really dynamic they make a variety of them because they're cool and it has shown up from time to time next up MOG flunkies yep you've probably cast us a timer to pretty recently actually like not even really that long ago yeah someone sent me a Deck Tech of from a Star City Games invitation like 10 years ago and I was playing bog flunkies then the pillar flame was in everyone's deck okay and I was like yeah if you have M funky immutable so that's game then or yeah so here's what I remember here's what I remember about Mo when someone had two him play they're always just like can I attack yeah does anyone know for sure if you can attack or not when you have two moys I think you can they can hold hands okay great great perfect you I always remember at the local store people are just like I have two MKE guy attack and everyone's like I'm not sure yeah yeah they can hold hands and walk down the street together awesome awesome uh let's see next red card any any MOG Maniac memories uh is this the thing that like if you deal damage to it it deals it to the opponent yeah it's really pissed yeah uh I mean this was a beloved sort of casual competitive card yeah it's very very combo oriented but it was never good enough in any of the formats that I recall playing to actually you were trying to win it was not the thing to do okay uh run Nation destroy all non-basics saw some place somewhere I'm sure oh yeah uh first pro tour that I played at okay so Odyssey was the newest set okay so the format it was extended uh and I forget how far back it went like what sets were legal but also just the Dual lands the revised dual LS were legal that was just a car out they had for the format at the time okay so me uh o lovic and Adam Horath all played the same obson cards deck veroa spectral links huny wumpus whatever okay all dual lands and wastelands in the deck so no basic okay so Adam and I bust out but EP makes day two he's making a little bit of run he actually ends up top 16 this Pro Tour and kind of is on his way top succeeding with that deck o was nasty with it okay anyhow he's playing against Brian Kibler day two he's on some blue red illusions of grandeur donate deck Kibler Mulligan to five and Adam and I are watching and I say to Adam I think O's still going to lose this match up so bad so yeah kler Mullan to five he's able to intuition for chele knowledge so he's just up and running yeah he's fine so plays haunted wus and uh kler puts a morphling and then goes untap ruination and that was that was uh one that I remember I love that morphling people look at that card and they're just like what it's just a different animal time I know I know damage on the stack very good with that you gotta understand something for me because I'm a few years younger than you when I'm coming up and I'm hearing all these stories about morphling and I'm just like and it's just like this card's unbeatable once you untap with it I'm just like really as a kid I was just like man hope I can own a morphling one day yeah it was a it was a tough part of our deck in that tournament there's a lot of Illusions donate Decks that had morling in their sideboard basically because the combo was too hostile to enchantment removal and you just needed something else to try to win the game with yeah sure against like pretty much all range of opponents but our deck happened to be especially bad against morling okay it wasn't just morling was good because our disenchants didn't work anymore it was like our entire deck on the table could not be the morling sure so that that was a a tough part of that tournament uh next up is Shard Phoenix yes counter Phoenix was a deck I remember hearing about this growing up was basically just counter spells and the ability to get Shard Phoenix back you could discard it to forbid maybe that's what was going on there yep okay uh and it's a recur it's not the biggest thing in the world now okay so let's let let's let's think about this real quick let's say in 2024 they re they make a new version of Shard Phoenix it's definitely not a 2u so how big is it well I think there's some sins about Shard Phoenix that they would not replicate today okay I think uh activate this at instant speed for zero Mana is just too horrible uh let me read so reded red put this in your hand useability only if Shard Phoenix is in your graveyard and only during your upkeep no I'm saying the activated ability oh the sacrifice it to deal two okay gotcha yeah that part is just too bad okay uh sacrifice as a sorcery and or pay Mana to sacrifice I think would be ways you could improve this design and a version that even had better stats if you wanted to okay I mean part of this is also we're talking about a time where all the best creatures were two ones for one and two Twos for two yeah so it was especially good something that it CH Fenix is pretty bad against is just three threes yep so if you make enough three threes for two or four fours for three with abilities like they do nowadays this would be pretty modest okay all right uh last red card worth mentioning again one that you've cast a bunch and I haven't cast as much as you but enough shock one of my favorite designs in the set big step forward for magic development okay of again we're T we've talked so much about trying to recapture the the magic of alpha how do we make designs that are um as appealing as the cards people understand are very powerful and at a certain point you got to just rip the Band-Aid off and say we're doing shock we're doing cancel we're not doing counter spell anymore we're just doing cancel and we can do better than cancel in the future if we want to just