The Guy Who Designed Wood Elemental

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The person who designed Wood Elemental.
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Filmed on iPhone.
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[@ZergrushEddie]

*First reading* "This is terrible." *Second reading* "Wait, UNTAPPED?!"

[@ThisIsACommanderChannel]

I actually run Wood Elemental in my Korvold landfall deck. Everytime I use it, people are stunned by how bad it is.

[@MrXennhorn]

My Korvold is stacked with Goblins .. i refer to it as food tribal

[@ThisIsACommanderChannel]

@@MrXennhorn Ha! I have a friend who despises goblins, so he'd probably like your deck.

[@BOLDBANGER]

@@ThisIsACommanderChannel i love goblin decks. i made one 15 years ago called "jimmy's kids"

[@NoelFallstrom]

I applaud you. I love seeing some of the worst cards in playable decks. Some cards are just fun to play because they are so bad. Other cards I have to include because of the theme. "Eaten by Spiders" is in my spider deck because where else would it go?

[@8D2BFREE]

that extra stun effect can come in handy.

[@jessicameadows7258]

And here I thought Organ Elemental would have been about sacrificing a piano

[@Gabu_]

Same

[@wild1dog1]

Maybe he meant to say OREGANO elemental…

[@brownmold]

Lol!

[@twin2dan]

No, it was Oregon Elemental... makes it rain. Not sure what the kidney reference would be though.

[@cooperross9495]

As someone who's had lessons in both, I am unreasonably angry by the implication that they're the same.

[@andrewmacdonald2041]

"If you're lucky" killed me

[@athath2010]

society if wood elemental let you sacrifice any of your forests, not just your untapped ones:

[@mattm7798]

Yeah, that would at least make sense.

[@mdb45424]

thats just atogs and they were good

[@imperiallarch7610]

It still seems like volunteering to lock yourself out of the game. You've got to sacrifice at least 3 lands to make it better than Grizzly Bears, and then what do you do when they cast Boomerang and it's back in your hand and you're already behind on lands?

[@SOME32]

Sacrifice any number of untapped forests and it will be */* and indestructable for that many turns.

[@CoolGuy-hp4rg]

Imagine it said, ''Every basic land is a forest in addition of its type'' and, it allows you to sac even your opponents forests lol

[@williamstinde8930]

That little tag at the end "Oh, I see where you're coming from....doubling up is problematic" was brilliant. It's already stuck in my head.

[@nuraby_9228]

All you need to know about WotC's bias towards blue is the fact that Wood Elemental and Mana drain came out in the same set.

[@spikescafe3940]

Getting Mana Drained is the best thing that could ever happen to a Wood Elemental on the stack. You keep your lands and your opponent takes mana burn next turn!

[@benjaminloyd6056]

Of course, they are the Wizards of the coast, not the Druids of the coast.

[@abuelovinagres4411]

Now it’s in the other way.

[@crovax1375]

Back then mana burn was a thing, so Mana Drain wasn't as strong

[@Blackadder75]

Up to Homelands sets weren 't really designed by WOTC but by some random groups of old friends and playtesters of magic before alpha. it slowly involved into a more central design team

[@bartoffer]

They just forgot to print Wood Elemental's best friend, Good Elemental. Good Elemental: 2GG */* Elemental As Good Elemental enters the battlefield, return any number of forests from your graveyard to the battlefield. Good Elemental's power and toughness are equal to the number of land cards put in play through this effect. If four or more land cards were put into your graveyard from the battlefield this turn, you may pay 0 rather than pay Good Elemental's casting cost.

[@bartoffer]

And of course, there's a swamp-related variant called Hood Elemental, but it might have been correct for WOTC to can the idea on sensitivity concerns...

[@whaleofdarkness]

@@bartoffer Well, back then WOTC didn't really check on artists so expect Hood Elemental to be something racist by the guy who made Invoke Prejudice. I didn't think that checking out that guy's artwork on his website would be such a mistake.

[@Alecations]

Ermageddon is back on the menu

[@ildathet]

@@bartoffer so ... Blood elemental and ... we need a blue one too

[@jinxed7915]

Dont forget about the classic card, Would Elemental. It enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter for each attractive creature you control

[@justingolden21]

and I quote "make something from pottery barn that kills you"

[@thomasnorby1012]

I sacrifice the opponent's untapped forests.

[@daveautzen9089]

I was just thinking”it’s been too long since we had a Remy MTG video”

[@quncle]

I've actually ran banker for while when I started out. It's not great but it's not wood elemental bad. By that I mean, back then none of us ran a lot of removal.

[@vaxfantomen]

Was that not the guy that came up with ante as well?

