8 Mechanics They'll Never Use Again in Magic: the Gathering

Dive into the mystical world of Magic the Gathering (MTG) as we explore the bygone era of its gameplay mechanics! 🎩✨ In this video, we're delving deep into the archives to uncover the secrets of MTG's discontinued mechanics that once shaped the battlegrounds of this iconic game. From the tactical formations of Banding to the high-stakes gamble of Ante, each mechanic added a unique twist to the game's strategy.
🔮 Banding: Unite your forces and learn how this mechanic allowed players to form powerful alliances on the battlefield.
🎲 Ante: Discover the original risk-reward aspect of MTG where stakes were high and every game could shift your collection.
🌿 Regenerate: Unravel the mysteries of this survival tactic that let creatures dodge death and return to fight another round.
😜 Gotcha: Get a glimpse into the playful side of MTG with this quirky mechanic that turned the tables with a word.
❄️ Cumulative Upkeep: Understand the escalating challenge posed by this mechanic that tested players' resource management skills.
Whether you're a seasoned planeswalker or new to the realm of MTG, this retrospective is packed with fascinating insights and nostalgic moments. So, grab your decks and join us on a journey through MTG's history - you might just discover some hidden gems to inspire your next game!
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[@HarrisontheManaDork]

A couple people are getting confused here so I want to put this out there. These are all mechanics that Mark Rosewater has given a storm scale rating of 10 meaning, in his words, "I never say never, but this would require a major miracle." There is likely a handful of keywords that aren't included that could be but he hasn't given them a storm scale rating. There is no use in arguing that a mechanic "isn't that bad" when I am citing THE head designer for Magic: the Gathering.

[@baval5]

The funniest thing about ante is it wasn't even banned strictly for the gambling aspect. There are nine cards with ante and if they weren't banned you could play four copies of each of them. If you're not playing a game with ante then you remove them from your deck before the game starts but after your deck is checked if it's legal. Your 60 card deck is now 24 cards, combo city.

[@odarkeq]

Yes, exactly this. You build a small, specific wombo-combo like Channel/Fireball or whatever, and half your deck doesn't make it into your Library on Turn 1. Doubling your odds to draw the win condition is a strong strategy.

[@justicegaming1412]

​@@odarkeq It's way more than doubling your odds. Not only is 24 less than half of 60, it's not a linear relationship either. Rough rule of thumb is that you have about a 15% chance of drawing both parts of a two-card combo in your opener in a 60 card deck with 4 of each card, not counting mulligans (as mulligan rules have changed over the years and heavily complicate the math). That goes to about 50% in a 24-card deck if my back-of-the-envelope estimate is right. If you extend that to 10 cards instead of 7 it gets even sillier.

[@Vincent_Beers]

Also note that the original rules were 40 card decks. It wasn't 60 cards until the first major rules revision. I was a judge during alpha/beta, the original rules also didn't have 4 card limits. Within the first few months we were already experimenting with restricting number of copies, expanding the deck size limits and discussing if cards needed to be banned. Ante cards were the first thing to be banned to prevent the exploit you mentioned, even before the power 9 were restricted to one of each.

[@baval5]

@@Vincent_Beers Interesting insight!

[@seandun7083]

Couldn't you just say that your deck had to still be legal after they were removed?

[@Sepp_Tember]

Fear is such a flavorful mechanic. Intimidate is not. Why would a green creature frighten a black/white/blue/red creature but not another green one? The flavor of Fear is that black and artifact creatures lack this emotion and it just fits so well.

[@MireVale]

@@Sepp_Tember I think it makes sense most for green, with the idea that a big beast creature would want to challenge another big beast. But other colors would not want any of that smoke

[@gusty7153]

​@@MireValethis logic can apply for any big creature of any color. isnt there a mechanic where a creature cant be blocked except by those over a certain power?

[@raykoonce5474]

I thought the set Outlaws of thunder junction, should have had all horses have "Horsemanship" lol

[@benvictim]

@@raykoonce5474 I absolutely agree. As weird / dumb as it sounds... It would have been funny and a clever nod to the past.

[@GiveItARest]

I recall a card that my friends and I treated as a "Gotcha" card, even though it wasn't, and that was Goblin SWAT Team (slaps the table). Every time someone said "Goblin SWAT Team" (slaps the table), whether they controlled Goblin SWAT Team (slaps the table) or not, we all had to slap the table within 5 seconds. Otherwise, each player who controlled a Goblin SWAT Team (slaps the table) would be allowed to put a +1 counter on each their Goblin SWAT Team (slaps the table). It was absolutely the wrong way to play Goblin SWAT Team (slaps the table), but we all loved playing Goblin SWAT Team (slaps the table) like that anyway.

[@philiphunt-bull5817]

(Slaps the table)

[@marcodaddario3965]

Most deprecated mechanics were replaced with understandable reasons. Mechanically, i'll like to see Shroud from time to time. It's Hexprooof with a pretty smart built in drawback and i prefer it over Ward. Flavorwise, Regenerate and Fear/Intimidate are really evokative and it's a shame they didn't work out.

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

I agree with the shroud comment. They made ward to be the fair way to do hexproof, when shroud did a great job at it. I do think there are a lot of magic players that miss that shroud stops everyone, just in the same way that a lot of players miss that protection also protects a creature against your own auras. And yeah, its a shame when we lose words for keywords that could be something cooler. Personally, I think the word Rampage could evoke something gruul where its like trample but then it does something extra/different.

