Can A HS Player Guess If A Magic Card Saw Competitive Play?

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CGB & Rarran check out cards from Pro Tour 1 | 1996 New York City.
Cards are from 4th Edition, Ice Age, Fallen Empires, Chronicles, and Homelands
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[@covertgoblue]

Kibler got 30th in Jrs division of this event, my bad on that. I got 55th and my little sister got 56th, which means we both qualified for Pro Tour Los Angeles

[@YooAPbruh]

I guess those birds wasnt as bad if you got higher than your sis 😂

[@js2188]

Never heard "butt pumping" before, well not in this context anyway

[@garash2000]

You qualifed? Hell yeah, Mesa Falcon **got there**!!

[@macurvello]

@@js2188 I once heard "butt breathing" (as opposed to fire breathing) and almost fell on the floor laughing

[@adamn7777]

So thanks in part to Rarran sorta you're signing Mesa Falcons at cons and Voxy is signing Gronds and Squees. He's slowly working his way through MtG content creators getting them to sign terrible cards

[@cheesyjamproductions6065]

This video turning into Rarran slowly realizing that you were, at one point, bad at the game, is one of the greatest character arcs in history. The illusion of perfection, shattered. Beautiful.

[@mahtimonni97]

Look... Who among us has never overvalued a life gain card?

[@hatredlord]

Never meet your heroes.

[@marcushead9985]

Rarran: "Did you run Mesa Falcon?" CGB: "I've never revealed my Pro Tour I deck--" Rarran: "DID YOU RUN MESA FALCON?" CGB: "YOU'RE GOD-DAMN RIGHT I DID."

[@quarktasche4997]

What do you wanna discuss now?! His favorite color?

[@LordKaiju_2]

Petition to change CGB's Screen name to Mesa Falcon Guy

[@jameswalterclark3696]

Got to change the acronym to MFG; luckily, I think he could slip it into the intro and outro without upsetting the rhythm!

[@TheJinjitsu]

CovertGoMesa

[@ZeroIsEven]

MFG MTG

[@bananamancer]

Subtitle: Me's a falcon guy (in Jar-Jar voice)

[@tommarren3809]

CovertGoMesaFalcon

[@weshverified]

This crossover with Rarran has got to be my favorite ongoing series on KZbin right now.

[@mauricedib318]

I'm a life long magic player and this series is the only reason i've heard of either of these people

[@LordKaiju_2]

I'm loving all of Rarran's MTG crossovers

[@chernoalpha3445]

Same, they have good chemistry

[@Cedisdead]

Love is a strong word.. and I agree with you

[@theelectricant98]

Same!

[@hunson3396]

absolutely

[@deadneck13]

I don't even know of Rarran outside of these crossovers. And they're some of my favorite MTG content.

[@KingOfNebbishes]

Salute to CGB for the massive self-own of this video. I never knew who Mesa Falcon guy was, but it turns out it wasn't the hero we need, but the hero we deserve.

[@aleksandarkovacevic7138]

will Mesa Falcon be good if you can switch attack and health. In Hearstone it would be

[@KingOfNebbishes]

@aleksandarkovacevic7138 No, it won't. It's simply too slow for what Magic is now. The power level is absurdly high in creatures now compared to 90s Magic.

[@S0kki]

MFG*

[@nyft3352]

the fact that mesa falcon was foreshadowed in the backdround art all along was just perfect, you are truly the mesa falcon guy, respect to the mad genius

[@e.m.b.5090]

Oh dang, Brian "Don't call me Brian 'Brian Kibler' Kibler" Kibler gets his own category

[@Dzharek]

He isnt called Brian Brian "Don't call me Brian ´Dragonlord´ 'Brian Kibler' Kibler" Kibler for nothing

[@nekrataali]

Louis Scott-Vargas does a lot of streaming (check out his channel for daily draft videos!) and one of his local friends in Colorado is also a moderator in his chat. That guy's name is "BK." For the longest time, I legit thought he was actually Brian Kibler, because Brian Kibler would totally shitpost in another pro player's stream and tell them to first pick Altar of Dementia over Sol Ring.

[@lostalone9320]

BK is an artist of bad picks

[@Opno]

I like how this video was basically an excuse for CGB to come out of the closet as Mesa Falcon Guy after all this time

[@livedandletdie]

I kind of wish I was there in 96 to watch CGB get pwned. However I was attending preschool back then.