[@asraarradon4115]

Ante was fun back in the day. We had no idea of the value these cards back then, so it was just really cool to put something up on the game. Nowadays it sounds preposterous, but the deck building was not remotely close to optimized, and the value wasn't really there outside of play. It was a different time.

[@mattm7798]

Ante actually made sense in really early magic. They had no idea people would build hyper tuned decks, and saw it as a trading game as much as a playing game. They were wrong, but it somehow made sense back then lol

[@taemyr]

@@mattm7798 It was markeded as a trading/collecting card game from the beginning.

[@wlyTheEverydayWorld]

Ante is a great idea ....as an optional mod for advanced adult players

[@vaxfantomen]

@@asraarradon4115 Well, the original design (as this clip shows) was that it mortgage your house and not your deck. Then again, back in 94 a house was about a summer job away.

[@mountainghoti1671]

Ha! Joke's on you, Pottery barn is... oh, 75 years old?!?

[@EGarrett01]

Back in the day, knowledge, playtesting, and things like deckbuilding restrictions were all in their infancy, so the main concern when designing new cards was not to break the game. So they were very conservative with any new abilities. All the good stuff was the "mistakes."

[@lordcrispen]

Thank you so much for having the character named Remy. What's it like playing yourself? I think some people would have tried to make it a caricature but I think it was much bolder to play a more realistic version of yourself!

[@Olvrin]

Any judge can confirm its legal to play Kidney Elemental with Doubling Season? If so, how does that work? I was playing a game with my friend and played Kidneyele like that, sacrificed my friend's kidneys for the two extra +1/+1 and now he is crying on the floor like a baby that I cant do that, anyone can prove my friend wrong?

[@nootnewt]

Not a judge, but that is definitely not how the rules work. You don't add any counters or make any tokens with Wood Elemental, so Doubling Season has no effects on it

[@Ariurotl]

I had a chat with a friend about how "strictly better" is a much narrower term than it appears because lots of seemingly worse cards can be situationally better in very rare circumstances, and we even came up with an edge case for ol' Woody here. You'll be jumping for joy at drawing him if your forests have blaze counters from Obsidian Fireheart on them! Okay, but seriously, Woody sucks.

[@tinfoilslacks3750]

By this logic *no* cards are strictly better than other cards, because all of them are "worse" in the circumstance your opponent takes control of them

[@Ariurotl]

@@tinfoilslacks3750 Yep, it gets fairly ridiculous!

[@jonnynice8366]

​​@@AriurotlMerfolk of the Pearl Trident is better than Ragavan if your only other creature is Lovestruck beast.

[@CUATROMORCE]

@@jonnynice8366😂😂😂😂😂😂 that one really made me laugh, thanks i love it

[@cameroncorrado3935]

@jonnynice8366 I still think I'd rather have Ragavan. 🤣

[@DeconvertedMan]

Wood you come up with a new idea? :D

[@Neelo5000]

I could picture it being viable in EDH with Titania Protector of Argoth as commander. That's why I love EDH. So many fun ways to play junk rares.

[@nathanmays7926]

still sells for $17

[@FaithG-s1f]

And magic players will still buy it hoping it fills the void

[@admiralxytan1160]

At least, back in Legends, they weren’t color coding set symbols to show rarity, so you could speculate on something else being the rare out of your pack. Because yes, this was, in fact, a rare.

[@FakeSchrodingersCat]

But there were magazines telling you what the rares were. That being said I remember trading my wood elemental for a lightning bolt and the guy coming back the next day demanding his card back.

[@Tryptic214]

That "Yeah" is so perfectly smug...

[@lashedsuns4529]

New Remy? Say less! Just happy to be here.

[@yuridhjeeyn9034]

My first thought when i heard the effect was: "that is broken" my second thought was "you can probably only sacrifice your own forests" that would make the card a LOT worse

[@Draqson]

To this day im waiting for "Food Elemental", a 2GG Elemental where you sacrifice untapped food for +1/+1

[@danacoleman4007]

ummm ..... yeah..... That's been a thing for some time now

[@katanyafleet]

Candelabra of Tawnos is great for decks that feature tech lands or Gaea's Cradle or focus on getting more mana per land. I have a Magus of the Candelabra because I can't use Candelabra of Tawnos.

[@Neelo5000]

Yeah I don't know if it was sarcasm or not, but Candleabra was released in the same set as the urzatron trio, hence it was absolutely broken.

[@Murdrad]

One kidney for +5/+5 and lifelink. Black will love it.

[@tallynnyntyg6008]

With Ashaya and landfall, I can see Wood Elemental being kind of neat.

[@Lreclusa]

With aftermath analyst in standard right now, a land sac card wouldn't be too bad. That's what people are doing with pitiless carnage

[@vincentxu8217]

There're better ways to sac your lands, the fact that it asks for untapped forests makes it forever one of the last options to consider. Maybe the elemental type matters a tiny bit. Even worse: it's not even budget friendly!