like can do better than shock in the future if we want to but we can't balance the game around the idea that counter spell lightning bolts are just baselines in perpetuity yeah so there it does require some level of confidence to put shock in the booster the first time it sounds silly to say but there's G to be a bunch of people who open this and they're just like I why would I ever play with this lighting bolts already a card yep so you have to be willing to say we it's going to be a little rough there's going to be some costs up front but we're going to live in a much healthier world with this as a Baseline and it's something that we can do better than if we care to rather than have to negotiate against ourselves around lightning bolt for the rest of time uh we're going to blow through these green cards here hermit we've already mentioned busted yeah uh I imagine at some point we'll play with it on tournament Edition and kill each other with it uh mulch nothing crazy going on here but like saw some playing like some early versions of dredge decks yeah this is a well it's it's put in the graveyard and finding lands and selection it has a very golgari experience and it's interesting because you know you could you could imagine saying why would you want to put in the graveyard it's just less of appealing that way most people would just prefer to put on the bottom or Shuffle talking mostly about newer charact players or more casual players and it's like no put it in the graveyard we do it every once in a while and it's just his own thing with its own incentives and the people who like it will play with it and the people who don't like it will play with the million other versions that we make that don't put stuff in the graveyard yeah sure great that's fine uh Spike feeder we've mentioned uh three Mana gained some life saw plenty of play uh and then wall of blossoms also saw plenty of play in your uh green black decks among other things because you see with cabal therapy oh I see oh yeah it was nice uh slivers we've mentioned so we're not going to go over those most notable of course are sliver Queen uh crystalline sliver and hibernation sliver uh artifacts there's in Bridge which is still good today really weird design in my opinion I can at least appreciate I mean that you can't attack for the rest of the game is bad don't do that but if you are going to do it oh that's bad if you are going to do it ining Bridge is a pretty good execution of it because it's like you can't sit back on your handful of counter spells that's not the way the card Works a lock piece that asks you to play proactively is very different than the lock pieces that typically got made at the time time so there's at least a well if you want to do the hard lock thing you got to be playing every card in your hand and that you can't always do that unless your deck is filled with nothing but cheap stuff so how are you supposed to build a lock Deck with this when it's not allowing you to really play with card drawing or uh situational removal or counter spells or whatever uh way back in the day I think my first time at Origins I played an ins snaring bridge deck that was called Burning Bridges and it was this with grafted skull cap oh yeah uh and I oh yeah and I think it had fire diamond and then just like burn spells and uh you know I didn't do great soz I was pretty young but I remember finding that deck list online I was like man it's so cool they can't do anything they can but yeah no but I that those I I saw decks like that around my local shop too yeah uh MOX Imon we mentioned and then a v stronghold which is Flavor wise a very key card in the set and then sometimes you see it as kind of like a one of in some decks yeah sure I again another green black staple cuz you know it's good with wall blossoms do you know why cabal therapy just reading the cards back to you it's in my I'm in my golgari era it's all coming together they could barely kill spiritmonger the first time how they what if I get it back it's like what are they possibly gonna do about it uh that is the trivia here for stronghold everybody which means we are taking a short break and getting ready for everybody's favorite part of the show the award show right after this all right everybody it is now time for your favorite part of the show our favorite part of the show it's everybody's favorite part of the show it's the award show for stronghold and we will begin as we always do with the oo thief of crowns Award for best card in the set your answer is I'm going to give it a dream Halls there's definitely some competition and I wouldn't begrudge anyone who gave MOX Diamond as an answer but in my opinion dream Halls would be I guess my position is I could imagine a fun standard format that involves MOX Diamond I cannot imagine a fun one that involves dream Halls okay that's my line um my answer even though I've never played with a card once in my entire life I've never cast it I've never owned one uh this is purely on reputation alone as hermit Druid a fine choice because it's banned in a format so it can't be that bad uh I'm hoping that one day I'll get to cast it and kill someone on turn hey probably two but almost certainly three and you know maybe they'll make the mistake of unbanning it someday and then have to emergency reband it so that'd be fun time for the carnival Souls award for worst card in the set my selection is Hornet Cannon do you know what Hornet Cannon is no I can't say I do it is a four Mana artifact that you can pay three and tap it to put a hornet token into play treat this token as a one- one artifact creature with flying that is