[@Tezhut]

​@@HarrisontheManaDorkI think Mark Rosewater has said that (newer) players had trouble with shroud. They kept enchanting their own shroud creatures for instance. In that sense hexproof is the 'fixed' shroud. But both mechanics lead to less interactive and that's why we got ward... oh well.

[@simplegarak]

@marcodaddario3965 they have sort of brought back regenerate only now they spell it out like "Cost - tap this creature, it gains indestructible until end of turn."

[@SwedeRacerDC]

@@marcodaddario3965 Shroud was just too confusing for many players and admittedly, the biggest continual confusion comes in the way that auras can attach to creatures with Shroud, but not when they're cast. It also feels bad to not be able to target your own things and Hexproof was the way to be less confusing, but also clearly too broken

[@SwedeRacerDC]

I do believe they are still using Shroud in universes beyond releases on occasion. It's not frequent and it may be unsatisfactory for some people.

[@OFSheep]

A major issue with fear, intimidate, and landwalks is that either you were open and couldn't block at all, or you were safe and the cards were blank, at the deckbuilding phase. It's not fun to have a creature in your deck be useless, and it's not fun to see your opponent have an unsolvable problem because you accidentally played the wrong one of the five colors.

[@xerty5502]

Reminds me of one of the siller and really not good decks I made during ice age barbarian guides and weather vain (had a word before that began with A. but been too long can't remember) make an opponents land snow covered with weather vain. the barbarian guides give something snow-covered land walk. It did work but was slow and not good.

[@michaelsorensen7567]

@@OFSheep on the other hand, having direct damage creatures makes it easier to trigger "if dealt damage to a player" type effects, and makes opponents have to have direct counters instead of JUST having bigger badder monsters than you. It creates more modes of play and more strategies that can be used. And the pass through type creatures were almost always balanced to at least be low on attack.

[@robmarney]

Ironically, the Storm Scale 10 mechanics for power level like storm and dredge and eminence do get occasionally reprinted. But not banding!

[@psymar]

@@robmarney pretty sure Rosewater had banding at 10 and bands with other at 11

[@lokidragon8725]

Banding is a fun mechanic, not a good one but there's some interesting things you can do with it... Anything that triggers when it's blocked or takes damage works well with it Tolarian enchanter is a favorite of mine. There's stuff that kills things when blocking, stuff that draws you cards... As for remade versions of it I believe Mutate an equally confusing keyword could qualify as a version of banding, several creatures combining their abilities to attack as one.

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

It definitely a neat mechanic but both it and mutate have too many moving parts. You start to understand it and throw a wrench into the mix and you need an old judge and a new judge.

[@Minisauro]

You can totally dominate a game of 40 cards with it. I have a unlimited vandalism hero deck that gets crazy strong at no time.

[@Oneiroclast]

It would be interesting to make a cube that lets banding shine. Focus entirely on creatures, combat tricks, and other things that put tactical play in the combat phase front and center.

[@lokidragon8725]

@@Oneiroclast you can do it with a commander deck if you use goad and lure effects.

[@justicegaming1412]

@@HarrisontheManaDork The bigger issue isn't actually Banding, but the way Bands With Other used to work. See, it didn't work the way every sensible person thinks it works, which is that a card that says "Bands with other Dinosaurs" can band with other dinosaurs. Nononono, that would make too much sense. Instead, it meant that it could band with other cards that had "Bands with other Dinosaurs" - and of course, it could join a band of Banding creatures. WotC has finally, for some reason, fixed it - literally as of Magic 2010 - so that Old Fogey can now, in fact, freely Band with other Dinosaurs and not just other Old Fogeys. I'm not clear why they felt it necessary to fix it at that point in time, since it had long since been left by the wayside. If you think I'm joking go grab a copy of the comp rules from 10th edition or older and look it up.

[@HenshinFanatic]

Banding is bad enough, but "Bands with other..." is a whole 'nother level of confusing since it, contrary to the naming, isn't just a limited form of Banding. There are subtle differences that change how it operates.

[@xerty5502]

Funny enough though I personally misunderstood and screwed up mechanics all the time banding was one of the few me and my friends got right from the get go never had problems with it then I moved and found out that no one at all where I moved could figure it out. Not sure how people get confused by it the examples in the rules for banding alweas made perfect sense to me. A little wordy but perfectly understandable. Not that there were not other things in the rule book that we had trouble with there deffenitly was. Just not with banding.

[@ruckly1241]