[@ubernerrd]

Might not be so bad if you have a card that lets you pull land out of the graveyard. And now I kind of want to build a deck based on wood elemental.

[@justanotheremptychannel2472]

Definitely would be legend if you managed to pull it out

[@atouchoftoxic1772]

Thanks for everything you do.

[@almightyk11]

Now if they made it a base 4/4, or made it just cost G I could see the value at the time.

[@juliolopes7831]

0:58 Funny is if you look at the monitor at top right corner. You notice no one sitting on the chairs 😅 I thought Remy used doubles...

[@patu8010]

I'm trying to come up a contrived way to make it really powerful but there probably isn't one.

[@zackkelley2940]

Titania, Protector of Argoth is the best he's going to get. At least there you get some 5/3s with him.

[@coreysierchio4650]

More like "Would-not-play" elemental, amirite?

[@PaulGaither]

DIdn't WotC have an article or interview where they were desging expansions os quickly, often at the same time, that they had people who had never even played magic working on them? People just coming up with effect ideas and didn't even understand the game mechanics much at all, let alone power levels and so forth.

[@TheMartianBotanist]

"Everyone is gonna wanna play this." "I wouldn't." "Well Clark wait until you see my Wouldn't Elemental where you sacrifice your marriage, you inspired that one."

[@martinrosschou]

I wonder if it would even see play if it cost 0 mana to cast.

[@carlmcd]

Oh, almost certainly would have at the time. Not sure today. But at that point it becomes part of an interesting combo, just gotta find the other part. My first thought is Balance...

[@CaveFreediving]

Please do more of these! There's so many bad cards from the early days of magic. You could also make fun of the artwork back then too. BTW, I played Magic in the mid 90's, but it was far from perfect

[@sc2fanterranplayer]

One card desolation angel without kicker is even worse..lol

[@ansonang7810]

If it was one green to cast it would've been great.

[@AgentOracle]

That's Phil Foglio, he's awesome.

[@louisnemzer6801]

Remy trolling again in a sketch set in 1994 wearing a Baltimore Orioles logo that came out in 2019 😅

[@Joseph125]

Would elemental

[@AND-od5jt]

Since green has so many possibilities to get mana. There defly are better ones but for a B/G sacrifical deck... not the worst. Round 8 should be aprox 10 lands and 6 mana by elves....

[@CamBoss64]

multiple yeats later this might work in a lumra deck

[@tsuki5298]

like for the video and like for the ad not being opressive af

[@cruetusnex]

Dang, first time seeing that card, it is UNBELIEVABLY bad. What was Remy thinking here?

[@Winterhe4rt]

Cant wait to play this again next season when Splintering is nerfed into obscurity xD

[@kiralaxer5772]

I mean... you could run it in like... Juggle the Performance... maybe?

[@itsJulian23]

Do Bargain next! (the white Sorcery)

[@danacoleman4007]

I'm starting to think maybe it's the hat

[@KoNekoNinja-]

I might add this to my Githrog deck

[@Aronia55]

You'll draw max 1 card :p

[@KoNekoNinja-]

@@Aronia55 i didn’t specify that it would be the Ravenous Ride. It’s so anti synergy, it’s gonna be bad and fun at the same time

[@ice_kraken55]

honestly though, it seems like a hard counter to a green ramp deck

[@Pistoolkip]

Legend wasn't designed in a board room. It was designed at a DnD table

[@2099EK]

Aww, I thought I would get a tutu for my kidneys. I misunderstood. Well, fool me once, I die. Fool me twice, well, I can't get fooled again (because I am dead).

[@williampittam1]

All hail the hypno toad

[@metalhev3989]

Same dude who created Hew the Entwood

[@haryadisuryonoto1118]

Maybe after casting Wood Elemental we should cast Armageddon?

[@seanhardner5842]

Well… Candelabra is busted with Tolarian Academy.

[@kyoko703]

How about Time Elemental? I sacrifice my PTO for work life balance. Any takers?

[@JazMan2001]

Remy you should do a “skyfall” by Adele parody named “landfall”

[@JuQmadrid]

Other expansions have a worse reputation, but for me, Legends is probably the worst ever. The good cards in the set are broken, and the bad cards (which are most of the rest of them) are terrible.

[@mdb45424]

it was a set ment to lower power creep and try new things. Magic used to throw in a very bad set to add filler for rotations

[@Lonovavir]

At least it's not from Homelands.

[@zero_mene]

Woodn't Elemental

[@officialtoofknbusy]

Sacrifice ONE kidney

[@thomassynths]

The Guy Who Designed Only Mountain For Arabian Nights

[@hermaeusmora424]

Maybe slap haste on it?