[@user-oo7qo7dj7c]

In Rarran's defence, I think he missed that Necropotence is an Enchantment. The way he talked about it made me feel like he didn't realise you could use this to draw cards in exchange for life every single turn.

[@Belgarion9989]

He’s actually seen it before, it was one of the first magic cards he evaluated and was told it was amazing

[@sylvainsanesti3499]

i mean, pretty sure it would still be broken if it was for 1 turn only

[@user-oo7qo7dj7c]

@@sylvainsanesti3499 You're probably right, but a one turn version is obviously less good and also less obviously good.

[@user-oo7qo7dj7c]

@@Belgarion9989 Hahaha, fair enough. My memory is so bad I can't hold others accountable for that kinda thing 😂

[@dstreetz91]

@@sylvainsanesti3499 There is necrologia that costs 3BB where you pay x life to draw x cards, but you can only cast it during the end step. All I know about necrologia is that back when mystical tutor was legal in legacy around 2008 some people tinkered with necrologia where the way you won would be end step cast it off a pair of dark rituals or something, draw 18-19 usually, remove 2 spirit guides, manamorphose for blue and black, cast more dark/cabal rituals off the black, mystical tutor for tendrils, then remove another spirit guide for manamorphose to add blue, quicken, then tendrils for lethal. The deck was pretty bad though particularly after ad nauseam was printed since you could just ad nauseam in the mainphase, draw a bunch, and kill the opponent without jumping through all the hoops of using instant speed cards only with an exception in there for tendrils that you used quicken to cast. All of this to say, the only versions of necro that can compete with necro are yawgmoth's bargain and griselbrand.

[@andrewcrisp8567]

I always love that CGB is willing to admit that he wasn’t always the expert he is today.

[@trifontrifonov4297]

CGB? Who's that? Ohhh, you mean the Mesa Falcon Guy. Or MFG if you will.

[@lostalone9320]

CMFGB thankyou

[@akorthouwer]

He still isn't really an expert tho

[@pureruination]

This has to be one of the coolest concepts for a MTG video! I love how it's both a gameshow and a history lesson. You crushed it man

[@Proxalox]

I love how when CGB shows up on Rarran’s channel he’s defined as a magic pro and when Rarran shows up here he’s just a hearthstone player

[@Coded_TH]

Rarran never competed seriously so he wouldn't be a pro. He did have a major role in keeping the game alive as one of the best content creators who brought me back into the game though

[@jackweitzman6697]

@@Coded_THwasn’t he rank 1 at one point?

[@user-ow1bc4sx2r]

He’s a professional in that he plays hs for a living but he hasn’t played “competitively”. Rank 1 legend shows he would maybe have been capable of it, but honestly rank 1 legend is like 75% skill 25% playing more games than everyone else in high legend to keep your mmr higher. Tournament hs is also quite a different beast to ranked, with each player bringing and piloting multiple decks per match and requires another skill set to read the meta and make the correct deck and tech choices. It’s the same with any game, skill at the game is one aspect of being a pro, but arguably the more important one is skill at the metagame

[@tannermattingly4462]

​@@jackweitzman6697I've been rank one legend once, just as a pleb on the internet. It's not that hard to get there for a few hours, you just need a turbo broken deck and a few days to burn. Much harder to finish out a month as r1, which I don't think Rarran's done.

[@justus5879]

I mean rarran is not good. Hes above average probably since he reaches legend but hes not a good player

[@Bluejayount1]

You can SEE cgb dying as rarran evaluates falcon

[@ZeroIsEven]

Hymn to Tourach: “I was too busy looking at the wolf”

[@Vael221]

Rarran just absolutely in the tank trying to figure out why a card that let you discard two others at random might be good

[@nekrataali]

Hymn is in a third category: "Still sees play in every format where it's still legal because it's just _that_ good." Fallen Empires is hilarious because if Hymn had been printed in Arabian Nights or Legends at rare, it'd be like $100. But it was in FE at common, so original copies are still 50¢ over 25 years later lmao

[@ZeroIsEven]

@@nekrataali All true, but the Wolf one is still the highest form of Hymn. I was recently building a vintage cube and was so happy to find one wolf in the old common box.

[@Dreznin]

@@nekrataali I bought a ton of Homelands and Fallen Empires since it didn't sell well and my shop sold off their stock at $1 per pack, which was great when you were the poor kid that just scraped together whatever little money you could to buy a couple packs a month. I ended up with so many copies of Hymn and most of my friends never bought any... that card was the bane of so many people in my play group, legitimately one of the best discard spells ever printed being hidden within one of the worst sets.