There are a couple keywords we'll never see printed again because they literally deleted them from the comprehensive rules. The first such keyword is "Threshold", which might be confusing as Threshold is coming back in Bluoomburrow. But that is Threshold as an "ability word" instead of a keyword. Ability words are just a flavor name a cards abilities, often unifying them across multiple cards. Introduced in Saviors of Kamigawa with abilities like "Channel". When it was printed in Odyssey block, Threshold was a keyword that said "You have threshold as long as you have seven or more cards in your graveyard." It was changed to an ability word because, honestly it was just less confusing to write the rules text out every time. So this keyword being deleted is more of a technicality than anything else. Threshold is still alive and well in spirit. The second deleted keyword of is "Landhome". Like Landwalk, Landhome called out a landtype, almost exclusively islands, and read "This creature can't attack unless the defending player controls a (land). Sacrifice this creature if you don't control a (land)." Really old heads will recognize this as the Sea Serpent ability, commonly found on early cards depicting sea monsters that logically couldn't survive on land. This was the first time Magic created a keyword to replace commonly used rules text. Landhome. Not Haste. Not Fear or Vigilance or Reach or Flash. Landhome. That was the keyword that Magic really needed. Landhome was only printed in Mirage block, and only on a couple of cards. The problems with Landhome were multiple. 1) It was pretty much exclusive to Islands. Sure, there was a rare Foresthome or Mountainhome creature, but those were mostly novelty. 2) The ability is 100% all drawback. Like Echo, Fading/Vanishing or Cumulative Upkeep, players prefer abilities that have an upside and deeply dislike abilities that feel like a punishment. 3) The Landhome ability was already on it's way out. Sacrificing your creature because your opponent Stone Rained your last Island was a major "Feels Bad" moment, so by Tempest block, WotC dropped the sacrifice clause and with it, the usefulness of the Landhome keyword. So they deleted the keyword and reverted all the cards with Landhome back to spelling out the rules text. Designers kept using the attack restriction for sea monsters for another decade or so. Until they dropped it all together a decade later, when they realized that players prefer smashing face with their giant creatures more than they cared about the illogical flavor.

[@justicegaming1412]

They still occasionally print an Islandhome (or Islandhome-styled) card without the Islandhome keyword, but it's very rare, and a lot of them are in "remastered" sets. If you want to exclude those, Sealock Monster is in Theros which is fairly recent, and has an inbuilt way around the restriction.

[@CoreyMarinoGames]

Fifth edition had islandhome (sea serpent)

[@garak55]

Ooooh a cube draft with ante would be wild! I need to make that happen.

[@Vincent_Beers]

I don't think you understand what ante is, it wouldn't even make sense in cube draft.

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

Sure, it would! If you win the card, it goes into your card pool.

[@l.belcher1687]

Bring back cumulative upkeep on some cards that do stuff when they hit the graveyard. A black creature that's strong for its cost but sucks up more and more of your mana until you let it die would be cool if it got to kill something when it dies. You've got an interesting choice there.

[@sonokawaray]

That could have been a way to balance Braid of Fire again in a post-mana burn world. Something like "when it leaves the battlefield, you take damage equal to its cumulative upkeep," so you have to consider how big you want this pile of red mana every turn to get before it potentially explodes on you.

[@jamessnedeker4799]

Ante and Shandalar (the Microprose MTG world) were amazing together

[@yemetrica]

i wish i could get this game to run so bad i cant even get it working on an old windoes xp laptop, DAMN YOU DAVE AND YOUR EXTRA COOL TIMER THAT DOESNT WORK

[@Larry.R]

I hope Level up returns in a future set. Aside from Hexdrinker from Modern Horizons 1, it's only even been printed in Rise of the Eldrazi. Just the keyword itself sounds very RPG-like. The main problem is that you have to be willing to sink mana into it to level it up. Which can be bad if your opponent has a removal spell with your creature's name on it.

[@thomasdawicki141]

And there are so many cards that would be way easier to show if it was templated with “level up”. See Surge Engine

[@kaichisaki5267]

Yeah I found out about level up through hexdrinker(I was going to build a snake tribal deck) I also wish there was a level up themed commander I can use, I have prismatic bridge as my commander for now, tho I might see if I can do without red and go atraxa

[@michaelbreedlove348]

It's actually fitting for Cumulative Upkeep to die in the sister set to the one it was born in.

[@Minisauro]

The reason why Ante was banned from magic is because back in the 90’s when WotC was expanding their market by going to places like Brazil where gambling is illegal. That is why they had to give up on it.

[@Larry.R]

Interesting...I thought it would've been to stop brawls from occurring in schoolyards over losing your best card.

[@psymar]

Well, and also most places in the US?

[@minervadetauro7646]

Another mechanic that could be a good example of deprecated mechanics is infect from Scars block. And how poison counters kinda went full circle from a fixed amount per damage (like pit Scorpion or Virulent Sliver), to infect and then nerfed back to fixed numbers in the toxic mechanic. Also, another reason why landwalk fear and intimidate were retired isn't just the unblockablity, it's that it is a very matchup dependent mechanic. Esther your opponent plays the right color to Block and the ability is almost useless, or they don't and it's way too strong

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

Infect is a funny beast on its own too because infect came out in 2010, but poison counters have been around since the 90s. They've been constantly trying to figure out how to make poison work in a way that isn't too strong that it is broken, but isn't so weak that no one plays it.

[@evandurham8908]

In today's scene, infect is balanced. Getting poison counters on someone tends to make you a target, since they're almost impossible to remove and usually you're the only one with it. If the Atraxa player plays a Prologue to Phyresis, suddenly everyone's attention is on the Atraxa player and getting them gone. While yes there are combos that can be used to instantly poison someone to death (Ziatora the Incinerator getting infect can be a big problem if you get something big to fling), that's more of a game-winning combo, something that can usually require several turns to set up (in my case, I run Prossh, so my opponents have allowed me to get three heavy duty value pieces out and keep them out for at least a turn cycle)

[@viviblue7277]

I love “spell counter” in casual silver bordered commander. It makes for fun table dynamics.

