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

[@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.

[@tochoXK3]

I wonder how much the Storm Scale means given that Stotm itself got reprinted with Bloomburrow Ral.

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

@@tochoXK3 A 10 means no cards in standard unless there is a major miracle. I think the major miracle is that Magic is now allowing guest appearances from some keywords. This way they can do some flashy things but they hopefully don't get too out of hand

[@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?

[@Zarlos01]

And there's a enchantment that gives "white fear", is the same rule, but swapping black for white.

[@nicks4802]

Why would a green creature be intimidated by a black creature? Ooooo a 2/2 zombie with decayed, SO intimidating….. my 7/7 Thorn Elemental that deals damage as though it weren’t blocked is intimidated by your zombie……. Right….. because a tree has flesh for the zombie to eat…. And a tree is burried when it dies, so it’ll have a grave to rise from….. See how much more stupid it is on black creature? Deathtouch causes more fear at the table than Fear itself…. Intimidation > Fear

[@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.

[@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.

[@frankvandorp9732]

They can't give characters on horseback horsemanship for one set, because it would make no sense why thousands of creatures from other sets, that are also mounted, wouldn't have the ability. They probably regret creating this mechanic in the first place for Three Kingdoms.

[@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?

[@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.

[@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)

[@eightywight]

Kek

[@oz_jones]

@@GiveItARest that sounds like an un-set card. (Slaps table)

[@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.

[@karl-erlendmikalsen5159]

I don't get why people think banding is difficult. You read the oracle text, right? It isn't more difficult than that. The band blocks or is blocked as one creature, and the controller of the band gets to decide how damage is dealt among the band.

[@staffordandsuch]

Easy to forget once you're established, but multiblocks/distributing damage is something a lot of newer players have trouble wrapping their heads around 🤷‍♂️ Also, banding is one of those mechanics that becomes more complex the more variables you add in. What if one of the creatures in the band has flying? Effectively the band doesn't fly, but that's not necessarily intuitive. What if one of the band has trample? What if your banding blocker can block multiple creatures per combat? These questions all have answers, but they're enough to make... really, any player who isn't a rules geek just not want to bother

[@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.

[@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.

[@RestingStitchFace0]

Banding was one of those keywords that was really easy to explain how it functions, but terrible to parse out in terms of Magic speak. Your band can include up to one guy without it. You as the attacker can decide how blockers deal damage, but if one dude in your band is blocked, they're all blocked.

[@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)

[@blairregenwetter4328]

Disagree on "Banding" being bad. If you attack me with a giant trampler, and I block with everything and have a creature with Banding, then I control where your trampler's damage goes, and I can put all of your damage in to a 1/1 and have no damage trample over. I use it all the time.

[@rraunso]

That's not how we used it. The trample effect would still have carried over to the player. Thats why you had walls back then. Banding with a wall of swords, and you would have a pretty beefy defender.

[@blairregenwetter4328]

@@rraunso thats a shame, you've been mis-playing banding. Rule 702.22j in the MTG rulebook, you choose where the damage goes, and Rule 510.1c says you can assign more damage to a blocking creature than required for lethal damage, so you can assign all of a 20/20 trampler to a 1/1 and have no trample damage go over. Come to think of it... the 1/1 banding blocker doesn't even need to be banded to anything else to suck up the damage!

[@rraunso]

@@blairregenwetter4328 oh, nice. Didn't know that. Don't think it was that specified in those small rule books, we had back then. On the other hand. We also used weird rules like. If you used two flyers with banding, they gave flying to the non-binding creature. Rules were a bit all over.

[@christophermcclellan8730]

Was glad to hear Soulbond mentioned. Everyone hated when I played that deck because no one understood the mechanic.

[@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.

[@anilin6353]

This is a black card from ice age that let you draw a card for each age counter on it, but the cumulative upkeep was one life.

[@MeowsyDancer]

Bruh banding on blocking is OP. You can move all 100 damage onto 1 creature. No overspill

[@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)

[@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

[@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

[@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?

[@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

[@williambamann1845]

I honestly love Banding… I think it is stronger than you describe in this video because you can essentially trade a weak creature for one of your opponents stronger ones..

[@Wiktorion]

Great video, just a tip regarding the audio recording, I advise putting a 100hz roll-off on the voice overlay. At 8:54 there is a very noticeable rumble and knocking in the 30-40 hz range which was very noticeable in my full spectrum listening environment. Usually this low frequency isn't needed for voice and can also mask accidental pops and booms that occur from shaking the table or a mic arm.

[@HarrisontheManaDork]

This is the most specific and oddly helpful advice I've ever received. Thank you lol

[@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.

[@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.

[@adrianscott4288]

5:00 wait, regenerate is gone? Wow, i really HAVE been out of this game for too long. 😅

[@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.

[@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.

[@pidgeotroll]

Banding certainly has use cases, but they are all so niche that banding is never a reason to play a card, and there are no banding cards printed worth playing in pretty much every format. Some extremely niche use like protecting an all-in commander from infinite sized blockers may exist, but there are probably always better, more flexible cards to run instead.