unaffected by summoning sickness at the end of turn destroy the token you know that's really good with grave pack as well look at you do you know why Kabal therapy yes we're back in the same we're back to black greed land yeah I mean that rates that rat's really bad awful yeah come on my vote goes to title surge I'm assuming this is a blue card yeah this is this is pretty pathetic okay I didn't you would think it's an instant oh no no no you would think that because why on Earth would you ever be interested in this at sorcery speed yeah you can't even tap their Flyers to get through with your Flyers no you gotta Tap The Ground Pounders yeah those big green creatures see you yeah I mean this is so weak in any sense it's especially weak in a block with so much Shadow sure like what are we doing here I just when I just when you told me this card the first card I thought of was early Frost but that only Taps lands nice I thought it was just three permanence I remember it from is it Fifth da yeah it's fifth da but it only tapped lands okay yeah title surge not great yeah I think that that title surge may be slightly stronger in absolute terms than Hornet Cannon okay but horny Canon actually has some purpose you could do something with it they're both quite bad though just the the token can't stay it has to die um I don't know if you're firing it out of a cannon I guess it's supposed to die in a turn it's a hornet I don't really know all right uh the Doom blade Award for best non-rare in the set we have the same answer Mana Leak yep wall the blossoms also a fine candidate here yeah really good option uh but yeah I think Mana Leak is just Spirit of the ward very nuts and bolts uh definitely wouldn't be rare thematic for color pie like it is very much a non-rare and super good at the time and has been super good every time it's been legal and standard uh totally agree so we're moving on to the aboro palace and the clouds award for fun of one of in the set your selection I don't know if I remember into Bridge oh in SAR Bridge there you go yeah I mean some decks play four but it often shows up as some sort of tutor Target it's a nice K Target yes K's so lame uh my selection is vas stronghold because it's a good tutor Target and it's also probably a better answer than mine because it's actually fun that's true that's true it's also legendary so you probably don't want to play one yeah that's another good point yeah pretty all all good points around uh we're going to move to the Mystic Confluence award for the best vintage Cube card in the Set uh we have the same answer once again which is MOX Diamond that is correct uh yeah acceleration and color fixing and it's an artifact and just what you know yeah you know it's vintage Cub it's a sick it is uh so now we move on to the smothering tide Award for best commander card in the set now I'll have you know I did my normal EDH research for this one but I took some Liberties because I am hard pressed to believe that grave paact is not a good answer me not a commander player but I think the grave pack is the best answer so that's what I've gone with may have and my answer is similar in that it might have been outmoded but it was so popular in multiplayer settings that magic has just made better and better versions of it over the years to scratch the dish giving it to Awakening a lot of cool stuff you could do with this thing very much like gray pack very naturally scales up in power level the more players they get out of the game yeah good answer and Awakening is also it doesn't work and gray pack too they both got something cool in common which is it just it doesn't work with just any old thing you got to be like trying to you know build it's not like the Dual ends that come into play untapped if you have two or more opponents yeah yeah it's true yeah that's it you like those lands no no he doesn't uh no he doesn't they are somewhat artless I think maybe maybe oh what am I gonna have two or more opponents I was talking about this with some of my uh the some of my co-workers with play Commander where I'm like let's imagine you had a car that says when you're at 30 life or more XYZ okay that to me is a celebration of Commander because the card still works in a one-on-one setting true it's harder right but you know have cards that gain life ah but in Commander you start at 40 so it just works there all the time however you still get attacked in games of Commander too so if I don't play with any life gain at all it could be kind of easy to shut this off so I still want to be doing a little bit of that blah blah blah blah blah blah blah that's an Artful way of Leaning the commander two or more opponents like well let me check y not derail but yeah those those lands when I see them I'm just because it it says two or more and I'm like waiting to get to the punch line and then opponents yeah found you I found you miss new booty uh pack red Award for best limited card in the set so I have two answers uh we are a joined on one so I'm going to go I'm going to go with constant Mist sure seems super lame get into a little late game able to fog for like six turns in a row while you're like beating down like a wind Dr or something just doesn't seem very fun but my other answer and your answer is was it flame wave that's correct now I think I had a recollection when I read your answer I was like did people call this game wave back in the day maybe playing much limited because I remember well I didn't play limit during this time either but I have a recollection of people just basically going game wave and the game ends cuz you deal four to all of their stuff in them