[@Rorschachqp]

Banding was good in Limited but not in Constructed. In Constructed, you often want to leak damage through to chip away at your opponent’s life total. The only reason why the rules were confusing was because it worked differently on offense or defense and there was no internet back then. But back in the day I often could explain Banding to newbies in one sentence.

[@Vincent_Beers]

Banding was simple when games were mostly combat and 10 other things weren't happening in response. You only needed to see it used and it made sense.

[@xerty5502]

You mean before you could do a bazillion things in response.

[@Rorschachqp]

@@xerty5502 Hey if you're drafting in a pod and you draft "a bazillion things in response" cards, more power to you. Obviously you can't get more than a few combat trick instants in a sealed deck.

[@xerty5502]

@@Rorschachqp more talking about before they changed how the stack worked and removed interrupts

[@Rorschachqp]

@@xerty5502 Which is important in Constructed but for Banding, it doesn't come up much in Limited. But if you're saying that's why no one plays it in Constructed, yes.

[@goddessbraxia]

I built a deck based on Cumulative upkeep, I had found a card online, but it was a fake card. It was super convincing. It read: Universal Acceleration, "Cumulative upkeep --- Take an additional upkeep step after this one. Universal Acceleration's cumulative upkeep does not trigger during extra upkeep steps." this meant every turn that passes, you would have an additional upkeep trigger over the previous turn. So I started building around upkeep triggers. I hadn't heard of cumulative upkeep prior to this, so I had no frame of reference to realize how broken this was from the onset. It wasn't until I tried to find the card for sale that I realized my error. however, I started searching for combos to simulate this effect. so Paradox haze became the cornerstone, and spells that allowed me to copy enchantments. Xur the enchanter became the commander as many of those spells, including haze itself were 3 mana or less. The deck has a lot of room for improvement, but it's a ton of fun.

[@SYST3MGL1TCH]

I built a commander deck that used the bands with legends lands. It was a Selesnia lure deck. Very janky but when it did it's thing it basically turned into a one sided board wipe during each time i attacked.

[@Pachitaro]

no Rampage? 🥺

[@chazzanschutz6096]

Thing is, they could explore Culumative Upkeep even more. (Triggered abilities that helps others, additive effects if it leaves play, etc.). I feel the same way about Fading as well, mechanics that were never fully fleshed out.

[@2rare2die26]

First commander deck i ever made (back when the format was still technically Elder Dragon Highlander still) was an Ayisha Tanaka banding deck. Forced my playgroup to learn how banding works, despite it not being good at all

[@LegendStormcrow]

I'm actually surprised that regenerate is dead. I played back in the day and even remember some of the games having the ability. Same with fear.

[@anthonycannet1305]

Banding is easily explained as “my group of creatures is treated as if it’s one creature in combat and I get to choose how to assign combat damage dealt to that group instead of how you would normally be able to” If they rephrase some of the reminder text I think it could be possible to bring it back but it’s definitely not strong enough to really want it back anyway…

[@seandun7083]

Not quite. Your creatures don't share abilities and a single removal spell won't kill all of them. You also need to explain about the requirements for declaring a band on attacks and the fact that you don't do so on blocks.

[@anthonycannet1305]

@@seandun7083 “treated as if it’s one creature *in* combat” a removal effect would be a non-combat effect and not care about the banding. Also for the purposes of handling combat phase state based actions, treating my 7 blocking squirrels with banding as if it was one creature makes no mechanical difference. The banding for blockers only cares about other blocking creatures that are also blocking the same creature, so my 7 squirrel “band” would all have to be blocking the same creature anyway, so pretending it’s a single 7/7 for the sake of combat damage works. Banding essentially does 2 things: First, it allows you to group creatures together in combat, and second, it gives you control of how combat damage is assigned to that group instead of your opponent like they normally would be able to.

[@drowningin]

We almost always played Ante in the lunchroom during alpha through ice age. Then we stopped because people were sick of losing dope cards

[@christopherzapata4970]

I'm surprised I didn't see flanking or phasing in here. Was that because they were restricted to one block (Mirage)?

[@ChristopherLaHaise]

2:00 I love banding. I used it with most of my decks. I even made a Benalish Hero exclusive deck before they limited it to 4 cards of any type.

[@coolbrotherf127]

Games as old as MTG or Yu-Gi-Oh have a lot of weird old cards and mechanics. Not too surprising since they were basically inventing a new genre of game so they wouldn't have had much experience yet to know when an idea actually works or not. Ante is probably the strangest one as I can't imagine that even in the early days, people actually were willing to gamble their cards away like that.

[@jamieredden8124]

I always thought it would be cool to make a card called "Boseiju, who withers" where it gets a -1/-1 every upkeep since boseiju is a tree but I guess they already did that with aboroth lol

[@skarloey1214]

Are there any other keywords that haven't appeared in awhile that you want them to bring back?

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

There are a few that I'm nostalgic for that I'd love to see more. Devotion from Theros. We saw it in Theros Beyond Death but anything that rewards you for staying mono colour just does something for me. Chroma is a mechanic that could've been in the video but I didn't have enough I wanted to say about it but I like it. Delve is another contender for this spot. We haven't seen it fully done since Tarkir block but holy crap, it is too powerful. Like Treasure Cruise is 8 mana and still warped formats. I'd love to get more of it but I don't expect it anytime soon.

[@CYCO1631]

Shadow.

