Does This Magic: The Gathering Card Need To Be Banned?

Intro [Music] did you know that modern's band list currently consists of 50 Magic the Gathering cards some cards on this list have lived there since the format's conception While others are more recent editions some are noticeably stronger than others some are stranger than others and some are relics of a bygone era of magic card design that frankly look out of place alongside many of the most recent editions and speaking of recent editions the modern band list will soon contain 51 cards after a historically dominant performance at protour modern Horizons 3 natu winged wisdom is surely not long for this world this could happen as soon as next week many Magic the Gathering players have even go so far as to call NAU the hak of the set in reference to another another Infamous Legend from the first modern Horizons that quickly found itself on the modern band list though perhaps not as quickly as some may have liked but what exactly makes NAU winged wisdom or hak Oris in necropolis for that matter ban worthy or blazing Shaw for that matter is glimpse of nature which is currently banned in modern as bad as or possibly even worse than NAU what about birthing pod and Splinter twin how do they compare to na in terms of modern bandw worthiness in this video I will discuss not only the crimes of NAU winged wisdom but I will also compare it to other cards on the modern ban list I want to explain why different types of cards tend to get banned in modern and where NAU fits in among all of them I will also talk about a few other powerful cards that are surely on Wizards of the Coast's radar and why they could soon join NAU on modern's ever growing ban list should Fury have been banned and should grief perhaps join it is na do really as bad as all of these let's begin shall we but first we all know that coding is a useful skill in today's job market but for many of us the thought of learning how to code makes our eyes glaze over and we start thinking instead about what our next 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help in boot dod's vibrant Discord Community what's more boot dodev never wants a student to feel like they spent their money on something that isn't helping them that's why they offer a free demo of every course and their interactive features as well as a 30-day no questions asked refund policy so click the link in this video's description box and use my code Taran to get 25% off your first payment for boot dodev that's 25% off your first month or even your first year depending on the subscription you choose and thank you boot dodev for sponsoring this The Crimes of NAU video the crimes of NAU NAU forms the center piece of what will likely go down in history as one of the most broken modern decks of all time protour modern Horizons 3 was defined by a bant combo deck featuring NAU shuko and a pile of ways to go looking for either half of this combo with NAU and shuko in play you can trigger Na's ability twice for each creature in play for free that's an absurd amount of value right off the bat but it gets even more ridiculous if you have spring har nuko in play as well every time Na's ability reveals a land that land triggers nantuko and makes a fresh creature to equip with shuko at that point it's almost always trivial to draw your entire deck and win however you'd like as if that wasn't egregious enough Na's ability also provides the combo with a fantastic fail case even if you don't win the game you still likely draw six 8 10 cards and if your opponent tries to remove your Nao to interrupt the combo that draws you a card too B Nao has all the makings of a broken deck it's fast often winning the game by turn three it's consistent thanks to the many tutors for both NAU and shuko legal and modern and it's resilient both because the tutors help replace any pieces to the combo that get disrupted and because that disruption usually draws you into those redundant pieces for you as far as Bannings go Nat is an open and shut case but is that always true for a banned card is Nao more problematic than most cards on the modern ban list or are the bird's crimes fairly commonplace to answer that question we need to understand why Wizards of the Coast bans cards in the first place why do cards end up on the ban list what do you think makes for a bandw worthy card is it a card that is too good is it a card that is unfun how does one decide on Bannings consider the card Ravon Nimble pilferer Ravon is widely considered to be one of the strongest creat creatures of all time but based on Wizards of the Coast's current design philosophy and the other cards legal alongside Ravon I doubt the monkey will ever be banned this begs the question why are some cards banned While others are not is punishing fire more powerful than Ravon it's banned what about MOS synth Lattis or splinter twin why is Fury Bann but grief allowed to run rampant when I think of the modern band list I tend to sort them into one of the following categories band cards are on the list because they are either historically broken contextually broken fundamentally broken or because they exhibit broken play patterns now these categories are imperfect they are after all attempting to sort a highly complex collection of game pieces you could easily make a case that a few band cards fit into multiple categories on this list but I do feel that every card on the band list falls under at least one of these categories we're do you think NAU lands let's take a look at each category one at a time and see how NAU Stacks up against many of the band cards that we might find Historically Broken Cards there historically broken cards Believe It or Not There were broken cards in modern legal sets even before the modern Horizons era several of these cards have never been modern legal they were problematic in a previous format and thus were pre-banned alongside the announcement of modern as a new sanctioned format cards in this category broke the rules of engagement in modern years ago for one reason or another when modern was initially conceived Wizards