Top 10 Cards that Changed How People Play Magic

every once in a while a Carter mechanic gets printed that completely changes how magic is played either because they finally give a deck a piece they've been missing or because they blink entire strategies these cards have redefined magic as we know it and today we're gonna go over the cards that have had the biggest impact on the game of magic starting us off at number 10 we have Nico Bolas this is a 7-7 legendary Elder Dragon with a Mana cost of two two blue two black and two red it has flying meaning it can't be blocked except by flyers or Rich creatures and it has the ability to wear at the beginning of your upkeep you sacrifice him unless you pay one blue one black and one red finally whenever it deals combat damage to a player that player discards their hand this card is actually part of a cycle of five elder dragons the name Elder Dragon might be familiar to some people as it's the namesake of the Elder Dragon Highlander possibly more well known as Commander these five dragons were the beginning of what is now the most popular format of all magic originally these were the only creatures that could be the head of your deck Commander though over time the format grew to accept more ways of playing as its popularity grew and grew in fact we can still see some of the vestiges of their influence in the format Commander damage is the mechanic where if a player takes 21 combat damage from a single Commander they lose the game the reason the number is exactly 21 is because originally the rule was that if someone's Commander hit you three times you lost the game this resulted in exactly 21 damage which ended up being a good bar to make it achievable with other cards but not as easy as hitting them with your one Mana legendary creature three times the reason I chose bolus to represent the cycle is because it arguably still has the biggest Niche when combined with cyan of the UR Dragon this is a five minute dragon with the ability where you can pay two to search a library for a dragon permanent card put it into your graveyard Shuffle and then Scion becomes a copy of it until the end of the turn this allows you to attack with Scion and turn it into Nikko bolus after blockers are declared and then force him to discard their entire hand now while these cards haven't really had that big of an impact on competitive magic their impact on the overall magic scene is still among the highest of any card and at number 9 we have stone Forge Mystic this is a one-two core artificer with a Mana cost of one and one white it has the ability to wear when it enters the battlefield you search your library for an equipment card reveal it and put it into your hand then Shuffle you can also pay one in one white to tap it to put an equipment card in your hand onto the battlefield Mystic is a card that has completely redefined how equipments were used you see there are a lot of very strong equipment like batter skull and Calder complete both of which happen to have the extremely strong living weapon keyword this means that whenever they enter the battlefield you create a 0-0 black forexian germ creature token and attach the equipment to it meaning these equipments are basically creatures by themselves this led stoneforge basically represent a huge Threat all on its own but what makes Stone Fort so important is how its ability redefines every equipment in Magic every equipment has to be evalued with the knowledge that you can search it off and cheat it out with stoneforge whenever new equipment gets printed people don't just see new cards that can build with it they also see new stone Forge targets and basically everything that runs equipment runs stoneforge even Hammer Time whose namesake card Colossus Hammer doesn't benefit that much from stoneforge however being able to find it whenever you want and being able to tutor out other equipment whenever they're at their most useful make stone Forge and auto include for the deck Stone Forge was so good it was actually banned in modern for many years is considering the card's long continued history success and how it redefined an entire subtype of card stoneforge absolutely earns a spot of this list and at number 8 we have Jace the Mind Sculptor this is a three loyalty Planeswalker that made a cost of two and two blue it is abilities where you can plus two him to look at the top card of Target players library then put on the top or bottom of the library you can zero him to draw three cards and then put two cards in your hand on top of your library you can minus one him to balance Target creature and finally you can minus 12 him to Exile Target players library then make them Shuffle their hand into the library Jace is on here representing Planeswalkers as a card type a somewhat recent addition to the game that has completely changed the way the game has been played in his time Jace was considered the strongest Planeswalker seeing play all the way back in vintage and being banned in his standard format and in modern for years while Jace himself has certainly had a huge impact the invention of the Planeswalker card type caused even greater shift in the past the best way for control ducks to end the game was to play a card like aetherly these expensive sticky control threats Define the game for years until Planeswalker slowly became more common slowly they replaced these big expense threats as the most common wind condition for control coming down in the mid game to generate value and often ended up winning the game of their ultimates if you manage to protect them long enough it's fairly common to see control decks and standard relied on Planeswalkers to close games for them as their abilities can often be more useful than a creature will be Jace and his ilk have slowly wormed their way into basically every Fair strategy and magic with Walkers being nearly ubiquitous and mid-range and control strategies across multiple formats and at number 7 we have burning wish this is a sorcery the Mana cost of one and one red it is the effect where you reveal a sorcery card from your sideboard and put it into your hand then you Exile burning wish this card is a member of a whole cycle and it's probably been the most consistently successful one besides possibly living wish the ability to have