[@vivianboor14]

​@@ZeroIsEvenmy quest to get 4x Wolf Hymns as a child was a *formative* moment in my life. I had *SO MANY* old man versions, but refused to play them. Had to be the wolf.

[@nathanwilkins6107]

“Three cards for three life” Oh, you sweet summer child.

[@dialp4penguin]

I'm not really a magic player, how was he wrong there? Is that not what it does?

[@dusterrant9332]

Most people drew way more than 3 cards

[@nathanwilkins6107]

@@dialp4penguin necropotence’s potential is that you can use it in a combo deck to play it, draw like 10 cards off of it and sculpt the perfect hand to win the next turn.

[@MrTrellheim]

@@dialp4penguinRemember: the only life point that matters is the last one.

[@Uefeti]

@@dialp4penguin You basically pay as much life as you can to draw your whole deck. (Like 15 cards or smth) It doesn’t matter if you go to an extremely low life totall, if you’re winning instantly

[@gabecohen-nv7nq]

I have come here to defend Serrated Arrows as it was indeed good outside of just this first Pro Tour. Besides being a card that's seen play in Pauper forever, when it was reprinted in Time Spiral, it saw competitive play throughout its time in standard and block. It was in 5 of the top 8 decks from Pro Tour Yokohama, won Worlds 2007, and top 8ed Pro Tour Hollywood. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[@sidneypowelstock6812]

mesa falcon is pretty busted. for only 2 mana a turn, it becomes a white storm crow. good to know wizards were breaking the color pie all the way back in homelands

[@pipboy17]

When rarran started contemplating how good discarding your own cards was with hymn i nearly lost it. Thank god cgb told him it hits opponents.😂

[@markuskoivisto]

He’s not even entirely wrong though

[@lurro9963]

​@@markuskoivisto i think the situation has to be reallly specific to cast hymn on oneself. Thoughtseize sure but hymn is hard😅

[@FrozenLavaDragonProd]

He needs to evaluate One with Nothing.

[@hinugundamB]

@@FrozenLavaDragonProd He did, he thought that card was good too.

[@reinhardveltrup9232]

CGB, I don't think we will meet in this life. But if, contrary to expectations, we do meet, I'll have my Mesa Falcon ready for you to sign.

[@moralnexus]

I was gonna bring my Shark Typhoon, but this video has changed me

[@Gadzinisko]

I checked and one can get an original Mesa Falcon for 20 cents. Maybe it will double in price if it's signed!

[@azer67]

Serrated Arrows actually still has a shell in current magic with the pauper Poison Storm deck, because it has great synergy with the proliferation mechanic !

[@liorramati265]

It also saw play in old versions of boros kuldotha because the format was still reasonably slow, so picking it up to reset it was totally viable!

[@dstreetz91]

I know some people played serrated arrows when timespiral was standard legal at my LGS since it got a timeshifted version and creatures were still reasonably small so it could give a 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 maybe.

[@nekrataali]

Serrated Arrows was basically Umezawa's Jitte before Jitte.

[@moralnexus]

Serrated Arrows was in the format for years because it was the only colorless removal, and some colors didn't have any removal (looking at you, green, blue)

[@devilbhrothesavage2807]

It was or is still a staple in pauper cube or pauper sideboards so its not a bad per se.

[@cheesyjamproductions6065]

Another thing about Serrated Arrows: as a colorless artifact, it could fit into literally any deck, hence why so many turned to it

[@nedcurfman3486]

Rarran should drag you into the madness of a Noah game show

[@Captdimitri]

Seconded!

[@Todesnuss]

Has he not been on there?

[@coolguywithahat]

I have to say, it’s really fucking cool that CGB has been there at the first pro tour competing! Who cares about the deck he brought, he’s been there since the beginning!!

[@moralnexus]

if "the beginning" happened about 4 years into the game

[@DiscardatRandom]

@@moralnexus yeah thats still the beginning

[@casteanpreswyn7528]

It's wild to me cause that was the year I played my first game of magic with my friend and his dad.

[@TwolfS3041]

Not that I'll do this, but the first thing when I saw Mesa Falcon was that "It can be thick enough to block a spectre" 🙃

[@naphackDT]

If a specter eats 4 mana every turn it's done its job.