of the Coast referred to it as a turn four format that is to say no deck in modern should be able to consistently win the game sooner than turn four a lot of these cards were banned with this rule of thumb in mind many cards on this list have gotten a lot worse over the years but surprisingly some have actually gotten better birthing pod for example has only gotten stronger as time has gone on since wizards of the gast continues to print more and more powerful creatures to tutor 4 imagine the golgari yog mooth deck with birthing pod other cards on the list have gotten a lot worse when you compare a glimpse of nature to NAU the evolution of modern is apparent both cards draw you cards based on the number of creatures you have but natu draws you two cards for each creature while Glimpse draws you only one NATO works with creature tokens such as those made off springart and nuko while Glimpse does not when you aren't comboing natu is a three four flying creature that your opponent will be reluctant to Target with a removal spell Glimpse is a one Mana card that cycles for one or two cards at best I don't know about you but maybe na do could take glimpse of Nature's spot on the band list Splinter twin is another great card to compare to Nao both cards are combo enablers that usually win the game the turn they are cast both combos end in a board full of creatures but Splinter twin costs one more mana and is a much less effective Standalone card than na do Splinter twin is Extreme extremely soft to spot removal while NAU really isn't Splinter twin combos with a three Mana do nothing card while NAU combos with a one Mana card that can be found off of urza Design Mistakes saga fundamentally broken or design mistakes many cards on the band list are just straight up broken they were broken before they're broken now and they'll be broken into the future they don't need any support to do broken things these are often considered the most notorious examples of design mistakes since theoretically it should have been clear that they were too good with even just a few play Test games when you think of a random banned modern card this is the list you're likely pulling from OKO lurus and Euro are some of the most recent examples of this category of card but design mistakes have existed for as long as magic the Gathering has been a game these cards tend to be banned in multiple formats and sometimes every format skull clamp is one of the oldest design mistakes from a modern set a product of the first wave of the new artifact subtype known as equipment play designers didn't realize that the card wouldn't just give players some value if their equipped creature died instead they would be using the clamp specifically for the purpose of killing their one toughness creatures and drawing a card much like glimpse of nature skull clamp has a pretty direct comparison to na both the skull clamp and na combos utilize equipment to draw cards both require you to have a board full of creatures to get maximum value both draw two cards SP specifically for each equipped creature the key difference is that skull clamp does all this for a single one Mana card NAU requires you to also have a sh go in play in the head-to-head comparison skull clamp is therefore even more broken than NAU despite being two decades older than NAU let's compare NAU to two other cards in this category that both happen to have the same Mana cost as NAU OKO and Euro these two cards released in back-to-back sets with similar names will each take over the game single-handedly OKO is hard to remove via combat and Euro is hard to remove period NAU for all its strengths is hard pressed to win a game single-handedly and as nice as the ability to draw a card when removed is doesn't quite stack up to either OKO or Euro on the resiliency front there's another card in modern that many Magic the Gathering players are currently debating as to whether or not it too should be Bann and I certainly feel this card fits into the fundamentally broken design mistakes category as as well and that card is of course the One Ring the One Ring needs zero Health to be broken the protection mode is effectively Time Walk while the card mode is often even better than ancestral recall the card also combos with itself multiple one Rings help you Stave off the life you'd otherwise lose to the burden encounters if the One Ring receives a ban in modern it will be because it is a fundamentally broken Contextually Broken card contextually broken the next category of card is similar to historically broken cards in that they are broken because of their context however whereas historically broken cards were broken in the context of a bygone era of card design and power level contextually broken cards are broken because of the existence of one or more specific other cards or in some cases types of cards these cards tend not to be banned in every format since not every format has the context necessary to break the card modern is a format that is currently defined by by fetchlands free spells and a massively deep card pool full of obscure cards waiting for a reason to see play many of the cards on this list turn out to be broken because of the existence of these other cards contextually broken cards are easy for game designers to miss these cards often have one intended purpose that's perfectly balanced but then a card Wizards of the Coast didn't consider comes along and suddenly you have a gamebreaking combo dark depths is a prime example of this as written there's nothing about dark depths that's too powerful but combine it with thespian stage or vampire hex Mage and suddenly you have a 2020 flying indestructible creature in play a lot sooner than most other decks can handle despite not being a fundamentally broken card I believe dark depths is the single most powerful card on the modern b list within the context of the modern card pool it's no wonder that the card was among those pre-banned when the format became sanctioned I of ugan on the other hand was legal and modern for 5 years before it became problematic the card responsible for alrai winter