Alliances | The Resleevables #12 | Magic: The Gathering History MTG

[@ScottieScottie-uw4xs]

100% saved MtG in my area. A red Juzam? A land that taps for a Dark Ritual effect? Making your opponent concede just because he doesn’t want to read ALL of the text on Helm of Obedience? Magic was back, baby! Balduvian Horde was a $25 hit. We hadn’t been able to pull something like that since the tail end of Legends when those packs already cost $20. The excitement was real.

[@loungezinger]

Red force of will

[@micahtaylor1397]

Contagion was a guaranteed include for mono black creatures. Force of will as also a mono blue player at the kitchen table, I played 4 forces, 4 counterspells, 4 arcane denial, 4 memory lapse, and of course 4 stasis. This is where many friends have been lost to many in Magic. Hahahhah

[@jondorsey2043]

Faithful viewer until the sun swallows the earth. Cedric and P Sully make the highest level MtG content. GOAT level.

[@calvinball1]

I can't get over how much I enjoy this series

[@makingnoises2327]

Surprised there's no discussion of Force of Will originally being red, explaining why its art is so different from other counterspells.

[@maximuscesar]

This is the first time in my life I hear about those war riders. And oh boy, like Mike said, this is the best use of cumulative upkeep and rampage ever. Very good card.

[@umpatte0]

A memorable moment for me around this time was that I got to play a deck with about 15 cards in it at a tournament when Alliances was out. The tournament rules had you get 3 booster packs, one or all (I can't remember) was Alliances. You could add any basic lands you wanted to the pack. You played that round. At the end of the round, whoever lost could keep a card from their packs or maybe two or something, and the rest of the cards would go to the winner who could now use those to build their deck for the next round. This progress through the tournament. Because we started with 3 packs, there was no minimum deck size for the first round. And I pulled a Soldevi Digger from my pack. So, my deck was basically some basic lands, the Digger, the "Ball Ant" that had haste and commulative upkeep, and about 3 other spells. I could keep cycling the same creatures into my deck over and over with the digger and never run out of cards. I may have had a pillage, and some other useful creature for blocking purposes. It was great.

[@jordanewers5375]

Loved the Guided Passage story, the trick is to use it as a way to show off your sweet deck

[@kingfuzzy2]

I use it as a way to confuse my opponents with my awful card choices

[@stephanieboulding1796]

CEDRIC: The pitch cycle, which still lives on in Magic today, PATRICK: (knowingly looks at the camera as a man who still gets Force of Will'd in Legacy)

[@jenniferwilliams9612]

2:00:14 I was a very young and new player when Alliances first came out. Alliances is the first set that I experienced the release of as an active player, where the set mattered (I was around for the release of Homelands, but that was at the very beginning of my playing time, and Homelands went unnoticed at the time for the Homeland-iness of the set). I remember the release and early days of Alliances. I still remember my (at the time older) Magic playing friends at the card store complaining about the only card that could have ever won this set, and one of them said, “Oh my God! Force of Will! I will never pay five dollars for an uncommon! It’s just an uncommon! How can they want five bucks for it?!” Oh my, how times have changed!…. Alliances made Magic what it became in many ways. And I still remember the days that it dropped. What a crazy time!

[@TheEppypens]

I remember being in the finals of an alliance draft and the opponent played Lord of Tresserhorn in the finals..haha (won that tournament) , super exicted about series in general; just great!

[@user-qw3oh3dx1o]

You guys don’t realize that this is a master class in game design. Please continue This is so important.

[@cameroncorrado3935]

100% agree with the Storm Crow opinion. Y'all have had your fun; it's time to let the meme die. 😁

[@kaylee42900]

I had my outpost stolen like 3 times as a kid. That's how much people liked that card :D

[@badgerchillsky535]

I love Soldevi Digger! I have my copy in one of my commander decks. I’ll never forget a friend of mine that would make these Rube Goldberg combo decks with five to ten moving parts, and Digger was always somehow involved 😂

[@MapleWillowAspen]

Regarding the "What is a snow land" dicussion at 25:25, as a new player I did indeed think that snow lands were lands with snow in the artwork. There's a plains in fifth edition where the art is covered in snow, and I thought that with that, I had a snow covered plains in my posession. It took me a few years to learn that these are distinct cards with actual different cardnames.