[@PwndNewbie]

The real pro move with Armageddon was to cast it even if you didnt have a board advantage or were even slightly down on the board because if you built your deck correctly, you would recover from it much faster than your opponent. You could always Swords to Plowshares their one creature on the following turn. I won several PTQs playing 4 Armageddons and it was insanely powerful.

[@dstreetz91]

Yeah geddon was messed up to hell, they're like let's print stone rain for everything for one mana more. Probably thought the symmetrical effect of it balanced it like the card balance, but nah as a curvetopper in aggro it's hard to get a better card even today you could play some great 4 drop creature that has some sweet abilities or just blow up all lands leaving the opponent with nothing to stop you from hitting them with your creatures. Best wrath of god protection too since no mana is pretty bad when it comes to 4 mana spells.

[@sicthejake2400]

lol Rarran forgetting that he saw Necropotence before.

[@juliandacosta6841]

And brainstorm

[@vaspeter2600]

8:27 Kibler used to run Mojomaster Zihi in HS a lot, and that card is basically diet Armageddon on a body, so it wouldn't have been terribly out of character for him

[@Noobie2k7]

I mean that card saw a fair amount of play from what I remember due to rhe fact the expansion it was from was pretty weak overall so there wasn't a lot to choose from.

[@argsgsgsgnngndg9894]

40:33 ''What if my specter was just bigger?'' Covert 2024

[@Roymunson_]

I like these Rarran videos but it's hard for me to find them in the video history. Maybe I'm missing a playlist but if there isn't one you should make one.

[@Nr4747]

Necro, Hyppie, Hymn, Ritual - all of the main ingredience of what became known as the "Black Summer" of Magic.

[@JonNuclear]

I really wish he would have talked about how popular it was to play necropotence and pay 16 immediately(to be one away from a bolt) and drawing into all your combo pieces and how that strat was actually amazing. Turn 1, swamp into dark ritual into necropotence pay 16, then you get to look at 16 more cards, make sure you have a swamp, a dark ritual or 2, and all your combo pieces and then fill up your grave with all the cards you get to discard. Was obviously risky and paying super low was even more risky later in the game where you could get double bolted or similar, but was and is one of my favorite cards and card game gambles.

[@froggouk2]

The fact that Rarran is saying things like "Paying 3 life to get 3 cards at the end of your turn is a huge card advantage" really makes me proud of him. He's starting to get it. He's starting to believe.

[@lostalone9320]

It's contextual, that's the thing. Necro was great back then because creatures were terrible, so your life wasn't being pressured. That's how Necro becomes a centerpiece of a bunch of pretty bad combos, because if you can just draw like 14 cards, even bad combos go off. But if your opponent is doing stuff you need to answer, dropping a necro is worse than nothing.

[@casteanpreswyn7528]

​@@lostalone9320 it's still great now. Lol

[@macurvello]

This video was awesome! Listening to all these stories + the game show-y format is crazy fun. Plus Rarran is getting pretty good at this! Dude, I cracked hard at the turn 2 bad moon story!

[@Skelthane]

I remember Inquest! They had Balduvian Horde as their number one pick for the Alliance set, completely missing the mark on Force of Will. To be fair, creatures were so underpowered that something like Autumn Willow was considered to be a tier 1 power-house.

[@argentfang]

They did have Force of Will at #3, so they at least recognized that a free Counterspell was still powerful. I don’t even remember the rest of that top 10, but I still have my old Labyrinth Minotaur spin down life counter that came either in or near that issue.

[@kokoro-no-me]

also CGB’s covert codename should just be Mesa Falcon at this point :p

[@ReiHost]

It's amazing that necropotence is still the card displayed to fool players that may think it's bad.

[@daftwulli6145]

dude when it came out it had one of the lowest ratings in the set and it took a while for people to realize how good it was.

[@zoa9720]

It's such an obvious card today. Draw your deck for 3 mana and some life.

[@Laezar1]

That's because new players are going to be risk averse, paying life is scary, losing your natural draw is scary. And some of it is irationnal but some of it also make sense, if you are inexperienced you don't have a frame of reference for the value of cards and the value of life so not wanting to play a card that could well be detrimental while focusing on the cards that you understand make sense. I think having some experience in card games you quickly realize how valuable necropotence is though. Like, having played heartstone you see necropotence and compare it to warlock hero power and immediately you understand it's busted.