[@stevefeak5696]

Contract from Below and Demonic Attorney were S-tier mvps in Shandalar

[@KumanoMTG]

If you miss the cumulative upkeep trigger nowdays, your opp gets to choose whether it's added back onto the stack or if you just completely missed it for the turn, but the card won't get sacrificed.

[@Tophadoodledoo]

I'm pretty sure I have an enchantment in my collection that gives a target creature Cumulative Upkeep, which seems like a decent enough strategy, if only as a stall tactic; put it on an opponent's creature, and they either A) Pay the price to keep it on the board, B) Let the crrature die, or C) Use a removal on it.

[@StAngerNo1]

I haven't played MTG in years, so I don't know, if it is used again, but I was sure "provoke" would be on this list.

[@ElPayasoMalo]

Banding is really good for blocking if your opponent runs a lot of big tramplers because you can choose to assign all of the damage to whichever one of your creatures you need the least. You can block a a 90/90 trampler with three 2/2 creatures and have all ninety damage hit only one of them, perhaps one you've made indestructible, and if one member of your band has deathtouch, then the giant monster is probably dead.

[@nispelsm]

I remember the original mechanics for the "Kor" creatures from the Tempest (Rath) block, which were humanoids that could redirect damage to or from another creature you controlled. That mechanic was quickly dropped because it ended up being way too powerful and tedious to use.

[@kaichisaki5267]

A deck i wish i can really build a strong deck with is the leveling mechanic, the idea of creatures that level up through counters to get stronger and gain new abilities sounds cool to me, sadly there is no level up commamder, so prismatic bridge will have to do

[@torbk]

A creature with banding, if you can make it indestructible, can be the bodyguard of any one of your other creatures when they are attacking. If it always takes all the damage things like deathtouch and double-strike doesn't really matter as the banding creature will eat all that damage. Sure, you could go through the process of making as many creatures as you can indestructible, but with a banding creature it can escort any one creature. If you slso give everything trample, say with Garrux Uprising, what does it matter if they are blocked as a single or two different attackers? Banding has a use, though it is very niche. Easiest way to to accomplish this is to cast the white aura spell Cooperation on a creature that already has indestructible.

[@rosembermorales1995]

I've been trying to use the lands that give your legends banding. No good luck but it's fun.

[@avengerwolf646]

Having played in the release of Unhinged...Gotcha was so much fun. At some point in the night, whenever someone yelled "Gotcha" in a game, the whole room would respond "Ayy!" This lead to a few extra Gotchas from laughter. If you take a silverbordered game so seriously that you are worried about Gotcha, you kinda missed the point

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

I'm happy to hear that it actually served its purpose of some light hearted fun for some groups. It seems like a cool thing for silver border but I could definitely see Maro's reasoning behind cutting it

[@ManuelRiccobono]

Banding is a very good mechanic on payper. Normally you would attack with 2 separate creatures, and your opponet would choose who to block and potentially kill. Immagine using a 15/1 and a 1/15. With banding, you instead combine those 2 creatures into a big 16/16 and you make take the damage only the 1/15 instead of the 15/1, dening your opoonent the chance to kill the crature with the highest atk. The real big downside of the mechanic is that flying and other abilities are not carried to the band. They basically becomes just a big creature with high stats but no effects...

[@arthurfleck4320]

There's a card coming out in Bloomburrow that's basically an upgraded version of Afterlife.

[@Bigparr43]

I remember playing with my first set, Saviors of Kamigawa (or was it Betrayers?) I used a black/green spirit deck that revolved around Soulshift, where you would revive a creature with a converted mana cost of at least one less than the creature that got destroyed. I feel like that could be extremely powerful if used right, but haven't seen it since...

[@DevilSide21288]

cumulative upkeep no longer exist? are u sure? and if i say it's only sliglhy different? for exemple: static prison have an upkeep non cumulative each precombat main fase

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

Yes, I'm sure. That is just an upkeep trigger. Upkeep triggers aren't going anywhere. The difference would be if Static Prison Required you to pay more and more energy each turn.

[@Lightman0359]

There was also psychic vortex: enchantment UU2, at the end of your turn, discard your hand and sacrifice a land. Cumulative upkeep: draw a card

[@TheTbf96]

Arendt they still bringing out/ making Regenerate cards?

[@CYCO1631]

In an Izzet Commander deck, Braid of Fire works really well with 'Cheat for Flash' (ex. Leline of Anticipation, Gandalf, Friend of the Shire, or Negall, Stormrunner) Makes using that mana a lot easier.

[@ryanfreedman6348]

Gonna do the sharpie cube thing and try and get ante and banding in

[@CaveFreediving]

Banding is cool! Just pair weak banders with high power guys, they could be 4/1, for example. Kill their big guys using small banders

[@therealforge]

I am sad sometimes that saying "I cast Lure on Thicket Basilisk and move to combat" no longer causes the shudder of fear it once did.

[@CYCO1631]

Nah... but Gorgon's Flail on Prodigal Sorcerer makes people angry... especially with Freed from the Reel!

[@tangent_mechanic]

Banding is less confusing than mutate.

