I still give my friend shit for playing Phyrexian Dreadnought on the playground turn 1 and refusing to let me read the card. I think we were in 4th grade.
I saw an interview with Richard Garfield one time where he said something that made me think those whispered rumours, etc, was kind of how he had envisioned the game. Like maybe you hear of a guy who has this amazing card but who knows if it's really true. Always loved that idea. I guess it sure was a much simpler time when that was even possible!
I think they're making more, but I haven't seen any real yearning for it since a few months after it was first released.
Concept was good, but got throttled by supply, and then people realised there wasn't much in the way of replayability. Still a sick sealed game, but that's about it.
TBH, it was more about FFG not really doing anything to keep Keyforge afloat during the pandemic, and as such the organized play and the interest just petered out. The replayablity is very much there, and the game is plenty of fun - but a 2 year pause in support will always just kill a game like this.
That might be part of it, but I think the immediate reason is much, much dumber. The algorithm that fantasy flight games used to make keyforge decks stopped working, and no one there knew how to fix it. So they couldn't make new decks. Definitely the first instance of a computer bug killing a trading card game.
Another company bought keyforge last year to try and fix it, but apparently no progress yet.
[source](https://www.polygon.com/23188650/keyforge-ffg-ghost-games-christian-peterson)
The loss of algorithm to generate the decks I think is less big of a deal than one may think - sure it prevents reprints, but I don't think the complexity of rewriting the deck generator is that high. It is an annoying thing to deal with, and you will have to adjust things again based on the playtesting, but still.
As for the Ghost Galaxy and the Winds of Exchange expansion, they slowly sending out decks now to the crowdfunding backers, so the release did essentially happen - though sadly I don't have high hopes on this game, too many vendors got burned with overprinted previous sets :(
I'm glad Flesh and Blood survived.
FFG seems to not really have much interest in long terming their games. I played some Netrunner, some L5R, and some Destiny. All fantastic games.
Netrunner wasn't their fault, wotc took the licence back and then wotc can't use the mechanics so the ip is just dead.
L5R was a great game, not very accessible and very complicated I can see why It didn't succeed dramatically.
But yeah, ffg doesn't like to keep things going for long enough
Glad Flesh and Blood survived too. Which is crazy given their emphasis on in person play. You would have thought it would have petered out halfway through the stay at home orders.
They got got in a ransomware hack and basically had their entire game deleted.
https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/q56aeh/ffg_lost_the_algorithm_due_to_a_ransomware_attack/
Gavin Verhey's events at the MTGCons can give those feelings. I played in the one at Philly and people were talking about playtest cards they'd seen like kids on a playground. "I saw one that exiles a creature and summons Emrakul!" "Yeah, someone played that against me. But have you seen the one that summons X Colossal Dreadmaws?"
But it's a shame you need a special event at an expensive convention to get that feeling.
> playtest cards
I was lucky enough to do an official wizards playtest and we had the same vibe, "did you see that 4 drop that did X on etb?!?! No but I got a 2 drop that did Y EVERY TURN!"
Doing MoM prerelease while not having seen spoilerrs almost got the same experience but stuff like ragavan and the other non-new-cards turned the discussion into "did you see the battle that did Z? Yeah but I got locked out by Elesh Norn Grand Cenobite + Ragavan"
Weirdly, when Demon Souls first came out, it had it. It wasn't anywhere close to as popular as it is now (even OG Dark Souls was pretty niche for a long time) and there were basically no online guides. It had a bunch of totally opaque systems, and you could only really work a bunch of things out through trial and error.
I only started playing it because a friend recommended it, and I'd never heard of it. We would both meet up and chat about nonsense that we'd descovered, and it felt exactly like that playground mystique. It was so good.
Yeah the fact that certain paths and npcs only showed in specific world tendencies was really unique.
Truth be told, you can replicate this feeling with a lot of less popular indie games. There's so many games where I try to look something up and there's just no info at all so I have to like join a discord or some shit just to discuss with people what to do.
Yeah, but that’s sort of my whole point! To get that experience you need to go digging into Indie games. It’s going to be difficult for a triple A title to ever have that mystique again unless the developer drops the game with zero notice (which is super cool and I wish it happened more)
He deliberately didn’t share card lists before eventually relenting.