[@hollowknight459]

with landfall and bring them back. why not

[@Paveway-chan]

I think you need to follow this up with "The first guy to realize Wood elemental is busted!"

[@xn85d2]

That person has yet to be born.

[@mrcatchingup]

How many people accidentally threw this into a tree folk theme deck?

[@8bitKatwalk]

This guy should write yu gi oh cards.

[@Kryptnyt]

The Wood Element? I think I've seen that movie.

[@Zorgdub]

I had to go check the card because I couldn't believe it was that terrible. Wow ...

[@nooneofconsequence1251]

I feel like Magic R&D creature design back in '94 was basically like every idiot who criticizes my homebrew cards today for being "unbalanced" or OP (they're all wrong, my cards are perfectly fine compared to the shit that WotC makes)... they never see the floor... they only see the ceiling. When they made this.. they were thinking... oh yeah, they game could stall, and you could late in the game end up with 15 or 20 forests in play, play this guy, and BAM!! you've all of a sudden got a 16/16 that is bigger than everything else in the game.. that should win easily, right? I mean... assuming your opponent doesn't have an Uthden Troll... or a Terror... but yeah... they never seemed to consider how bad creatures could be only how good they could be in the perfect situation. which is a big part of why creatures sucked back then.

[@masterjbt]

I’m early enough to ask for a restock of the verdict hoodie

[@eugeniafurman4968]

Remy please have my babies!

[@mattstrott753]

Worst card bit THE BEST art!

[@asraarradon4115]

The smile that you can't unsee.

[@munsterotaku3058]

Organ elemental would allow you to sacrifice any number of church to get a +3/+3 but your opponent get 4 cleric for each church sacrificied this way. >Cleric who are goated only to attack you.

[@Fadexpl]

Woodn't

[@karlkhansen]

I wood

[@mattm7798]

I know some cards are meant to be bad, but wood elemental is beyond bad.

[@brofenix]

Lol >

[@BOLDBANGER]

as someone designing a card game and balancing my cards, i'm coming across cards that are almost this bad and i'm like wtf was i thinking... before release at least lol

[@robertdascoli949]

You laugh at wood elemental. But one day some broken combo will come from destroying all your land. And on that day. ON THAT DAY. I will probably play zuran orb cause it does the same thing at 0 mana and gains me life.

[@autobotjazz1972]

" pay four mana and mortgage your house" so just like trying to buy reserve list cards?

[@helgemeff5555]

[@byrontheusurper6505]

Damn that is ASS

[@cameronhaynes9983]

Wood Elemental is the ultimate Anti-Green tech card. It doesn't say that you only have to sacrifice Forests *you control*. So if your opponent leaves a bunch of Forests untapped, Wood Elemental cleans house. This is a terrible card though, I don't know what Wizards was thinking 😅

[@Neelo5000]

I think you're confusing 'sacrifice' with 'destroy'.

[@cameronhaynes9983]

@@Neelo5000 No I meant what I said. "Sacrifice" is to remove a permanent from play. Most MtG cards that sacrifice will say "Sacrifice X you control" to stop you from sacrificing your opponent's creatures/lands/etc. This card does not

[@Neelo5000]

@@cameronhaynes9983 You can only sacrifice permanents you control. If there are are any cards with wording like you mention, they are almost certainly very old cards that have errata to update the wording. Even back in the early days of MtG, the rules for sacrificing worked the same. You've never been legally allowed to sacrifice a permanent controlled by another player.

[@h2ojr1]

are those comments A.i.?!?!

[@Gabu_]

No, the racy profiles are regular ol' bots. They spam pretty much any comment section of successful youtubers.. Which, on a positive note, confirms Remy is successful!

[@mdb45424]

some of them spam just to promote their botting services

[@Gabu_]

Silly card designer, you can get loads of tutus for a kidney!

[@scozzbaggs9224]

Thats actually the dumbest card ever lol

[@ppellacani]

Is wood elemental one of the shittest cards ever? I mean, it is shit, but it is still a creature.

[@mattm7798]

It is easily in the top 5 of worst creatures ever.

[@bramvanduijn8086]

@@mattm7798 Well now I want to build a deck around it where it really shines.

[@EGarrett01]

It is absolutely unplayable.

[@ppellacani]

It is a crap, but still a creature. It may attack and block. Some cards just do nothing, like Sorrow's Path

[@EGarrett01]

@@ppellacani You have to pay 4 mana and sacrifice an untapped forest to get a 1/1. Sorrow's Path is obviously horrific as well, but people would sometimes donate it and then tap it using Icy Manipulator.

[@masterjbt]

orioles represent

[@greenkitty1]

0, 3

[@iTzDritte]

Second

[@Joe_for_real]

I'm pretty sure 1st was a bot, so we'll give it to you.