[@Chronor3]

You should make a list now of mechanics you think either should get a full return or have a cameo in a sey

[@Chronor3]

@@HarrisontheManaDorkgood point, personally a list of mine wood be mutate and kamigawa upside down cards

[@g4mmalotus937]

After they gave a card from Murders "Clash" I wanna see more of it. It's a really fun mechanic that's really balanced from my testing

[@sylasDC]

What about rampage I was one that saw very small amount of actual cards with it The one I believe I remember is craw giant or claw giant I believe it was a 6-3 or an 8-3 rampage 2 and costed six. I was a little surprised it wasn't there and fear is still seen and regeneration is also still seen but those two as you said aren't seem very often. Hey there's even a new assassin's Creed card that gives all your characters fear so there is that

[@Redrum2381]

Banding can be awesome. You can eat a Ball Lightning with a Timber Wolves for instance. Banding trumps trample.

[@Knightfall8]

I have a banding card in my War of the Spark Krenko deck - Baton of Morale. Lets krenko band with a goblin token so that he can safely get through. I know i could just run an equipment to make him unblockable, but it's a flex to run it!

[@evandurham8908]

This is actually a pretty clever way to protect your Tin Street, though you don't need him to connect to gain the benefits, just swing.

[@brendans1983]

I love that a 1/1 with Banding basically Fog's a creature with Trample 🍻

[@SpitefulAZ]

banding actually is very strong when being used for blocking. banding used effectively leads to stale board states and long games.

[@sandwichboy1268]

Worth noting that cloak is power crept manifest, not morph. The difference being that morph cards morph themselves, while manifest/cloak do it to other cards.

[@seandun7083]

Yeah. Disguise is the power crept morph.

[@randallross420]

Back when Mirage and Visions were new, we would completely ignore any rules text that had phasing b/c we just didn't understand it.

[@LupeLokota]

I kept waiting for Phasing to make an appearance, but I guess that wasn't as loathed as some of the other mechanics.

[@seandun7083]

They sort of brought it back as "phases out", but yeah the keyword mechanic wasn't great.

[@steenrai3415]

When a creature is in a band with two others attack alone, is it attacking alone or not. If so, Banding with Samurai could be interesting

[@seandun7083]

No. The creatures don't count as one, it's just that a single creature can block all of them (but can't choose to block a single one individually).

[@timebreach9295]

Yes but bending is even more complicated because of two other keywords Trample and death touch If one of your creatures has death touch that is in the band and one of your creatures has trample how it will work is killing damage has to be assigned first so you allocate the death touch damage to be applied and then all of the creature with trample doze through but that only accounts for the deathtouch creatures power Basically you have to block with a additional creature for each one of the death touch creatures power to get into the trampled damage Also when a band is blocking trample is the problematic interaction Because they are blocking as a group Bandung has a weird interaction were you actually can assign more damage then killing damage without having trample hit you How this works is the entire band has the combined toughness to block the creature with trample then you assign all of the damage to one creature technically there wasn't any assess damage but because of how it was assigned it doesn't travel over It made the thing more complicated than even that but these are some rough rulings that I have seen judges actually put forth on Banding

[@BrotherAlpha]

I would love an Ante Cube on Arena.

[@skillganon606]

Remeber when MaRo introduced the Storm Scale and then printed more cards with Storm and Anihilator. Pepridge Farms remebers.

[@ComingUpDilhouse]

The Storm Scale ONLY refers to standard legal sets though. So the only card printed that breaks the scale that gives storm or annihilator is Ral, Crackling Wit in Bloomburrow.

[@donovanloreman]

Banding is highly underrated.

[@pauldefillippo8490]

My personal favorite commutative upkeep card would be hibernation. And put it on the battlefield, so basically I return you get yourself whatever creature you want and it progressively gets bigger and more threatening, and if you'd rather play the creature in your hand and get rid of hibernation then so be it.

[@adamwarehime6444]

Banding needs to be brought back it's not confusing at all

[@xXMONSACRAXx]

Was that worlds away in London Ontario?

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

It is!

[@BrotherAlpha]

Cumulative Upkeep should make a comeback, but be more creative. There's one where you have to put cards from an opponent's graveyard on the bottom of their library. This is actually upside against graveyard decks.

[@MC-kf7ve]

Skulk could be on this list? I do enjoy some casual commander "Behind the Scenes" shenanigans (as well as horsemanship).

[@petman515]

@MC-kf7ve horsemanship Not flying from one set that was made as an interductery product for the Asian market that has never been reprinted and will likely never be reused. Yeah it's a good choice. Bushido is another I doubt will be seen again at least not likely to be seen again.

[@seandun7083]

​@@petman515it was technically brought back on Herald of Hoofbeats.

[@jeffbriem]

Blocking as a band is busted. You can assign all the damage, including excess damage, to one creature. And only one creature needed to have banding for that to work. Very difficult to attack into.

[@seandun7083]

Yeah. From what I've heard it seems to have a lot of the same problems as first strike where they want you to use it aggressively but it ends up being more powerful on defense. I feel like they could fix that pretty easily by making some of them say "As long as it's your turn, this has banding"

[@Kagebushin01]

If they all get attacked together I can see it working with Deathtouch. I think Ante would be cool if instead of giving them they are temporarily traded until end of event. Also for got Fading, Rampage, Horsemanship, Bushido, Echo and Phasing.

[@sashmiel6566]

It has always puzzled me how people struggle with understanding banding.

[@Darwingreen5]

Surprised "Grandeur" wasn't on that list.

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

Surprisingly, Maro puts it at a storm scale of 5 meaning that it needs the right conditions to work but he's optimistic about it returning. It is a cool mechanic that'd be interesting to see them explore more but it is definitely a victim of commander becoming the face of the game.