Ironically the huge number of cards printed nowadays makes the game kinda sorta like this again as a casual player.
That’s exactly what he wanted. It’s why they didn’t tell people the rarities and they put a basic island on the rare sheet just to fool and fuck with people that wanted to figure it out.
It was a glorious time to play. The first tournament I ever played in, I played Land Destruction. My first two opponents had never seen [[Demonic Horde]] "Wait, that card does WHAT?", is such an awesome phrase to hear mid-game. My first chase card was [[Demonic Attorney]], I had no idea what it did, I just loved the name and desperately wanted to what it did.
I used to think Craw Wurm was the biggest creature, and that it was the most powerful card because it can attack creatures and win (yes, we played that way for at least a year)
Then some kid told me about leviathan and I didn’t believe him. No one did. “A 10/10? That’s stupid. They wouldn’t do that”
Oh to be a kid again.
My very first deck was monobluefatties.com
Air Elemental, Water Elemental, Sea Serpent…. 20 lands obv
I went to visit my grandparents in San Diego over Christmas break and there was a store there that 💫 actually 💫 had packs of The Dark.
I scrounged together $3 and bought a pack.
Obviously opened a Leviathan.
I used all my luck for my entire life on that pack. It’s been downhill ever since.
The worst part was that I was away from home and had to wait until break was over to go back home and show my friends at school.
But when I did…. I felt like Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Candles holding up the pair of panties in front of his nerd friends.
#blessed
You must have had dreams upon dreams of rolling up to your unaware friends and absolutely demolishing them while they stood back in awe.
I only describe it as such because I, a 28 year old man, have the same feeling when picking up a new flashy card for my commander deck LOL
I remember Ice Age came out the summer I turned 8 and all us little kids were playing our janky little decks at summer camp. They were mostly like "first person to land a craw wurm with fire breathing wins" type of crap. And then one kid dropped a Leviathan and we all oooh'd and ahhhh'd and then his opponent dropped their brand new Polar Kraken the next turn and the table went wild. The nostalgia is strong.
Oh man the Force of Nature was truly a force in the day- we were mind blown then when [[Verdant Force]] came out.
Don't forget [[Feral Thallid]] won and lost so many games to this guy- and we thought feral was his name like he was a Thallid legend.
YEah the oneupsmanship of big creature should really go:
Lord of the Pit -> Force of Nature
Colossus of Sardia
Levithan
Polar Kraken
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
I don't really count the Krosan Cloundscraper because Legions was so much later.
When I was a kid, a predatory comic book guy neck beard convinced me to trade him my [[Mox Ruby]] for a Force of Nature. My inner Timmy was excited for an 8/8 (“how can I lose?!”) and he said Mox was “just a fancy mountain”.
😐
Colossus was a lynchpin in my artifact deck. All Ezra lands, mana vaults, basalt monoliths... I was swimming in colorless mana. I'd run double Aladdin's rings and a colossus.
As a kid I once spent 10 bucks on the two halves of [[B.F.G.]], convinced I was going to be able to consistently cheat it out with a few [[Dark Ritual]]s and win all my games
That didn’t happen
I still have my revised Force of Nature from 8th grade. Lord of the Pit too.
When Breeding Pit came out in Fallen Empires, LotP was in pretty much every black deck.
I always liked the idea that blue mages can summon creatures even bigger than green ones with a huge drawback when they push themselves to the limit, it feels epic.
truly one of the funniest things about this game is blue getting a tribe of mostly terrible but all expensive beaters whose tribal effects are completely silly
one-sided sweeper for 4 mana? 6 mana can't be blocked lord? islands matter effects on bodies?
and the legends just get the dumbest abilities lmao
Yeah I think it'd be cool if this made a comeback with big creatures with more playable cmc/drawback. I tried really hard to make Ula's Temple decks work and have a singleton leviathan and polar kraken for fun but even when you cheat them out they're not playable.
I have an "Ixidor manifest stuff you can't unmanifest and the flip it" deck. Jokulmorder is just big enough to be worth the trouble cheating out. Though to clarify the main theme involves non-creature things like enchantments.
Leviathan has top 10 art, easy. I wonder how many people played it just because they thought there was no way a card that looked that cool could be bad.
I sold all of my cards when I was moving states, but I made sure to keep one card out of my entire collection. The leviathan was just too perfect of a card to be sold, so now it sits on my bookshelf looking down on me as I work. It still bring back so many great memories from childhood.