yeah it's plag onein plus lava axe yeah seems like a lot cuz the creatures back then were so small yeah now in limited games there's just more six Mana 55 floating around back then this is like I think this kills basically every creature in the set except for sliver queen and the rare 65 regenerator for six how do you know that uh the the the carnid yeah that's a rare by the way yeah five4 ni oh yes so you can still catch it there's this elephant endangered armadon that's a 4 five nice so you can't kill that one with game wave I'm just going to check the green creatures real quick just to see if there's any that that also live got a bunch of spikes here they all die well the spikes situationally one could live that's true you load up on the big the biggest one or whatever spined worm dies so that's dead uh and let's see spitting Hydra well thats the Battlefield four plus one plus one counter so that one dies too that card's also nice okay good eye by you it does kill all oh the flowstone merer lives maybe they can mess it up sure that would be that'd be really tough there're a misclick away that's true that's true uh okay next award is the new award which I forgot to give you in our script so you're going to have to answer this one on the Fly the circle protection Award for best hoser in the set now there's not a lot of hosers in this set in a meaningful way like we've seen in past I'll give it to ruination okay so that's a good answer r so brutal that's a good answer and that is a hoser in in the technical way yes and it's especially rough here because we're already talking about a time where dual lands are so bad people don't typically play multicolor decks it's also just the wrong place and time to go after people like that okay U my answer was stronghold assassin which is the three Mana 21 sacer creature destroy Target non-black creature because you know if you play against a green deck the game's over mhm uh and you know that's why I was in my oversold Cemetery deck gotcha oh you're a green deck okay cool well this game is over as long as I draw a creates you lose uh so we're moving on to the Char rumbler award for the weirdest card in the set I'm gonna get mine out of the way real quick because I don't know what the hell's going on with yours so mine is Port Cullis uh for those of you who are not in the know Port Cullis is a fourman artifact whenever any creature comes into play if there are two or more other creatures in play set that creature side if forculus Leaves play put the creature into play under its owner's control just doesn't really strike me as a fun way of playing Magic no a little weird to do in the sou staring bridge too yeah do we need permanent no creatures do anything also just set it aside yeah what are we doing so I don't know if this is against the spirit of the award or not there are certainly strange individual designs up and down the set but I'm going to give it to the combination of wall of razors and cven giant okay we were talking about a set with 140 cards not many not that many cards how do we have two different four ones in red with an attacking or blocking restriction this is a really when I see the two cards together it's just like so weird how many kind of how many creatures are in red total in the set okay 1 2 3 4 I'm up to six 7 8 9 10 I got 12 13 13 two out of 13 so over 10% yeah it's very weird thing to do twice again each card not individually that weird I think wall of Razor is a little bit strange but fine whatever you want to make some walls that work with rolling stone or whatever the deal is but yeah both of these in the same set in the set this small is so strange he doesn't like it he doesn't like it mirrored pair one can't attack one can't block both four ones uh blank award for the best card name in the set your answer is um I don't know if I remember Rolling Stones oh yeah rolling yeah such a sweet card beloved casual card another one that was way more popular and expensive relative to its tournament resume pretty aspirational thing to build around even though they very rarely make cards that work with this at all cuz so many walls are zero power or reference block in as the thing um I would say that this card is sort of the precursor to a lot of the DOR and The Siege Tower type of space yeah people just attacking with things with big butts they love it it's really fun they do love it you know it is they love it uh my answer is fling cool name don't to tell you much you kind of get the idea of what it does based off of the name cool artwork cool flavor text just cool everything so one of my favorite cards uh in Magic history uh John Aon award for the best land artwork in the set well there's only one land in the set so the award goes to VRA stronghold so now we move on to our final two the a excuse me Aus Fury award for most overhype card during previous season and the tag award for most under hype card during previous season I as always don't have an answer because I was not playing in a meaningful way then however you have one for each your realest Fury Award winner is you tell me pursuit of knowledge oh yeah people thought this was like you could do something with this other than uh basically lose the game on the spot if you cast it it's like really bad if it gets disenchanted um you have to absorb three turns of not drawing a card in most circumstances get the thing to happen Y cards are in general are on somewhat diminishing returns so uh losing three cards to draw seven is not nearly as good as just drawing four cards but people were like into this as a potential just you could just play it on R there's the there's the