[@dstreetz91]

It's more that TCG's were so new people didn't know what was the best thing to be doing. If necropotence came out tomorrow for the first time everyone would be calling for the card to be banned right off the bat. Card advantage as a concept was something few people knew, but then you had people slamming craw wurm and shivan dragon thinking they're the best thing since sliced bread. Or things like tempo as a concept people didn't recognize save very few. I had a friend who played back then and opened a mox pearl who was friends with a guy who had a red/green aggro deck packing all the strip mines, stone rains, and efficient beaters like scryb sprites and kird ape at the casual tables he was basically undefeated with the deck because no one could play their cards against him and he'd just bash them to death with small creatures while they had a bunch of cards that were unplayable or by the time they played a card they were overrun.

[@ReiHost]

@daftwulli6145 I played when Necro came out, I remember the instant belief the card was bad and it was not risk aversion. The card's wall of a text was not yet common. It was not instantly recognizable what the card did or how it did that. On first glance, it looks like the controller skips the draw step and then can pay 1 life to get it back. It's not immediately obvious in Ice Age, 1995 Magic you can pay 10 life to get 10 draw steps until you see someone do it--Probably in a game you then lose.

[@HaxDotCombo]

The Necropotence story reminds me of Dark Armed Dragon in Yu-Gi-Oh, that card became THE expensive chase card in a non-rotating game for literal years but Pojo Magazine was underwhelmed.

[@dstreetz91]

That's honestly pathetic, like yugioh at the time wasn't combo oriented it was more of a value type of game and dark armed dragon if unanswered could instantly blow up 3 cards and was a big beatstick. It would have been bad on release if it was released into a combo heavy meta like now. Probably thought '3 dark monsters in GY? Impossible!' even though good dark monsters existed back then.

[@HaxDotCombo]

@@dstreetz91 Yeah, it was a really bad read.

[@IavraPlays]

Back when I started playing Magic (around Apocalypse), I bought a playset of Hymn to Tourach with this artwork, just because I liked it so much. To this day it's still in my binder.

[@theelectricant98]

I LOVE how you formatted this with the different categories, made it fun to play along at home

[@Toyourto]

Man, the nostalgia. I remember those Big Red decks with Rukh Eggs, Jokulhaups and Nev’s Disk.

[@Ev200818]

Love these colab videos with Rarran. I enjoy hearing random facts about magic cards being slept on and the ante mechanic

[@BebehCookieIcecream]

"A 1h20 video between cgb and rarran? I'll check it out but definitely not finishing it." Got sad when cgb said "last one." Love you two.

[@nefrone]

I too was (and am) bad at magic. I paid money to have Polar Kraken in my deck. I was convinced for so long that if I could just get it on the board I would be unstoppable. And I never once got to play it. Hard lesson for sure.

[@LtSMASH324]

The background being Mesa Falcon this WHOLE time BLEW. MY. MIND.

[@macurvello]

OMG

[@RetroMTG]

Rarran spotted Necro, Brainstorm, and Chime right off the bat. That’s insane

[@zephyrfyr]

He already saw necro and brainstorm from his collab from PVDDR

[@dstreetz91]

He didn't immediately notice the full power of brainstorm since he thought it just 'drew 1 card' but once you see fetchlands and put them together like CGB said it becomes gross and format defining to become one of the best cards ever printed in all honesty. Ponder, preordain, portent, and basically everything except ancestral pales in comparison to brainstorm in constructed. Cube draft it's a little trickier since you need to have picked up shuffle effects to take it and utilize it, but if you make it work then you'll pick brainstorm over most cards with proper shuffle support. Preordain is just more flexible since you see bad cards you bottom them no shuffle needed and shuffles are honestly bad with preordain for this reason.

[@zigzag2370]

Mill stone was a huge staple in opposition land still with emperor laquitas and howling mine it went on to win multiple tournaments during the odyssey block era. Turn one careful study or hold up force spike for their root walla or birds or nimble. Mongoose into turn 2 standstill followed by opposition once they broke standstill then millstone and laquitas to mill them out once you've tapped them down each turn and eventually play your ensnaring bridge to close things out

[@StriderYGO]

these videos are insanely great, amazing even! In a way it is a shame that I do not play Magic myself (YGO player and former HS player here), so I do not necessarily crave all your videos - although I actually still watched some of the pure Magic videos. However, CGB's personality and entertainment prowess are just superb! It is a treat to watch all these "guess" videos. Thank you very much for making these.