[@sniper13500]

Bravo Johnathan Choi! The editing and production is so subtly complementary to MTG's greatest casting duo. Keep up the great work :)

[@SimplySimonLP]

While it's not a named mechanic in either case, there's two design trends I noticed in Alliances cards that I'm pretty sure are new, at least in this density: removing cards from your library as a specific cost (Seasoned Tactician, Diminishing Returns, but also unmentioned ones like Royal Herbalist), and giving your opponent resources. Especially of the latter there's always a sprinkling here and there in earlier cards, but nothing as clear as Phelddagrif, the War-Riders, Soldevi Heretic...also, unmentioned in the video, Phantasmal Sphere, Soldevi Sentry and Steam Beast).

[@KellyUnekis]

re: Varchild's War Riders, I used to Brand all of the survivor tokens before they changed the rules on who put the tokens into play

[@simoncss1]

1:13:48 Ced: “I do like that this dead had a ‘stache on it” Pat: “Yea. Recently deceased”😂 Can y’all hear the live wrestling fanz crowd chanting away “You still got it 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏You still got it!”

[@frederikandersen7295]

Alliances is awesome. I still play Ice Age + Alliances from time to time, just to play some thawing glaciers. Also balduvian horde is pretty strong there, if you play similar threads before that to lure out the swords and bash:)

[@Zero_Chaos]

Around 23:10 Charlie Catino is the name of the Alliance dev. The different name is a joke. From the MTG Wiki - "Starting with the inadvertent typo of “Cateeno” in the game's first rulebooks, Charlie's name has been intentionally misspelled in many products he has worked on since as a kind of running gag."

[@sobman]

interestingly, that's the only way people know of him, is the misspellings of his name lol

[@captawesome42]

Boss - "design team is all full but we got room at developer if that works for you." Mark Rosewater - "I'm not that great at evaluating power level. I think I'd be a much better designer." Boss - "you want a job or not?" Mark Rosewater - "yes, please" and that's what happened

[@Cecekcz]

Nature's Blessing effects also don't end at the end of a turn. Very weird card.

[@ankhi3585]

Riding that Dilu horse before it was fashionable.

[@umpatte0]

Alliances was a breath of fresh air. (I was literally typing that before you said it at @2:04:15). There was soooo much Fallen Empires. Homelands had a miniscule number of cards that were good enough to play in a tournament. Ice Ages had some useful things, but was another set that was really lackluster. When Alliances came along, it actually had chase rares in it. The stompy decks wanted the Balduvian Hordes. Control decks wanted Force of Will. The Kjeldoran Outpost were hard to deal with in the blinking spirit/wrath of god types of decks. Everyone want about 3 thawing glaciers in their decks for mana ramp. There were actually cards in the expansion that were sought out greatly. And this was the first time that was the case in 4 expansions. And it wasn't like the current day where a new expansion comes out every month. Months would go by between expansions back then, and Homelands/Fallen Empires was your reward. I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit. :(

[@NizzahonMagic]

I'm so glad you guys went after the Storm Crow meme.

[@penguinlust6749]

Looking forward to this one. Before watching this episode I'll give this set an 8 -- let's see if we agree. Edit: Yup, seems we do. I loved this set back in the day. This was the last set I was an active player for, and it was telling that it got a lot of use immediately as opposed to the prior set where if it hadn't been for the 5-card requirement rule might never have been touched. There was genuine love for this set amongst the player base, and the discussions of the game dying disappeared fairly quickly in the wake of this set. Thanks guys for an excellent episode.

[@kingfuzzy2]

I'm the only one that likes this set at my lgs so I'm happy someone else rates it highly

[@mxes5938]

been waiting patiently for this, let's gooo! finally a good set

[@targetplayer]

Mirage is often regarded as the first set designed for Limited, but Alliances nudged design in that direction. Very few double mana symbols at common and those were well worth it (black first strike regenerator, white 2/3 bander, green 3/3 regen / berserkers / 2/7 pump tree). Plus Alliances relaxed the silly rule about not doing artifacts at common and gave us a color fixer (Astrolabe) and four playable creatures (Soldevi Sentry, Aesthir Glider, Soldevi Steam Beast, and the busted Phyrexian War Beast).

[@vincentlance]

We were robbed of Marriage of Convenience.

[@DracoSuave]

The reason for 'two pieces of art' going away is because Alliances and previous small sets were printed on two sheets, and rarity was set by the number of copies on teh sheet. Later small seats instead used the standard three sheets up until Alara's addition of mythics.

[@anthonypreville9345]

Love these so much! When I found the show (Ice Age) there was a huge back catalogue to watch, it was heaven. Now I have patiently wait for every new release one at a time like everybody else. Can’t even get decent food. Right after I got here I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.