Allure of power here yeah draw s wow in white yeah I know yeah get it all back in then some it's like no you're actually you're you're dead uh do you remember your answer for tago award I think it was hermit Druid that's correct yeah again I've already mentioned this but it's the C scroll thing yeah the all the text conceals the straightforward bustness of it took a little while for this one to get over just because you do need to have synergies with having no deck either playing on your graveyard winning on the spot whatever there's some herit Drew Decks that play like one Basic Land and there's something they're up to or whatever okay so it took a little while for this one to catch on but you know eventually it's you know Green tap pulled your deck over there's a lot you can do with that in older formats and band so there's that well everybody those are the awards for the show which means we've got one thing left to [Music] do all righty my friends we're going to grade this set say what won this set in just a moment but first a quick word from our friends over Coes apparel and design you can head over to coals apparel. shop the number one source for Magic the Gathering inspired apparel to check out their selection of shirts hoodies stickers playmats and a whole bunch more if you find something you like be sure to use promo code rebles at checkout to save 10% off your order coales Apparel in design nobody made what they wanted so they made it themselves all righty partner what card one stronghold for you and why sliver Queen okay it's just first of all just doing a five color creature is that's pretty cool really cool and it's not that it was just for no reason it's that the slivers are spread across all five colors okay and then also the ability is not just random stuff it speaks to well you can just play with this if you want to it works just fine but if you're doing the sliver thing wow are you really are you really doing it and if you do play with sliver queen that presupposes you have access to all five colors of Mana at which point you can start really mixing and matching the different slivers you're playing with to do cool stuff okay another card I mean I know at this point it's worth several hundred dollars but even on release it was like no chance of keeping it in stock really just too beloved too cool people just wanted to own a copy of it even if they weren't really playing with it it is I want to check really quickly I think your right is still oh my what you looking at it's $300 sure oh my gosh yeah yeah all right it's worth $300 because it's cool it is the juam Xin of this era yeah all right all right that's actually High Praise all right my answer is going to be Spike feeder uh spikes are cool these are probably the coolest creatures in the set you know the other options slivers are cool obviously LDS are not so much and then um the flowstone creatur is not really that cool Spike feeder isn't like overpowered or anything it's just kind of a cool design and this set I can't say this like that strongly but feels like the set just kind of lacking on cool designs yeah it is it is weirdly uh too many of the designs in my opinion rest in the place of either being extremely simple or completely bizarre and inscrutable and yeah you're right that theer is there's some play to it and the thing that I really like about it is um how do we do this counter REM moving stuff in a way that doesn't add to onboard complexity when the counter removal thing costs zero okay so Spike Weaver is gated by the fact that it costs Mana so we acknowledge that we allow some a more complexity feder is super appealing and the zero mana ability does not add to board complexity true that's true unless you have something that cares unless there's like a third party interaction it's a great design all right so that means it's time to give the set a grade and I'm going to go first I've been thinking about this one for a little while today what I was going to do here and I always try to save it until we do the show I'm in between a four and a five I'm leaning four okay so I'm gonna go with a four uh here's why compared to my Tempest eight now I think maybe I gave Tempest a little bit too much credit but here's the thing this is a really big step down from Tempest it feels like uh and why I say that is because buyback which we've discussed is not great but like it's not really anything here either so like the buyback designs in this set aren't anything particularly interesting or cool in my opinion so that's number one number two your other mechanic Shadow there's only three cards that reference shadow in a meaningful way in the set so if you were like really into shadow in Tempest you were like man I can't wait to see the shadow designs are boy are you disappointed when you open up this set I'm just like oh there really aren't any and then there there's other cards here that are just like not particularly fun to play against uh like I'm not going to mention hermit Druid because I don't think that was good right away and you know it's like busted combo enable or whatever not really what the goal of the card was but like in snaring Bridge doesn't seem very fun grave packed maybe is mam I know it's like a casual Superstar but uh not most fun card I think to play against either and when I look through this set and as we've gone over through this set today nothing really stands out to me here as like oh that's kind of neat that's a fun thought experiment like besides sliver Queen because even some of the slivers are just like whoa crystaline sliver yeah you can't kill my stuff anymore have fun or hibernation