[@theelectricant98]

Its a fun way to get a taste of early card game history for anyone really

[@StriderYGO]

@@theelectricant98 i love that creative twist to a pretty popular format by now in particular - the structure from the timeline really enhances this series

[@RadStitch]

Love the mix of "other players react to Magic" and the historical facts about the first pro tour

[@daftwulli6145]

I don´t know about winning tournaments, but there was a millstone deck that made quite the splash as a combo/control deck. The idea is that the deck wants field of dreams in play and at least 1 millstone, ideally 2. Field of dreams says that both playxers play with the top of the library revealed, and the deck basically controlled both players draws with millstone. It also hid their own draws with sylvan library. This would havge been right up CGB´s alley

[@garyroach4942]

CGB actually mentioned this deck in the video where they reviewed millstone! He sounded pretty excited while he was explaining it, definitely sounded like a really cool deck!

[@zsewqaspider]

It's like a primodial form of lantern control

[@daftwulli6145]

@@zsewqaspider I would argue millstone is even better then lantern since it does not need to be sacrificed. ON the other hand lantern is both field of dreams and millstone in one card

[@daftwulli6145]

@@garyroach4942 If you mean the antiquities video, no he does not I did in the comments lol. The millstone deck he mentioned was an actual mill deck that won by milling the opponent out. But the millstone field of dreams deck only does that if there are no other options left, but if you control both draws you usually win way before you mill them out. And the combo with sylvan library is pretty juicy too, you can keep an unimportant card on top, if you do not like 2 of the cards you saw with sylvan library you can mil that and improve your draws/filter what you need for the current game. It had recall and regrowth to get the important pieces back from the graveyard (usually you would use recall to get back the pieces and regrowth to get back recall, rinse and repeat). Variations of this deck are still played in oldschopol and win tournaments.

[@tciddados]

That "pick the most worn-out card" line is immensely big brain.

[@deusxWAR]

absolutley the heebie-jeebies, the good kind. that is how i recall magic in those days and my cards and my decks and the games with my friends. =) thanks daniel and thanks rarran ps. fun fact - working at GW at the time, MTG was banned from the company.

[@UsernameXOXO]

So on brand for GW knowing they had the worse game, though arguably better hobby, even in the light of magic's early blunder years.

[@galgramax6713]

The secret of his name comes to light, CBG was converting from being a Mesa Falcon guy to blue all along

[@HamSandwich-xk3om]

Yup. I started playing when ice age came out, and having fallen empires and homelands as the first two sets released in my playing days definitely caused a noticeable drop in players at least in my area. I mean, alliances seemed so powerful and was the only time i bought an box of booster packs upon release. I was in that sweet spot where i was working full time, but still living at home with my dad, by the next set release, i was on my own and disposable income was scarce again for a couple years..

[@EliasMheart]

1:03:52 Oh, that's funny. It's a Klein Bottle in the art :D The 4-dimensional version of the Möbius Strip :D

[@Mediamatix]

OUCH on the "how do you choose a card at random" story. Holly hell I felt that. D: Poor [Mesa Falcon] & [Bad Moon] combo guy suffered emotional damage that lasts to this very day.

[@SenLouie]

Covert the Mesa Falcon Man.

[@noobknights]

I love this window you give us into the competitive days of Magic in ages long past.

[@dmcdante1991]

Fun question, did you know Kibler during the Magic days and did you meet at this tournament?

[@jeremymorris6000]

This is so great. The story telling, the gamesmanship, and just seeing CGB so excited to share all this magic history. And I scrolled past it for two days before I decided to check it out. I won't make that mistake again

[@dustinaug4994]

Love these videos! I got into magic during midnight hunt so its cool to hear about all the stuff i missed.

[@KindaPOGMusic]

As a hearthstone player just getting into magic this was one of the coolist ways to look at a past tournament.

[@jji7447]

33:08 For those that know, you just pray they never got windfury.

[@dialp4penguin]

I haven't played magic for years and years, I started in revised and ended around visions. These two guys have pulled me back in, I absolutely love these videos!