[@TuneL0wDieSl0w]

Dude I want these set episodes every day they’re so good lol. Also, I’m glad you guys let the episodes be long and talk about things in depth even if they’re a little of track. It’s cool to hear stories and fun facts from personal experiences from back in the day. Stoked for the next one

[@themisprintguy]

So we aren’t going to mention Force of Will is an uncommon? Should be the winner of best non-rare.

[@stephenmoran5855]

Woooo I've been fiending for some more resleevables! Can only watch the same episodes over and over so many times!

[@user-to9ge8ii9n]

2:11:43 - excellent end card, these are the best ad reads

[@85mcarnold]

38:45 Obligatory comment that Bounty of the Hunt should have given permanent +1/+1 counters. Seriously, black gets to give permanent -4/-2, green always got the worst in early Magic.

[@kingfuzzy2]

Still a fun way to win in green aggro in legacy

[@Blackadder75]

I love this series. I played since revised, but I became a Spike soon and never put much attention to things like the Lore.. and now 25 years later I still discover new things.. Very cool.

[@kaylee42900]

thawing glaciers was crazy card advantage

[@rkk667]

This set inspired so many deck ideas. When mirage came out I had an actually good counter burn deck using browse and soldering digger to never run out of gas w thawing glaciers and ivory gargoyle

[@christopherlundgren1700]

Interesting that Patrick points to Browse as a card that would have inspired players to play more cards in their decks. While I'm sure this would have made sense to someone at first pass, the real trick with Browse was to exile your deck down to just a few cards, which you could then recycle over and over with Soldevi Digger to create an unconquerable gamestate for your opponent. Edit: So he kind of alludes to this strategy just a few minutes later, but as part of a value engine rather than an end-game win condition, which is a pretty different deck imo. The Browse decks I remember, specifically tried to deplete their library as fast as possible, so they could use the Digger to perform the same action every turn for the rest of the game.

[@kinginthenorth1437]

It's easy to forget the exact details of someone else's deck's gameplan from 25 years ago.

[@christopherlundgren1700]

@@kinginthenorth1437 I'm not doubting that Patrick knew a guy that played an 80 card Browse deck, I'm just saying that's not the version that I remember.

[@terryschwimmbacher2314]

In retrospect it seems obvious that Mark Rosewater designed Library of Lat-Nam. It really feels more akin to a modern card than something out of Homelands in the way it reads and plays.

[@b.h.abbott-motley2427]

Great episode! How did y'all neglect to mention the Mercadian Masques pitch cycle when discussing pitch cycles? You remembered Pulverize but not Misdirection, Unmask, Vine Dryad, Cave-In, & Reverent Mantra. All of those, except for possibly Mantra, saw competitive play.

[@Rebelismlol]

They also missed the shoals from Kamigawa (Blazing still considered too powerful with infect to this day)

[@christopherlundgren1700]

Not a pitch card, but on the subject of alternative cost "free" spells, we have Fireblast in Visions, coming out not long after this. I imagine that's a card that Patrick will have some strong feelings about.

[@crikohler6]

mercadian masques... such a missundertud set 🥲 (his only problem was... came after urza's block😅 )

[@malificusalbert]

@57:56 it was a little delayed, but that Fireball from our man Sullivan broke through

[@kevinbrown770]

Have really come to look forward to these episodes. Love the nostalgia of these old cards and remembering a collection long gone. Hope you keep it up until you reach my first packs (Starter 99/Sixth Ed.)

[@mymoviesbetter8466]

Aw yeah this made my day, hearing that Resleeveables beat like 🕺

[@Kozlack]

I look forward to these so much. Thank you for everything you guys do. I adore your cotent!

[@Penfold67]

Amazing as ever. I look forward to these every fortnight-ish?

[@EltWilder]

Loved those months of playing Homelands cards with nothing new.

[@kingfuzzy2]

Very glad to see a video one one of the 10 hated draft sets in my cube love this set : D

[@vincentwerts4724]

love these videos. i love magic lore, including the story of magic itself. Looking forward to the next one.

[@benwinterbottom9635]

Loved this set as a kid

[@Billchu13]

Imo Homelands was the final block-less set, Alliances was the 2nd and only real expansion to ice age. Cold snap fits as an expansion for both sets as far as mechanical follow ups etc but it's more like Time spiral 4

[@janmelantu7490]

Alliances continues ABU’s mantra of instant cycles: Blue is bonkers, Red and Black are Excellent, Green is fine, and White is unplayable

[@UCanBeatVideoGames]

How about the Shoal cycle from Betrayers of Kamigawa, and the VERY GOOD Mercadian Masques Cycle that includes Misdirection and Unmask.