access to sideboard cards in the first game of the match has proven to be far far more useful than it may seem at first one use for them is allowing you to hide your combo pieces from lobotomy effects cards like surgical extraction have been used to stop combo decks in their tracks for years but if one of your four copies of a card is in your sideboard Sergio won't be able to do anything about it this is why decks like storm and Legacy have used the card to find their Storm cards to end the game during their combo turn another very common use was to basically just grab useful cards whenever the be best used in a matchup one car that's been used to do this to great effect was the aforementioned living wish its ability to grab lands and creatures left it much worse as being used for combos but far better in creating a toolbox powerful lock pieces like collector oof and sanctum pre-lake can just be grown out of the sideboard against opponents will have a hard time dealing with them sure this is a lot worse than just drawing the card and casting it but the upside of just having such a versatile sideboard is very high in a way playing with wishes gives you four copies of every one of the Targets in your sideboard this means you can have a good chance of drawing them without having to actually put four copies of the card into your deck the end result is basically being able to have your cake and eat it too when it comes to your sideboard slots you can consistently draw the sideboard cards you want while still having a 10 or so different sideboard cards the wish Cycles single handily introduce an entirely new type of deck building image quite literally changing how people approach the game and at number 6 we have grizzlebrand this is a 7-7 legendary demon with a Mana cost of four and four black it has flying and LifeLink meaning any amount of damage deals also causes you to gain that much life it has the ability where you can pay Seven life to draw seven cards this card is obviously very strong but actually paying eight Mana to cast it is a very large task however if you can get even a single turn with girls around the battlefield you can often simply win the game as a result as soon as the car is printed people started finding ways they cheat onto the battlefield as soon as possible from reanimation to cards like show and tell every method that could be used to cheat Grizzly Brown out was and in fact was usually more than enough to win the game people would use cards like gorio's Vengeance which allows you to reanimate a legendary creature but only for one turn and gives it haste then they would draw as many cards as they wanted and repeatedly cast Fury of The Horde a is there a romantic card that lets you take an extra combat and repeatedly attack with girls abandoned until you win the game this card was so influential that Wizards started designing around on the card well they wanted to put a reanimator deck into modern the two cards they designed to facilitate the strategy persist an unmarked grave both specified non-legendary creature in order to specifically stop the car to work with grizzlebrand before grizzlebrand these decks built around cheat out creatures had tons of different options they would choose between but after grizzlebrand came out it was either him or emerokul the degree to which grizzlebrand has warped the game around him is pretty severe considering the only use for the card is a payoff for people to cheat him into play and at number 5 we have the golgari grave troll this is a 0-0 troll skeleton with a Mana cost of four and one green it has dread 6 meaning when you draw a card it fits in your graveyard you can instead Mill six cards and return it from the graveyard to your hand it enters a battlefield with plus one plus one counters on it for each creature card in your graveyard and you can pay one and remove a plus one plus one counter from grave troll to regenerate it meaning that next time it would be destroyed this turn you instead remove all damage from it tap it and remove it from combat however if you know anything about this card you'll know those abilities basically never mattered you see there are quite a few cards of Magic that can function out of the graveyard such as necromoeba which reanimates itself when it's milled or ikorod which reanimates itself at the beginning of your next upkeep if you X out a black creature card from your graveyard this means that if you could find a way to Mill enough cards quickly enough you could quickly assemble an entire board for no man at all this led to daxwear rather than actually playing a normal good magic players would just use cards like faithless looting or breakthrough to draw and discard a huge number of cards very quickly allowing you to dredge upwards of 20 cards in a turn this would let you do a ton of damage but even better this was really hard to interact with most of the decks threats could just come back next turn so most forms of removal just wouldn't work against the deck you really need a card like anger of the gods or rest in peace to actually slow the deck down as soon as the dredge mechanic was released dredge decks started popping up in basically every format where the card was legal now this spot on this list could have been bizarre Baghdad a car that's famously broken in graveyard strategies and has done a lot to enable them for years in vintage even variants without dredge cards however since the card is banned everywhere except for vintage The Dredge mechanic is taking the spot for enabling really broken graveyard based decks since the impact of the game was overall higher and at number 4 we have Millstone this is an artifact with the Mana cost of two it has the ability where you can pay two and tap Millstone to have Target player Mill 2 cards this card is honestly pretty bad but the ripples of its Legacy have not only gone through all of magic but through all of trading card games in general in fact the reason that taking cards from the top of your library and putting them into your graveyard is called million and magic and in most other card games is explicitly a reference to this card Millstone birthed the very first meal deck which aimed to Simply install the game with various removal spells counter spells and walls to stall the game as long