[@ElPayasoMalo]

@@pidgeotroll I love using banding to shut down green trample-heavy EDH decks.

[@pidgeotroll]

@@ElPayasoMalo Thing is, there are a ton of ways to shut down green trample-heavy EDH decks, ways that are more flexible and better agianst other strategies too.

[@ElPayasoMalo]

@@pidgeotroll Sure, but the fun of EDH is seeing unexpected tactics and weird cards you wouldn't see in other formats. Nobody expects the Banding Inquisition!

[@Conan_the_Based]

I don't get why Regenerate was axed. Even as a newbie kid with his first deck, I intuitively understood that Regenerate restores HP damage, but they were still vulnerable to things like Destroy, Bury or Remove From Game.

[@RasmusVJS]

That's not how it works. Regenerate does prevent destroy effects.

[@OnetastyJoe]

Yeah i dont really understand the logic of "its not newby friendly" when all of magic is very non friendly to new players. Crew, equip, jumpstart, rebound, suspend are all equally complicated when you dont read what it does. Just read the rule for it once and youre good to go...

[@RasmusVJS]

@@OnetastyJoe You say that, but the person who wrote the comment literally got how Regenerate works wrong, in their comment about how easy Regenerate is to understand.

[@OnetastyJoe]

I get that but i dont think it disproves my point that its just as simple/complicated than the majority of magics rules. While also being really fun.

[@RasmusVJS]

@@OnetastyJoe Personally, I think "indestructible until end of turn" plays better and is more intuitive, so I don't see why they'd return to a worse and more complicated mechanic.

[@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.

[@wowbaggerTIP]

I started playing in Revised and I swear I don't understand the confusion around banding. It's powerful and simple, and for some reason everyone hated 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.

[@seandun7083]

That would be a cool one to see again. I guess they are just a bit cautious about putting that much removal on creatures when they aren't forced to by having a set that is entirely creatures like Legions was.

[@jasonclough9380]

One thing about Regenerate (which I don't think you explicitly mentioned) is that it was scrapped because everyone used it incorrectly. As mentioned, it functions exactly as shield/indestructible but most people kept using it to bring creatures back from the graveyard (I actually remember doing this when I was younger). Basically, it was a case of "the mechanic was fine, the word wasn't"

[@viviblue7277]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@brandonm558]

No one ever talks about provoke anymore. Shadow’s another one

[@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

[@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.

[@michaelbreedlove348]

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

[@isHavvy]

It was dead before then, but they brought it back for a single card in that set; mainly for this thematic reason.

[@Deathgaming112]

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

[@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.

[@johngriffin9407]

Honestly one of the most fascinating old keywords I have seen is "Epic" which was printed on a single spell for each color. It had the effect of copying itself every turn at the cost of you no longer being able to cast any other spell.

[@Tera_GX]

I absolutely love the Suspend mechanic and still play it, but the technicalities around it do get convoluted, and I have to be prepared to explain the nuances of its rules every time. It's clear they don't "want" to use it more because of clarity. I'm happy they did, mostly in Modern Masters 2, recent two in Murders at Karlov Manor. And it's clear that the new "Impending" was named to be related but a smoother execution, a possible replacement.

[@angelfury8182]

Banding is one of the few ways to change how combat actually works. Getting to choose how damage is distributed to your creatures that are blocked is secretly over powered. Also it's crazy how many people pronounce cumulative wrong

[@evlkenevl2721]

As soon as I saw this I said "banding". Haven't played in many years, but knew that would be one of them.

[@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.

[@Rijnswaand]

Banding is actually really strong. The reason why it shouldn’t return is because of the complicated rules that define how to actually form a band that even spawned the „bands with“ variant.

[@frankcrowley5756]

@@Rijnswaand it wasn’t that hard to understand when it came to banding. I’ve played since alpha and understood it when it came out.

[@lunondisposable5382]

Funnily enough, Braid of Fire having outlived mana burn is still legal in many formats. Combine it with something like Horizon Stone and it's just a growing source of free mana

[@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.

[@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

[@WoWisdeadtome]

With banding, since the attacker determined how combat damage was dealt instead of the blocker it could actually be insanely overpowered particularly with something like a 1/3 (or several 1/3s) banded with a strong attacker. Treat that 1/3 like an ablative +1/+3 counter so you had to deal 3 damage MORE than the toughness of the strong attacker to make any progress. If you did less than that the attacker could split 2 damage onto the Benalish infantry and the rest onto the big monster and lose neither. If you can muster 3 damage more than the big attacker's toughness then all damage piles on the 1/3 and you knock off the the +1/+3 counter. This did come with a caveat though in that if you split damage across multiple bands to prevent losing creatures you were priming yourself to suffer the greatest of pyroclasms (deals two damage to all creatures on the table) of all time and as pyroclasm was quite prevalent at the time this was no small threat.

[@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.

[@DAsrada]

Herald of Leshrac is fun. Its just such a fun design. Such a nice way to handle Cumulative Upkeep.

[@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

[@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...

[@haxalicious]

Ante in cube is indeed rather fun, especially mixed with things like Booster Tutor and other un-set cards. All of them besides Contract from Below are basically unplayable tho.