sliver you again can't kill my stuff anymore have fun I am I'm straining to find a lot of fun cards here or positive designs the crystalline sliver winged sliver combo was really rough his game it's like just lose so what what do you want me to do about this yeah you can't do anything sweeper dead my grade for stronghold is a three oh okay uh I think any part of this set that is basically an extension of Tempest is pretty close to an F okay there's no there's nothing really novel going on here with with the exception of constant Miss which is like not sure if that's the place you're supposed to be putting some novelty points into the only thing that saves the set from a lower grade is a lot of individually cool designs uh that have a casual or multiplayer uh resume to them the Awakenings and Intruder alarms grave packs uh you could kind of put sliver Queen in that list as well there's a lot of designs in here that uh as I said before sort of the the family tree of multiplayer designs that come off of them is really uh really powerful and a fun design space so stronghold I think should get some points for that there's some just great multiplayer designs here the other stuff is you know like I said when you were talking about your grade the the number of designs that are either boring or completely inscrutable you know that's part of the reason that Spike feeder jumps out it's like oh this is a fun design I can do cool stuff with it and I understand it the first time I read it sure there's so little of that going on in this set yeah um I think the uh the the white creatures are pretty much I consider them to be a failure in so far as to the extent they ever showed up anywhere was just unbounded zero triggers not anything to do with manipulating damage or anything of that sort y um so yeah some individually cool designs but uh either everything in this set is either very derivative of of Tempest without a new spin on it or um completely off message with the stuff that's going on in Tempest Tempest it feels like they kind of like went for it and I you remember at the beginning of our Tempest episode you were like what if we print all these cards and took a man off yeah right and so they were clearly like kind of trying to juice it up a little bit and this said it just feels like I we're kind of out of ideas is kind of boring is I don't really know well the places where there's power in the set are overwhelmingly Bad Bet okay so um I think that the best the best bet in here is probably Spike feeder or wall blossoms but dream Halls MOX Diamond Mana Leak these are just not yeah and snaring Bridge these are just not bets that are likely to go the right way and it's where a lot of the power of the set is even we at stronghold is we kind of I think know the card with some Warmness because is we're familiar with it in a format like vintage Cube where first of all it's just not that powerful yep and second of all there's so much crazy stuff going on that even if it was powerful like compared to what you know what I mean this is kind of what the format is sure it's not actually a very fun card to be good it's a lot about just looping and recursion and the game stay on advancing and in sliver mirrors was literally about decking the other person because they couldn't proceed Yeah you mentioned that so that's a card that I think Nostalgia and sort of time has given it a much warmer uh view than it would be if it was just legal and standard right now and a card people were playing all right scoreboard time quick review of what we've done so far you can see on the screen Alpha ba unlimited still the goat with scores of 10 from Patrick and I uh then we start getting our scores just start going down down down got our homelands two and three still got our Chronicles one and one things starting to Trend up maybe a little bit around uh Tempest but uh with an eight and a six but magic design kind of early on still a little bit rough now we'll see what happens when we do get to Exodus which I believe is the next that we're covering here um but you know just they're still working out the Kinks definitely I mean for a player of my vintage I think that I'm probably much more sour on wrath cycle than than most yeah because most of this stuff that I to go back to Mirage block there's so much good and appealing stuff going on there that has nothing to do with just power crep it's I mean there's some cards that are better than others and I I think the average card is a lot better than the average card in Ice Age or certainly homelands Fallen Empires but it's not introducing an unsustainable model for how power gets distributed through the sets and through that sort of lens you can have a real appreciation for the architecture of the Set uh different designs and mechanics it's all through this you could imagine this going on forever to the extent that R cycle has steps forward it my opinion it is just power level it's just the cards getting a lot stronger and that can be a fun thing some amount of the time but you can't do this forever true and it's hard for me to get away from you know if you look at that trajectory of um Saga block just like blowing the game engine out of the water yeah I can't wait and then marum mask being this hard reset yep people talk about those two blocks a lot as yeah this is where it went way over the line and then this was basically the cost of our sins sure is mercadian mask Y and I believe that telling of History ignores wrath cycle it's easy to do now with with you know hindsights 2020 and all that but you can see where things are going comparing this to Mirage and this is I think that