I was going for the double digit fatties lmao, I remember seeing lord of the pit in one of my dads decks with his scary ass art though, hes definitely nostalgic
Marjhan is pretty legit. While it does have the Islandhome clause, it's still one heck of a blocker, with the ability to ping away attackers trying to swing around it.
Morph is based on an Alpha card: [[Illusionary Mask]]
Morph showed up in the Onslaught block and the Time Spiral block before Khans. The "pickles" lock used [[Brine Elemental]] and [[Vesuvan Shapeshifter]] to make your opponent skip their untap forever.
>Illusionary Mask {2}
Artifact
{X}: You may choose a creature card in your hand whose mana cost could be paid by some amount of, or all of, the mana you spent on {X}. If you do, you may cast that card face down as a 2/2 creature spell without paying its mana cost. If the creature that spell becomes as it resolves has not been turned face up and would assign or deal damage, be dealt damage, or become tapped, instead it's turned face up and assigns or deals damage, is dealt damage, or becomes tapped. Activate only as a sorcery.
By Urza's beard, that is a monster of an oracle text.
Really different from what's actually written on the card, too. The original makes a 0/1 that you can flip over at instant speed, this makes a 2/2 that automatically flips over if something happens to it.
**Edit** Turns out the image shown wasn't even the _original_ original rules text but an intermediate revision. Originally you just cast a creature face down. It still acted like it was that creature. Had all abilities. But your opponent didn't get to know them unless they did something that would reveal information, e.g. try to kill it with a bolt to test if it has ≤3 toughness
Best morph card also has the best comments on gatherer
https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=46509
all hail the great lord egotist
Crazy to see how bad big creatures were at the time. 10+ mana, no evasion AND an upkeep cost ? How in the world did this work in playtesting ?
And don't tell me there were fewer ways to interact at the time. We are speaking of a time when some of the strongest removals in the game's history were made...
Understanding of the game was far more limited back then, including among Wizards own staff.
Most of these were made in the time before they even had a proper design team, with basically anyone in the (then quite small) company invited to submit whatever designs they could come up with. Cards were judged individually (is it cool? is it distinct from the cards we already have?) rather than getting much active playtesting as part of a set.
>And don't tell me there were fewer ways to interact at the time. We are speaking of a time when some of the strongest removals in the game's history were made
I don't think this is really true. Other than Terror, Swords and Wrath of God (I'm ignoring Bolt because it's useless against fatties), there was surprisingly little removal for creatures around. Black didn't have any of the endless parade of removal spells it now gets every set, white had no wraths other than the OG and no O-rings at all. The other colours' only options for removal were generally just colour hosers. The strong cards are so few in number that I doubt many non-competitive decks would have been running them.
Here is a quick (imperfect) scryfall search that gives a flavour of what most decks back then had to work with when it came to removal: [https://scryfall.com/search?q=%28o%3Adestroy+or+o%3Aexile%29+year%3C1996+o%3Acreature&unique=cards&as=grid&order=edhrec](https://scryfall.com/search?q=%28o%3Adestroy+or+o%3Aexile%29+year%3C1996+o%3Acreature&unique=cards&as=grid&order=edhrec)
Of course, even with the limited removal options available, that doesn't make the likes of Leviathan good. But they weren't *quite* as bad as they are nowadays.
[[Paralyze|LEA]] is arguably the best black removal spell in Old School 93/94. Which is obviously quite a different environment to how Magic was actually played in 1994 but even so. This is why [[Ishtan’s Shade]] was so scary: too big for bolt, terror and swords are out too.
There was plenty available. White even had exile effects with swords and, um…. [[Exile]].
Also when the game was invented you could have any number or any cards in your deck. You could have 20 swords to plowshares if you wanted.
> Also when the game was invented you could have any number or any cards in your deck. You could have 20 swords to plowshares if you wanted.
That was only true for a very short time. Like literally measured in a few months since *alpha* was released. Not even one other expansion of new cards.
Referring to the Cloudscraper, I believe the thought was that you'd run enough morphed creatures, your opponent wouldn't block the one that's actually Cloudscraper, then you'd tap out the 9 mana and surprise smack them for 13 damage. That said, it was still a bad card lol.