[@stevefeak5696]

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

[@SquibbyJ]

You can crack banding incredibly easily though if any band with others creature gets an attack trigger or a surplus of tokens. Takes the risk out of attacking

[@sdmayday]

So what are your thought on provoke and the epic mechanic?

[@tomfrost6049]

Getting rid of Banding is such a crime... shield knights and walls could benefit so much from the mechanic. Being able to band as a group and block a serious threat, kill it without losing everything? That's so cool. But seeing as it's been 30 years, how did it work with rampage?

[@tomfrost6049]

Most of this list, ti me, is a reminder of how much more fun the game was way back when... im glad people enjoy the game now but nostalgia is a bitxh and I love things like landwalk, banding, regenerate, etc... hell, I feel like the older cards were better for our vocabulary.

[@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.

[@holdintheaces7468]

Donating Illusions of Grandeur is still one of my favorite win conditions out of the entire history of magic.

[@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.

[@chompythebeast]

Another mechanic we see very little of lately is Protection. Not sure if it's supposed to be gone altogether, but it does sorta have the problem of having a large paragraph of italic text when explained

[@RasmusVJS]

As recently as OTJ earlier this year, there was a roadrunner with Protection from Coyotes. But it's only a decidious mechanic nowadays.

[@chompythebeast]

@@RasmusVJS I dunno if I'd really heard a mechanic called "deciduous" as opposed to "evergreen" before, that's funny haha. I guess that's the best part of the IP releases, they go so hard on fitting the lore into MTG that they use almost the full breadth of its toolbox Edit: ah, _OTJ,_ that's not even one of the Realms Beyond lol. I've been out for a bit, I guess

[@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.

[@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

[@loxeggcheese]

I have ante as an option for my mono white cube! Still haven’t tried it, but I imagine it’s pretty fun :)

[@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.

[@Pachitaro]

no Rampage? 🥺

[@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.

[@HobGungan]

I guess I'm the only one who kinda liked Banding back in the day. Not that I ever used it to its full potential (I was 7 when Magic came out and it would be another decade and a half before I grokked the rules enough to actually deckbuild instead of just collect the pretty pictures), but I always thought it was kinda neat. I would love to see some of the Ante cards redesigned to just have the player take temporary control rather than just keep the card, because they're flavorful as hell. I kinda miss landwalk.

[@Redrum2381]

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

[@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...

[@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

[@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.

[@ThorKillian]

11:54 Ha, I run Karplusan minotaurs in my multi-player flip-a-coin deck that features krark's thumb, etc. Lol ahh good times.

[@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

[@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.

[@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

[@ctsamurai]

I have a soft spot for Ante cards as it was a clear design choice based around loosely constructed decks. Plus the various cards that exchanged themselves for ante cards; the idea that the cards would drift through different players' decks ... Feels very "Magic 1.0" when card sleeves didnt exist, and deck construction was not as defined.

[@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.

[@SpitefulAZ]

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

[@Markvdorow]

I may be talking out of my butt here, but I'm pretty sure Fear and Intimidate and landwalk were cut not to reduce unblockable creatures (given blue still gets a bunch of them today) but more so that they are unblockable only in certain matchups

[@huntedperson3147]

Arcane spells and "Splice into arcane", came out in one set and one set only. Card designers called it a parasitic mechanic in that it only ever worked with arcane cards and didnt work with cards outside of the set. Near the release date they realized that it should of been "splice into instant" so that it wasnt so limited in capability without designing more cards that only worked with itself.

[@seandun7083]

"Splice onto instant or sorcery" did actually come back in one of the horizons sets.

[@RasmusVJS]

Plenty of mechanics have only been printed in one set. But yeah, Arcane is not coming back.

[@TheTicain]

I remember banding... it was a nightmare everytime somoene brought a banding deck and making up blocking rules everytime...

[@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!

[@aralornwolf3140]

Why not cast Entangler on your Basilisk instead?

[@brendans1983]

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

[@misterturkturkle]

Banding in seconds: Pretend the entire band is one creature Until damage dealing time

[@Ruinah]

0:10 For a half-second I thought you said Daunt and were gonna talk about that, which may be a real keyword spoiled in Mystery Booster 2 based on an existing set of words already in use on cards.

[@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!

[@adamwarehime6444]

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

[@arthurfleck4320]

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

[@darkgatheringwfb5759]

I like to see Ante brought back but affecting player's side boards instead. Might make competitive play even more twisted = "they only won b/c they use a card from my sideboard" 😂

[@christopherzapata4970]

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

[@RasmusVJS]

Whilst the keyword "phasing" hasn't been used, "phasing out" is being used in standard sets.

[@christopherzapata4970]

@@RasmusVJS as an effect from sorceries or enchantments (or whatever they're called now)?

[@RasmusVJS]

@@christopherzapata4970 On any card type. Cards that phase out cards are a thing, but the keyword where a card phases out every other turn is unused.

[@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.

[@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

[@tangent_mechanic]

Banding is less confusing than mutate.

[@viyami]

*Not why ante was discontinued, but good job making up your own narrative.

[@ryanfreedman6348]

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