you know part of the reason I'm so down on this block is um it's a look into the future and it is Bleak gotcha okay well let's try to lighten things up a little bit bring some hope and tell you all the things that uh we are doing here with the receivables like our YouTube page which you may have watched this episode there at YouTube youtube.com/ theer receivables where you can find our most recent episodes of this show the receivables in which we uh of course have reviewed strong hole today you can go back and watch Tempest Weatherlight and all the other sets prior to this one you can find our most recent episodes of the receivables tournament Edition as well we've got some awesome new stuff coming out there in a couple of weeks of Old Pro tours and World Championships to cover from 1996 and Beyond you can find stimets of our unsleeved podcast which we'll talk more about about how you can listen to the whole thing here in just a moment and you can watch our cracka Pack videos uh like our Tempest cracka Pack video where we opened an ancient to Mana Lotus pedal baby and if you want to be the recipient of the other pack from our crack a pack videos uh you're going to tell them how well if you go over to patreon.com the receivables you can sign up for our patreon a variety of tiers and each tier comes with its own benefits part of the benefits at the $102 $5 tiers is that you are entered into all of our crack a pack giveaways after every set we review we open up one and make a video out of it and the second booster is sent out to someone under1 or $25 tier you don't have to sign up or do anything or send an email to us alerting us that you like to be put in the drawing if you're in at the 10 or $25 TI it's fully automated and you might be the fortunate winner of a stronghold booster pack and now would be a particularly good time to sign up because we are approaching some of the most expensive packs in Magic's history that's right Soca block baby it's almost here uh let's talk more about our patreon that Patrick did mention at patreon.com levaes there you can get early access to both the receivables and the receiv receivables tournament Edition you can help vote on what we play in an additional episode of the receivables tournament Edition you get access to the total library of the unsleeved podcast which is our patreon exclusive podcast and as Patrick did mentioned if you are in the 10 and $25 tier for our cracka packs you're eligible to win one of them from the random drawing that we do before every single one of those if you like to browse on Twitter you can follow us at the receivables over there where we have fun updates to what we're doing and fun photos behind the scenes type stuff all that good stuff and then a quick shout out to all three sponsors of the show Tales of Adventure Eternal does live there you can use promo code receiv receivables to get 5% off of your order Co has Apparel in design nobody made what they wanted so they made it themselves promo code receivables for 10% off of your order a checkout and then Brian koval's wonderful YouTube channel Bosch and roll where he's playing Eternal magic every single weekday so some of the cars that you saw on here you can go see over there also Brian super cool he's funny good poster and he wins a ton what more can you ask what what more could you possibly ask I know so what is next well I can confirm that it is Exodus we'll finish out wrath uh wrath block wrath cycle whatever you want to call it in our next episode here of the receivables for our next episode of the receivables tournament Edition it'll be Pro Tour Columbus 1996 we got all those cards in the mail recently so let me tell you oi Rod's uh red green deck the giant spiders giant trap giant trap spider woolly spider uhuh it's one wor it's one of the worst SE I've ever seen spider die I was fishing it and I can goldfish just about anything not this one mhm CU you know what you do when you goldfish with this deck you activate storm bind a bunch oh yeah which that was me I did the same thing that's not goldfishing at all anyone could just throw a card away they pay two Mana that's the whole deck so it's pretty bad and the other decks are white based like have some land destruction and blinking spirit and uh they're going to be some ugly games that we're going to record looking forward to it cannot wait so uh with that everybody we want to thank you so much for watching we hope you learned a ton about stronghold Exodus is coming up next have a good one look at this big as your car just he does everything big mhm uh this one if it costs the same yeah why wouldn't you get the bigger one okay where'd it go you got three of them there it is I found it this is like my old buddy he's like yeah my my my dad just always bought 100s like the really long cigarettes he's like it's the same price it's just cheating maybe that Che they haven't figured it out yet I'm not sure that's how that works but that's okay that's okay all right everybody we are here for [Music] the okay I'm going to start over I can't fix that now we got a mic mic check uh let's take a looki test yeah good job by you yeah uh your mic's good my mic's good uh snapping mcdu that's a technical term [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] a o [Music]

Channel: The Resleevables

Views: 20,892

Keywords: #mtg, #magicthegathering, #commander, #mtgcommander, #mtgstandard, #mtgmodern, #mtglegacy, #mtgvintage, #mtghistoric, #mtgalchemy, theresleevables, the resleevables, podcast, magic podcast, mtg podcast

Id: aEu559FxD9k

Length: 127min 36sec (7656 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2024