[@Darwingreen5]

@@HarrisontheManaDork yeah, they'd really need to put it on a legendary dude(s) that you could take multiples of like the Nazgul or 7 dwarves.

[@bunrakku]

didnt they just did an out of place common legendary recently?

[@Hanmacx]

The main problem is rhat banding and bands with other works slightly different 😅

[@NateBullock-ow6on]

I miss regenerateI used to love silvos rogue elemental and spiritmonger back in the day

[@michaellee4276]

For Banding to be useful, the creature needed to be at least 1/2 (so you could distribute damage with no one dying) but most were 1/1. The ones that weren't were WAY over costed. A 3W 2/2 trample. Or Mishras War Machine, a 7 mana 5/5 with a discard every upkeep. If Mesa Pegasus were 1/2, it would have been used. Banding wasn't that complicated.

[@crovax1375]

I'm building a commander draft cube that uses ante cards!

[@Deathgaming112]

1:51 banding could be interesting with like 0/7 and like 4/1 arcatype

[@Greenlantern957]

Kids today will never know the thrill of a high end ante game…in my group..we each had a “ante box”.. only rated qualified and all of the cards had to be mutually approved..it would get crazy!

[@ShizaruBloodrayne]

I don't see how menace could replace intimidate when it's a whole different tactic being played.

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

In simple terms, it was just another way for these colours to get evasion.

[@ShizaruBloodrayne]

@@HarrisontheManaDork it works against mono colored decks mostly but not so much multicolored. Idk I've always seen it as fair game but I also play legacy so most people aren't a fan haha

[@seandun7083]

​@@ShizaruBloodraynethe idea was that evasion abilities that check if the card can ever be blocked during the deck building phase are less interesting than ones that check if it can be blocked during Gameplay. If you aren't running red or artifact creatures, you can never block a bladetusk boar whereas a mono red deck can always do so. If you look at Boggart Brute however, any deck can block it but they will all also find it harder to do so and might need to play differently because of it.

[@ShizaruBloodrayne]

@@seandun7083 but there's countless types of kill cards or remove from play cards. I don't see how intimidate is a problem when people find ways to remove indestructible cards no problem. I don't even think it's possible for a single deck to cover every boon......if there's a flyer, an indestructible, an enchantment, an artifact, and then maybe like they lay down an instant, there's only so much a single deck can counter and block or remove certain things. I've never seen a deck that is impenetrable from card types. Even control decks have some weaknesses.....not that I'd really know tho because I can't stand playing against control decks lol

[@danielbloomquist9810]

Here's an odd and very specific case of an ability that could be given the keyword treatment as it functions similarly to keywords that would debut fully formed years later. MH3 granted a handful of enchantment creatures Bestowe, effectively removing the typical implicit risk of getting 2-for-1'd which define auras as a subtype, while equipment creatures got Reconfigure on the artifact side of modification, but unlike Bestowe, has the flexibility of modality. But what about a creature type that itself is not an enchantment creature with an activated ability at sorcery speed thru which it becomes an aura attatched to another creature (it loses all other card types when in this mode) and unattaches and reverts the aura to the original creature, effectively Reconfigure for auras? Because this was basically the defining ability of the forgotten brain slugs from the Rath cycle known as Licids. Perhaps Transplant? Maybe a portmanteau of slug and enslave, Enslug? What, if any, are your thoughts on the matter, Syr?

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

I think bestow started back in OG Theros as a way to make auras more playable. That 2 for 1 is enough for a lot of people to steer clear of them especially in limited gameplay. What you're describing makes me think of something like Mutate but then it works from the board rather than the hand. Either way, I think it'd be interesting but I think it constantly runs the risk of being too complicated. Throw a wrench into the mix and watch the whole thing go boom.

[@danielbloomquist9810]

@HarrisontheManaDork Thank you, Syr, for serving up a heapin helpin of cognitive comida. I am gonna need to have myself the neurological equivalent of an after dinner nap to digest this adult serving of food for thought.

[@camerons6028]

Rampage. We will never see it again.

[@Hpborges]

Phasing deserved a mention. Also rampage.

[@gusty7153]

banding sounds like an inverse of menace

[@roberthoddinott9160]

I miss using ritual of subdual

[@robertbemis9800]

Banding could work if they changed it to opponent must block all creatures with banding or not at all

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

Even then, it's one word trying to represent an even bigger mountain of text. By addressing the playability problem, the complexity problem is worsened

[@robertbemis9800]

@@HarrisontheManaDork well I would drop the defense option

[@thetimebinder]

Exterminator Magmarch came out this year and has Regenerate.

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

@@thetimebinder Yeah, I talk about it in the video. It is from Modern Horizons 3 which is designed for more established and experienced players. It'll never show up in standard again.

[@jonothanthrace1530]

12:10 I thought mana burn was done away with long before Coldsnap.

[@Imerias2]

I thought the same thing, but it was removed in September 2007, a year or so after Coldsnap's release.

[@jonothanthrace1530]

@@Imerias2 It is bizarre that it lasted all the way into the "modern" frame era.

[@Alice_Haukea]

I assume this list is non-exhaustive then because I would have assumed that Infect would never see new support. Then again, I guess Toxic is the replacement to Infect. Ironic though because Toxic is infinitely better. I really want Mutate to get more support. But I assume it wont ever again. Not because it's broken, but because it's a ruling nightmare for judges.