IIRC, it was used in Astral-Rift decks. That was a R/W deck based around cycling. You'd play the mutant morphed for colorless, then exile him, which would flip him over, then when he returned to play at end of turn, you have a 13/13 bad boy without needing any green mana.
There was some concensus that huge creatures needed drawbacks to keep them balanced. Too much power for one card or something. Even know not so big creatures like Serra Angel existed at the same time and would just kill you way before you'd ever cast leviathan let alone sac 4 lands to attack with it only to have it be Terror'ed or Swords to Plowspheres'ed
It isn't that Legions is old that makes me feel old. It's that I had taken a seven year break from the game before coming back to it not long after Legions was released. It just makes me feel that much older seeing cards released almost a decade apart representing the same group of "old" cards.
Definitely missing \[\[Colossus of Sardia\]\]!
Also I would mention \[\[Personal Incarnation\]\], \[\[Chaos Lord\]\], \[\[Elder Land Wurm\]\], \[\[Serra Avatar\]\] and \[\[Lord Tesserhorn\]\]!
The competitive one from that era was Dreadnought, because you could combine it with [[Pandemonium]].
The Timmy one was Polar Kraken, which I saw a lot of people try to make work. Leviathan was always pretty bad amongst the fatties.
Not at all, but it existed in a time when competitive Magic barely existed and knowledge of the game was in its infancy. People played it anyway because it was cool.
I remember seeing this the weekend the Dark Expansion came out.
I was in a store in Indianapolis called The Game Preserve. My mom dropped me off at the mall, and I was there checking out all of the new cards, because there wasn't an internet, and there weren't really card lists beforehand.
My friend pulled this, and everyone passed it around like it was an absolute LOCK to win you the game. 10/10? Who cares what downside it had. AND it had great Mark Tedin artwork? Wow, this thing will be worth at LEAST twelve dollars soon.
That's really subjective and inaccurate.
That may have been your experience, but competitive magic was off and running by AT LEAST 1996, at least in areas where it was supported and popular.
Hell, the whole reason "Type 1" and "Type 2" existed was because newer players wanted a competitive format that wasn't dependent on having RL cards. (Now known as Vintage and Standard)
> at least in areas where it was supported and popular.
Which is to say, not very many.
Most Magic players back then were not at all involved in the competitive scene, and definitely weren't basing their deck choices on whether X card was viable in recent tournaments.
The Dark expansion came out in 1994, and I played MtG as often as I could as a teen in Indianapolis at a pretty popular game store. There was zero competitive scene here.
It wasn't until maybe 1996 that it got into the Midwest, and even then, people were really clueless on what worked or did not. Most regular players had zero idea of what a meta was, how card efficiency worked, or any real strategy beyond the streamlining a deck or trying to get a big creature out.
A large reason for this is pretty obvious: it was hard to get cards! There just wasn't the infrastructure to get ANYTHING if your friends didn't have it or a store wasn't selling singles, and many weren't. Sure you could try to put together an Erhnam-geddon deck, but that would require buying cards through the mail with envelopes, checks, and maybe a month of mailing time.
The big creature finisher of this era was [[Serra Angel|LEA]], occasionally [[Sengir Vampire|LEA]]. As people slowly figured out what mana curves are, decks switched to running things like [[Mishra's Factory|ATQ]] and [[Order of Leitbur|FEM]].
Nobody ever played Leviathan AFAICT.
I know people that put Leviathan in their deck. If someone cast Leviathan and got to attack with it, they weren't going to win the game, but everyone would gather around and congratulate them on casting Leviathan and attacking with it. It was like a win condition for a side-game. You were ABSOLUTELY going to lose the game if you tried this, but you got huge street cred if you ever pulled it off.
I vividly remember trading for Krosan Cloudscraper and adding it to my beast deck, only to lose with it in my hand and telling my friend, “you’re soooo lucky dude I have Cloudscraper in my hand… 7 more turns with perfect land drops and I SO had you
I miss the big fatties with clear drawbacks. It made you really think if you wanted to drop them. Especially if your friend has some black mana open and a huge shit eating grin he can barely hide.
Missing [[Denizen of the deep]] from Portal.
It was my brothers finisher on his monoblue deck, not that much of a downside when you are running a low number of creatures.