[@bdellovibrioo5242]

12:46 It's so funny to me how invested this ad is in the negative story arc for the losing player. It could have just kept the opponent unspecified, but instead the ad shows us someone's bad beat, lol.

[@andrewscott8813]

“Gorilla’s don’t have shamans.” *clicks like button*

[@Eddyb1e]

My LGS had always been rather firm of holding msrp on all products. I saw the evolution of their change in philosophy as mtg progressed after removing msrp. When Lorcana came to their store they were shouting about how at ~50% above msrp they were doing us players favors. I decided to abstain and recommended my closer friend to do the same. Glad we did as the store is now forced to lower their price with this drop. Maybe they check themselves in the future.

[@starwed]

You've finally caught up to the point where I originally quit playing magic! (I played from ~Legends -> Homelands). More due to my friend group no longer playing than because of any personal dislike of the sets.

[@seanparks6939]

Remember buying homelands and ice age packs for under $1.50, fallen empire packs for around $0.50. The dark and revised were still standard 2.5ish. Yeah they were underpowered but you could tell overprinted. Even mirage was overprinted and you could get at times for under $1 a pack. Star wars had similar issues with unlimited and cloud city

[@karlk5801]

14:38 It's nice when the two pieces of art tell a story, but it can still be worth having the two pieces of art so that you can let the *flavor text* tell a story. Like Aesthir Glider, where one quote is "This is an abomination" from a skycaptain and the other is "this is artifice at its best!" from Arcum Dagsson, Soldevi Machinist. 1:41:37 Keeper of Tresserhorn is a 6/6 when blocked and causes life loss instead of damage when unblocked, just like Lim-Dul's Paladin. It should have been called Lim-Dul's Squire.

[@jacksonreynolds7433]

Oh man I needed this today

[@fawkes418]

In regards to free cards, we also had traps in Zendikar. Not all of them were free, but some were.

[@kingfuzzy2]

There was also trap hate cards which is hilarious

[@thenightangel05]

Love the content! Keep it up!

[@JalebJay]

You missed out on the Kamigawa cycles where the pitched spell's cmc attributes to the X.

[@Cactrot]

I am told by reliable sources that Bill Sienkiewicz's last name is pronounced Sin-KEV-itch, one of the greats.

[@gabri3lzzz]

I figured by now they would have made a 3RR 5/5 with no drawback - but after doing a search I confirm they haven't!

[@karmajarrule]

Shoal cycle overlooked 😢

[@pdieraue]

BTW, Charlie Catripino is actually Charlie Catino. His name was accidentally misspelled in the Alpha rulebook where he was credited as a playtester, and after that they started intentionally misspelling his name in the credits as a joke.

[@ehall2877]

My main takeaway from this is that Alliances is the reason I just got turn1 Grief Undying Eviled two games in a row

[@abbiemcdaniels3122]

I consider Lake of the Dead as Lim Dul’s lake story wise, would making its name specific to Lim Dul get over the flavor fail for Patrick?

[@Fandwicksvhs]

Pacts were also kinda "free" alternate costs

[@danielkaragic7057]

No better timing for thissss

[@dm364]

Balduvian was THE hot card! even though it had a huge drawback, I still like it for its time. BraveheART!

[@trevordwyer5638]

SHELLdoran Outpost!!!

[@cornball7883]

This was the first set released after I started playing.

[@NuMBERNYC]

@32:45 Is that a Super Mario Bros. stage on the wall of the art?

[@hermodnitter3902]

58:05 shouldn't Nature's Wrath be a part of the double hosers as well? It clearly hoses black/blue, or am I missing something here...?

[@timothyvandenberg2905]

Agreed

[@Billchu13]

Nature's justice has kicker?!

[@Chocolate83Bunny]

Dang, immediately the discussion about 12 card packs.... They never could have known what news was to come probably the week after recording

[@nicholaslott4575]

Phyrexian War Beast Replaced Sedge Troll in my R/B Midrange-Land Destruction.

[@TheFranchise83]

You forgot Nature's Wrath as a hoser.

[@timothyvandenberg2905]

Agreed

[@christopherlundgren1700]

The three-set block structure wasn't really codified until Mirage-Visions-Weatherlight made it official. I don't remember anyone thinking that Homelands had any particular connection to Ice Age. It was only retroactively added because as time went on it was the sole "block" with only two expansions, and they were played together in the tournament formats of the time. Homelands only made it in to Ice Age in the first place because of proximity, not because of any creative through-line. Cold Snap is absolutely a manufactured after-the-fact addition to the Ice Age block, but I don't think Homelands holds any more of a "rightful" place there than Cold Snap does.