[@seandun7083]

You can't get extra counters by casing become immense on a toxic creature though, which was how old infect decks worked.

[@jedstanaland2897]

Most of the supposedly overly complex mechanics as they claim aren't really that complex or broken. Intimidate does not properly replace fear for a primary reason and that is the fact that they haven't errated it to read something to the effect of can't be blocked except for creatures that share a color unless otherwise stated.

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

It is very easy as an experienced and established player to look at a mechanic now and think it isn't complex. Magic is making the barrier to entry as easy as they can. And yeah, complex =/= broken, just like simple=/= weak. Saying intimidate doesn't replace fear, you're just being pedantic. The one was created to replace the other and besides corner cases, performs the exact same way.

[@jedstanaland2897]

@HarrisontheManaDork I'm not being pedantic I was saying that because they have not done the wording change that they should/ could it doesn't function the same way as the other though it might be similar the key difference is that fear does not care about the color of the creature that has it while the other does. The reason why this is important is because a creature that has fear doesn't have certain weaknesses that a creature with intimate absolutely does. For example if you have a field of non-black, non-artifact creatures you would either need to change your entire field to one of those to block the fear creature while a creature with intimidate can have its color changed and now it can be blocked by all of the creatures of that color in addition to whatever color(s) it already had and artifact creatures. This said intimidate has an extra benefit that fear doesn't and that is if the creature is colorless then only artifact creatures can block it.

[@kmsbean]

Dude, World's Away at 666 Dundas?

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

I miss it. I could flip through those binders for hours.

[@jonothanthrace1530]

Ante belongs in a draft-specific set like Conspiracy.

[@fermitupoupon1754]

Ante is actually pretty neat in cube draft. That way your opponent has another opportunity to give you that card you missed during the draft phase. Though we do play with modified ante rules. Ante is compulsory. Cards in the Ante Zone are not considered part of a player's card pool (this matters for Worldknit for example). Players get to choose which card to ante. Basic Lands are not allowed as ante. Cards in a player's card pool, but not in their deck are considered side-board cards (even if there are more than 15, for example due to Advantageous Proclamation) At the end of a game players each get to pick one card at a time from the ante zone, winner goes first. A player can only take as many cards from the ante zone as they've put in. The cube is singleton, with the core being Conspiracy and Conspiracy Take The Crown, all of the planeswalkers from War of the Spark, a healthy dose of Un-sets, some fancy lands to encourage dual colour play, and to top it all off we play this with Planechase for maximum chaos. Preferably with 8 player 2HG, with 4 teams playing in the single game. Ante adds to the fun in this case, because what may seem like crap to one player may be a vital combo piece to another player. Want to pass a card to your 2HG team mate? Put it in ante and hope you win. We did make it a swap instead of winner takes all, in order to make ante compulsory. Same with the "take out what you've put in" rule, that way if in a 3 player game there are 4 cards in ante, the player that put 2 into ante also gets 2 back and everyone stays at 45 drafted cards. But the order in which you take cards doesn't change. So if the player who came second put in two cards, the player who came third gets to pick their first card, before the player who came second gets their second card. At the end of the night there's not really anything at stake, as all cards go back in the cube. But it does add a fun mechanic to a cube draft.

[@jonothanthrace1530]

@@fermitupoupon1754 I can only imagine you put a lot of thought and testing into this, which I appreciate. I bet it'd be a lot of fun to play in this cube with these rules!

[@jarodshawcroft6624]

I miss rampage on creatures

[@jaycue7641]

How about Shadow?

[@thetimebinder]

Dauthi Voidwalker in 2021

[@ladwigs]

They need an enchantment, that brings mana burn back

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

@@ladwigs its not the same but there is a commander that does it

[@TheZakurumy]

Banding is extremely broken. Because of how Damage Dealt is managed in Magic, having Banding meant that you could make all of the damage of a card go to one of the blockers. So if you attacked with a 10/10 and a 1/1, and your oponente blocked with an 11/11, you didn't made an even trade. You said "I assign all of your 11 combat damage points to the 1/1", and you kept the 10/10. BTW, this also meant that if you blocked using Banding, you effectively negated TRAMPLE, because once again, you negated the attackers ability to assign combat damage. You could also divide the damage in parts, instead of choosing order of creatures like having multiple blockers. (Ex. If you attack with a 3/3 and your oponent blocks with a 1/3A, a 1/1B and a 1/2C, if you attacked A first, you only killed that. If youattacked B and then A, you only killed B, if you attacked C, then B, then A, you killed everything EXCEPT A. Well. In the contrary way, with Banding, if you are the blocker in this, you can choose to assign 2 damage to A and 1 damage to C, instead of choosing "order of blocking", which is not the same. This way, all of your creatures are alive). While Banding is shamelessly complicated in text with no real reason, learning how it actually makes the game work is a good way to understand game mechanics like Combat and Damage Steps and Assignation of Damage.

[@BooyaCS]

Shadow and Flanking were funish mechanics especially in the block they were released in. Same with Buyback and shroud. Phasing was very confusing when it was introduced Same with Sunburst

[@seandun7083]

I really want them to bring back shroud occasionally but just tweak the reminder text to make it clear that it stops you from targeting your own stuff.

[@seandun7083]

Sunburst has sort of come back in the form of converge, which is a bit more wide open in terms of design space.