only achieved broken status when an influx of low Mana value colorless eldrazi entered the format via oath of the gate watch contextually broken is one of the best descriptors for NAU the card is just too strong with any reasonably costed permanent that can repeatedly trigger Na's ability for zero Mana is shuko contextually broken well maybe but if shuko didn't exist outrider and core or even lightning group would also be too good when combined with NAU but even if neither of those cards existed then na would still be disgusting in a hammertime shell with pure still Paladin so I think it's a safe bet to say that it is NAU not shuko that is the contextually broken card here but its context is not the only thing that makes na do Bad Play Patterns banworthy undesirable play patterns look at this board state do you have any idea a what cards are on the battlefield do you have any idea what cards are in the graveyard and what cards are in hand this is the epitome of the final kind of band card cards that make for miserable play patterns when a card invariably leads to the same kind of game every time that is a card that tends to find itself banned this is especially true if like na do the kind of games are drawn out one-sided or hard to parse visually but that's not the only kind of undesirable play play pattern all that matters is that the play pattern happens consistently and isn't very fun for the opponent fun is subjective of course but the most egregious examples are hard to defend sensei's divining top for example is a very popular card to play with but watching your opponents spin their top every turn Shuffle their Deck with a fetch land then spin their top again is worse than watching paint dry second Sunrise Cornerstone to the infamous eggs deck and crar Clan Ironworks are two more samples of this obnoxious one-sided game play now generally speaking these decks also have to be strong in order to be hit with the ban Hammer neoform combo which can put a Grizzle brand into play on turn one thanks to Allosaurus Ridder Chancellor of the tangle and gemstone Cavern then combo off for the win after a turn that lasts between three and five business days remains legal and modern because the deck just isn't consistent enough to be problematic many modern players disagreed with the Banning of Fury this past year but the reasoning for the Banning was the card's ubiquity and the play patterns of the card against small creature strategies if you had small creatures they were weak to Fury and if they had an undying evil effect well that's an even more miserable play pattern anyone who played Modern in 2023 is intimately familiar with the feeling of having your entire board plague winded for one mana and your opponent ending up with a 33 double Striker out of the deal many would argue that rather than Banning Fury Wizards of the Coast should have banned grief for similar play pattern reasons it's fair to say that a grief brought back by an undying evil was even more miserable than a fury who wants to get two cards stripped from their hand for one mana and then have to deal with a 4-3 Menace creature you know if I had to pick one single card in modern that I think will soon join NAU on the ban list I would absolutely choose grief the card is a textbook case of undesirable play Conclusion patterns the topic of Bannings is often insufferable too often players approach the conversation from the standpoint of I don't like playing against this card therefore it should be banned but the ban list is an important tool for maintaining the health of a format and discussions surrounding this tool don't need to be frustrating by developing an understanding of what makes a card bandw worthy we can have a more informed and nuanced conversation about which cards should or should not be banned in the future and I believe Nao is a fantastic entry point for that understanding in I also think that bird is going to be banned within a week but what do you think do you agree with me that na should indeed be banned how about my evaluation of the different kinds of band cards let me know your thoughts in the comments below and don't forget this Monday is a brand new episode of Shuffle up and play starring Charlie AKA moist critical who sits down to play a game of Commander with myself voxy and Crim it's an episode you won't want to miss and it airs this Monday morning so be sure to tune in in and remember you too can learn how to code with the same ease and joy as playing a game because with boot. you'll learn backend web development from start to finish in both the python and go programming languages all while playing an RPG style online game learn to code by playing a game that's right you'll earn XP level up get achievements and even complete quests to get a top spot on the global leaderboard the whole time you'll be writing a ton of code all while playing this game what a great way to learn a valuable skill so just click the link in the description box and use my code Taran to get 25% off your first payment for boot dodev that's 25% off your first month or even your first year depending on the subscription that you choose and thank you boot dodev for sponsoring this video [Music] [Music] next time on shuffle up and play welcome to shuffle up and play and our brand new set Charlie what do you think of my set I think it came out super nice you're more of an aith guy instead of a TAA guy that's pretty interesting it's pretty telling hey my name's Charlie moist critical I'm foxy I stream Magic on Twitch it's me Crim you've seen me play on MTG goldfish so I I don't play Blue I decided to put this card in and apparently it's hated by the masses somebody called Grand Arbiter Austine you're a real scoundrel scumbag scumbag I thought this was going to be a fun game of Mag yeah if you want to give me a light tap it's not a light tap though it's like it's like a dominatrix like say sa safe safe word please can you get rid of the grand Arbiter it is Chun Lee that will kick our faces in I will kick your face in yes this is chat's fault I didn't do this yeah yeah blame chat all right yes this is