as possible and slowly Mill their deck by activating Millstone over and over this birth an entire Arc Type of Deck The Mill deck and in fact this was the first time that any deck had a win condition that wasn't simply dealing 20 damage to your opponent Wizards would repeatedly print cards with these kinds of effects afterwards as it was something of a hit with a player base no matter how bad they were any time a card like this popped up in standard people would try to make a meal deck work and while Mill decks did have their fans there were tons of players who found them very annoying no one wanted to have to build their own deck watching their favorite cards go the graveyard before they ever got a chance to use them regardless of the somewhat controversial status of the mechanic Millstone will remain a huge part of the game's history and at number 3 we have blood moon this is an enchantment with the Mana cost of two and one red it is the effect where all non-basic lands are mountains released all the way back in the dark this was the first car that really punished greedy Mana bases in Magic a greedy Mana base is a term for whenever a deck is relying heavily on lots of non-basics to allow them to play three more colors however as soon as blood moon comes down all those lands will only be tapping for red Mana this will usually make it so that they can't do anything at that point you've usually just won the game most ducks and older formats play so few Basics that drawing into them to turn their spells back on is fairly unlikely as a result people often try to find their basic lands early on against opponent who they're suspected as playing blood moon or hold up man to use a removal spelling and as soon as it resolves the impact this card has on the format is so severe that without it or more recent cards I do a similar job most formats will be overrun with four or five color Decks that would all play mostly the same cards before we finish we also need to mention Wasteland this is a land that you can tap for a colorless and tap and sacrifice to destroy Target non-basic land Wasteland does the same thing as blood boot in the format it's legal in but since it's only legal in Legacy and vintage blood moon was chosen over it for this list and at number 2 we have fetchlands these are a cycle of tent lands one for each two color combination they each have the ability where you can pay one life tap and sacrifice them to search your library for a land with one of the two basic land types and put it into the battlefield now when these cards were first printed they were considered pretty underwhelming in both circumstances that was until the shock lands were printed these were a cycle of 10 lands that all had two of the five busyland types and enter the battlefield tapped unless you pay to life the reason this was so important is that it allowed you to essentially find any color you wanted off of a fetchland let's say your deck Temple Garden or breeding pool or Overgrown Tomb and stomping ground in it with that setup any fetch line that could find Forest could find any of the four shock lands and then you find any color you wanted now most techs didn't play this many colors but it was very easy for three or even Four Color decks to make sure they got all of the colors the fetch lands being able to find lands with these Basic Land types is so important that some cards are made incredibly strong just because they're fetchable for instance Mystic Sanctuary is a card that ended up being pretty broken specifically because it had the island type basically this was a land that entered untapped if you had three or more other islands and one hit the field if it entered untap you put an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard on top of your library being able to fetch this card ended up being a huge problem as you could basically just choose to draw whatever into the sorcerer they wanted in the late game another place with a power being able to fetch non-basics really shine is in triumphs these are lands that are always under tap and can be cycled for three Mana but they have three basic land types these lands have already seen heavy played Modern in all matter of three four even five color decks however the original trilands barely saw any play simply being able to fetch them whenever you wanted made them a huge Boon to Mana bases fetch lands are the backbone of any half decent multi-colored Mana base and older formats but there's still one car that's possibly more influential and at number one we have force of will this is an instant with the Mana Casa 3 and 2 blue it is the effect where you counter Target spell but you can also cast the car without paying its Mana cost by accidentally a blue card from your hand in pain one life this was the first and still maybe the best zero Mana counter spell in all of magic and without it formats like Legacy and vintage would be virtually unplayable you see Legacy and vintage have a ton of decks that can pretty consistently win the game on turn one and if you're going second that means you won't even be able to play a land before your opponent kills you now the only real way to counteract this is with zero Mana interaction of which by far the most common is force of will if force of will didn't exist to regulate these formats they each have to have a band list a mile long to stop the Litany of extremely fast and strong combo from taking over force of will is so iconic that when Wizards decided to make a new cycle of pitch spells they called them forces Force still has an impact on the game outside of the first few turns of course later on in the game players need to keep track of the cards in their opponent's hand to see how likely it is they might have a force up even if all other Mana is tapped while force is contained to only a couple of formats the impact it has on them is so vast that it easily takes number one spot on this list alright and that's the list are there any cards you think we may have missed or have any ideas for future videos just like this one if so please let us know Down Below in the comments foreign [Music]

Channel: TheManaLogs

Views: 133,901

Keywords: magic, mtg, magic the gathering, tcg, card game

Id: IIlXGmdRQQY

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 28 2023