[@kinginthenorth1437]

Yeah, it actually specifically didn't have anything to do with Ice Age. It took place on another plane that didn't even experience the Ice Age.

[@jonathancederberg5200]

Got Tresserhorn in the Alliances sealed deck pre release. Played it of course. Went 2-1. Did not top 16.

[@exitspectral7666]

Pitch cycle inspired kamigawa shoals and March's as well

[@greyman419]

I sleep happily at night only because I can no longer remember what I traded in to acquire a playset of Balduvian Horde

[@304783]

Anyone know why they got rid of "bury" as a keyword? They took the opposite direction with that one compared with e.g. vigilance ("does not tap to attack") or haste ("can attack the turn it comes into play"). Bury used to be short for "destroy x, it cannot be regenerated". I really don't get why they didn't stick with "bury" - especially considering how common and relevant the mechanic still is.

[@poiri]

Part of it was probably to just do a full cleanup of old wording on cards that used bury to mean different things, like sacrifice sometimes and I think there was one that said to bury cards from the top of your library, but idk what card that was (or if that was even a thing). So in order to make it abundantly clear what was meant on a card, bury was not used anymore. That’s my theory anyway

[@fastpuppy2000]

Well, they don't print regenerate anymore really, and regenerate itself started working entirely differently (and worse, but that was probably a sacrifice worth making) after sixth edition's rules changes standardizing the game's timing. Bury was done away with in Tempest apparently (according to the mtgwiki). I'd guess they were already working out the rules changes and knew that it'd get weird a few sets later. Additionally, bury is kind of redundant. It's really not a relevant ability, and it's so close to just saying sacrifice, you may as well just say sacrifice. If you want to make a point of really removing something, you can just exile it.

[@donaldtaylor724]

Didn’t it also get updated to sacrificing on certain cards?

[@kinginthenorth1437]

Better rules communication about how sacrificing creatures works and regeneration (the thing it was counterplay to) being intentionally used less and less.

[@breadbox1357]

Brought up masques pitch spells without bringing up the rare cycle. Misdirection, unmask etc lol

[@Baex21]

Didn´t know Bill Sienkiewicz had drawn Magic Cards. You should check out his New Mutants, Moon Knight or Elektra Covers for Marvel.

[@jevontaylor9309]

Love the content. But one thing I had to point out in terms of the production is the mic placement over your mouths. It's kind of distracting, and probably more important a barrier to access for people with hearing impairments. Keep up the good work. I am looking forward to the next episode already.

[@thenamedoesnotmatter]

25:46 Counterpoint: Fate Reforged had Renowned Weaponsmith. Which could fetch a "not yet existent" card Vial of Dragonfire. Tarmogoyf from Future Sight had reminder text including "Planeswalker" for card types even though no cards of those types existed at the time it printed. Steamflogger Boss was a 1-off ultimate letdown mechanic from Unstable. But those last 2 anecdotes are irrelevant.

[@09dmband]

Yo, Cedric… I’ve always wonder what the deal was with the Pinback album. Just a big fan?

[@BrodyLodmell]

Pronouncing kjeldoran however you feel like it was my experience too, everyone said whatever and understood all.

[@clefable6]

@34:00 #MakeDominariaColdAgain

[@aritargownik]

Where do you get the podcast episode? I see the Resleevables podcast, but the last episode is from 2021.

[@UMTSMAGE]

Patreon

[@ClockworkEngineer]

You've gotten to the expansion after I quit. No idea what any of these are.

[@Ishygog]

I hope you stick around for more episodes! I’m curious to see what you think of how Magic evolves over the next several sets that they cover.

[@DracoSuave]

Alliances is what happens when you don't Home your Lands.

[@__H__]

I am pretty sure that "kj" is pronounced with an "sh" sound. So it probably should be more like "Sheldoran Outpost."

[@kinginthenorth1437]

Patrick has a Type I (or card's people owned casual going far back) bias. It comes up a few time but most noticeably when talking about the pitch cycle. Yeah, Force of Will obviously the best but... Contagion and Pyrokinesis were real relevant to those of us not playing with Abyss, Moat, ect in Type I. Necropotence was still the biggest deck in Type II so Contagion was a real player, Pyrokinesis similarly useful a room full of pump knights, Hypnotic Spectres, mana elves, Mishra's Factories, aggressive red dorks, ect. The pitch spells that weren't card disadvantagous might have even been more popular than Force of Will until they started to print new combo pieces.

[@sobman]

boomer

[@kinginthenorth1437]

@@sobman It's amazing how you said one word and were still an idiot in multiple directions.

[@badgerchillsky535]

I’ve always heard it pronounced Ter•rys•e•air