[@stevenwallace6989]

There wasn't much in the way of forums, certainly, but MTG meta discussion was definitely taking place on Usenet back then. (and probably email mailing lists, but I wasn't in those)

[@Duckboi112]

These videos got me hooked on mtg arena after only playing hs. Love it, keep it up :)

[@teppec]

Just wanted to share a short Jokulhaups story. My playgroup played primarily in western PA, Ohio and sometimes traveled to Indiana for PTQs in the 90s. Post tempest block release, we were determined to make Jokulhaups work. We playtested it into the ground using Eladamri's Vineyard as an engine and alternate wincon. 5 of us brought it to a Nationals Qualifier in Columbus that had something like 400 people (give or take). I just whiffed top 8 on tie breaks and finished tenth, and one of our guys finished 15th or 16th. The deck was dumb but fun in that toxic way of watching your opponents choke on green mana while you dumped the mana into spike creatures. Some of those mid/late 90s tournaments in Columbus had insane turnouts, drawing in people from all over the midwest. I remember multiple PTQs that had 400 to 500 people playing in them. 12 rounds before you even get to the top 8 makes for some long days. Anyway, love the series and the content mate. It's always fun to take walks down nostalgia lane with your vids.

[@MFMegaZeroX7]

I ran mesa falcon ... when I did a retro homelands draft in 2018 haha.

[@Whitewingdevil]

Love the theme of this! I'm learning more about this period in magic even though I'm pretty familiar with the game, really cool to learn about the early days!

[@laytonjr6601]

Drawing 5 or 6 cards with necropotence? You're playing it wrong, you're supposed to draw 15 cards with this and keep the 7 that allow you to win with an infinite combo on your next turn Edit: I don't know if there were combos like that in the sets allowed in this pro tour Wait, Brainstorm is banned in historic? But there's no fetch lands to shuffle your library, brainstorm loses half it's power then!

[@bencheevers6693]

These are so hugely anticipated by me, on both channels, love to see these. Great team. Edit: Now that I've watched, didn't disappoint, this was such a funny banger of an episode

[@Crovax]

Bad moon and Mesa falcon. Holy guacamole mate.

[@jeffkosko5815]

This was very cool! And i love the stories and how engaged Rarran is. Great job!

[@marcowefers6990]

its so good to know that CGB came from humble deckbuilding beginnings! Thank you for sharing I respect you so much more now!

[@senken12]

Talking about the "Discard at random" thing and just picking the most worn cards reminded me of a story I heard from not being able to use sleeves. In those early days when they were still messing around with the ink, sets ended up having different brightness of the colours on the backs of cards. So when your deck was given to your opponent to cut/shuffle, your opponent would be able to "pile shuffle" and sort the cards out by the difference in shades, basically resulting in everyone's Strip Mines being at the bottom of their decks

[@Nil_Echo]

These videos are such treats! I love your MTG gameplay stuff but you're knocking it out of the park with this series too.

[@whocares1417]

The colab's between CGB and Rarran truly make my week, y'all are freaking awesome

[@MiliosFilios]

I ran a copy of Serrated Arrows in my Hapatra EDH Deck, the first one I built myself. was a budget pick, and it's slow, but sometimes having a way to get a free -1/-1 just to get the combo rolling was pretty nice!

[@jasoncampbell7337]

Watching this was nostalgic. I still have all my Inquest mags. Used to send in solutions for the one turn challenges in them. Won about 3 boxes that way. Very interesting cards back then.

[@Zwijger]

Lol the first pro tour sequence is apparently how we all start. Though at a local gamestore I played Stubborn Denial to counter my opponents one drop creature: they only realised I had done something illegal about 5 turns in, and I only realised after he told me and called the judge/storeowner over, who told us to just keep playing, probably correctly realising that I would very much lose 2-0 anyway.

[@catfishrob1]

To be fair, maybe it doesn't apply in 60 card formats, but in commander, Jokulhaups could be nuts in the right deck. Say, an enchantress deck with a lot of card advantage. Your opponent has thrown everything they've got on board, down to one or two cards, meanwhile you're drawing like crazy, throwing down powerful enchantments, and you reset the game but with big card advantage and enchantments that will let you run away with the game. Especially if you're losing on board as far as mana and creatures, but winning on cards and enchantments.

[@ManaKiri]

Yeah...but that's the kind of play that would get you kicked out of the commander group cause that's mega toxic. Which I approve of because its hilarious, but still.

[@kashiffarees881]

I've had my fill of X player reacts to Y cards, but I really enjoy this series because you made it a walk through Magic's history with Rarran as the audience surrogate.

[@NotASummoner]

Yeah, I appreciate most of the react to cards but CGB with Rarran is the best by far because of how you get an insight into the early MTG game and how it evolved.

[@Kestral287]

Agreed. I mostly skip over them at this point, but I really like the way these two have innovated on the concept. The CGB showing Rarran Magic are definitely my favorite, but Rarran's A or B was an interesting take on it too. The issue we run into a lot of the time is that it's just "person with no concept of what these things means gets things wrong ha ha" and like... duh? Those get old fast. A or B mitigates that a lot and these history-based CGB videos even more so, especially as we keep going.

[@schroecat1]

The greatest thing about Apocalypse Chime is that Autumn Willow, Spectral Bears, and Ihsan's Shade were all Homelands cards that *did* see play in the format, and all had some form of built in protection against some of the most popular removal spells. It was a good sideboard choice for almost any deck as a result.

[@Bobal27]

1:12:31 I could see this seeing play today, in historic brawl/commander things. Mono red walkers, enchantments, battles, and specifically the enchantment that hits anything for how many counters you put on something? Interesting. Hit nothing of yours (except the mana-having portion of the game ends), kill everything of theirs, it’s basically raigeki+armageddon, in mtg.

[@apharys8921]

This reminds me of my first M:tG tournament. My favorite card at the time was False Demise which I could not only use to get my big green guys back but also to steal my opponent's stuff which I did pull off once for one of my few wins. Running UG I had the brilliant idea that green creatures big and blue gives evasion so they would literally be unstoppable! And with False Demise they couldn't even be killed! But naw it was terrible lol.

[@meatballll]

I love these types of videos. Seeing different card game players try to apply their thinking to other card games is super interesting for a card game nerd like myself :D

[@head2797]

I used to play a blue black Rack deck around that time. Making your opponent discard their entire hand with Mind Twist basically won the game. With some blue counter spells. I was pretty toxic when I was younger.

[@LongStrider42]

The image on Elkin Bottle amidst all of the red ribbon mess is a Klein bottle. It is a closed surface with only one side. It's a really weird thing.

[@jvtc]

This era was peak heart shop tournament time for me. The only tournament I ever won was with a black discard/rack deck. I played a lot of these cards in my deck; Hymn, Hypnotic spector, bad moon, The Rack.... Best deck ever. I was like 10. People were so mad at me.

[@stfinalwrath]

Yeahh, necropotence is so incredibly broken. I bought the 30th edition secret lair specifically for necropotence and chrome mox. Didn't get a foil mox unfortunately but got a foil necropotence. Almost missed the lair drop entirely because the site was so bogged down and laggy that it took me 30 minutes to place an order, and my roommate almost accidentally ordered twice because it really freaked out for them when they placed their order and it was sold out in like, 45 minutes. If you weren't camping the checkout option you probably didn't get one. Necropotence has dropped way down in price since it's last reprint, but the foil lair art is so damn cool. 100% worth the stress. 😆

[@darkwatershadow]

I have a lot of good memories using bad moon. These days with magic being more multicolor focused it's probably way more of a liability but I used to use it in multiplayer all the time. Sometimes it made fun little alliances where another player would protect you because you were buffing their stuff too.

[@cookies23z]

the mesa birdie makes sense, you were a kid with tunnel vision on a flying only strat

[@ocarinalover1214]

I love how these videos become lookbacks for early eras of hearthstone and magic, great stuff

[@rlidwka]

56:00 - Serrated Arrows were played a lot in sideboard of Pauper decks, specifically Tron and Familiars. People found a way to blink it and reset the counters, which is very good against 1/1 elves.

[@CDShap]

It is weird to realize that I had stopped playing magic before the Pro Tour started and didn't get back into it until a friend introduced me to EDH just as WotC was starting to release Commander Precons

[@cameton_youtube]

Would love to see you quiz him on the original red deck wins and the story behind it

[@marcuswesterman5981]

This was great. I do feel your pain on the Mesa Falcon though😂 that nombo with Bad moon is why Covert Go Blue. That must be your origin story 😅😅😅

[@zeromus6460]

8:22 I'm glad to see some continuity over here. You mentioned Armageddon in Rarran's video where you went against Voxy in the guessing-game, now we're coming full circle as I learn what Armageddon actually is

[@user-rh7uy9xz7y]

I don't play hearthstone or magic anymore, but god damn I love the videos with both of you guys. Please keep more of them coming, the CGB "Timmy" deck building was hilarious 😆