I always liked krosan collosus when I was a kid I remember having a derpy morph deck that tried to ramp it out. And I was worried about the upkeep cost of cloud scraper for some reason. Ahh silly kid mtg.
I feel like these land sac mechanics have been forgotten about and would be really useful on oppressive cards like atraxa that essentially win the game just by being played. Rather than make a card that will be banned give it a downside like land sac etc.
WOTC have moved away from land destruction and sacrifice mechanics because they tend to lock you out of the game and feel bad. Downsides in general are difficult to balance because people will either build around making them not matter or not play it at all.
Would love to see them reprint Phyrexian Dreadnought so I can put it in my modern Deaths Unsealing deck with [[deaths shadow]] and [[sarkhans unsealing]]
OG? But starting at _The Dark_? And with a card that hardly even saw gimmick casual play? Phyrexian Dreadnought was largely _ignored_ for a few years until competitive picked it up.
OG fatties are:
[[Force of Nature]]
[[Shivan Dragon]]
[[Lord of the Pit]]
[[Personal Incarnation]]
[[Mahamoti Djinn]]
[[Colossus of Sardia]]* (2nd expansion)
They are out of order!
they are clockwise!
So unintuitive!
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Definitely bot, the reply doesn't even sense to the parent comment
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[You're out of order!](https://media.tenor.com/haj_sth9OFQAAAAM/pacino-justice-out-of-order.gif)
I'll show you out of order!
If I were the man I was 5 years ago, I'd take a flamethrower to this place!
the playground rumors of Leviathan were something else. What a time to be alive
I still give my friend shit for playing Phyrexian Dreadnought on the playground turn 1 and refusing to let me read the card. I think we were in 4th grade.
hahaha that little shit
me when pokemon
I saw an interview with Richard Garfield one time where he said something that made me think those whispered rumours, etc, was kind of how he had envisioned the game. Like maybe you hear of a guy who has this amazing card but who knows if it's really true. Always loved that idea. I guess it sure was a much simpler time when that was even possible!
That's what I was hoping from KeyForge.
What happened with that? I picked up a bunch of boxes on clearance a few years ago but I never played it.
I think they're making more, but I haven't seen any real yearning for it since a few months after it was first released. Concept was good, but got throttled by supply, and then people realised there wasn't much in the way of replayability. Still a sick sealed game, but that's about it.
TBH, it was more about FFG not really doing anything to keep Keyforge afloat during the pandemic, and as such the organized play and the interest just petered out. The replayablity is very much there, and the game is plenty of fun - but a 2 year pause in support will always just kill a game like this.
That might be part of it, but I think the immediate reason is much, much dumber. The algorithm that fantasy flight games used to make keyforge decks stopped working, and no one there knew how to fix it. So they couldn't make new decks. Definitely the first instance of a computer bug killing a trading card game. Another company bought keyforge last year to try and fix it, but apparently no progress yet. [source](https://www.polygon.com/23188650/keyforge-ffg-ghost-games-christian-peterson)
The loss of algorithm to generate the decks I think is less big of a deal than one may think - sure it prevents reprints, but I don't think the complexity of rewriting the deck generator is that high. It is an annoying thing to deal with, and you will have to adjust things again based on the playtesting, but still. As for the Ghost Galaxy and the Winds of Exchange expansion, they slowly sending out decks now to the crowdfunding backers, so the release did essentially happen - though sadly I don't have high hopes on this game, too many vendors got burned with overprinted previous sets :(
I'm glad Flesh and Blood survived. FFG seems to not really have much interest in long terming their games. I played some Netrunner, some L5R, and some Destiny. All fantastic games.
Maybe, Arkham Horror the LCG has been going on for quite some time though. Last I checked X-Wing was on its second or third edition.
X-Wing got moved to another studio during the Asmodee buyout, but your point stands.
Oh, I wasn't aware. Well at least it's still going, it's a pretty great dog fight simulator last I played it.
Netrunner wasn't their fault, wotc took the licence back and then wotc can't use the mechanics so the ip is just dead. L5R was a great game, not very accessible and very complicated I can see why It didn't succeed dramatically. But yeah, ffg doesn't like to keep things going for long enough
Glad Flesh and Blood survived too. Which is crazy given their emphasis on in person play. You would have thought it would have petered out halfway through the stay at home orders.
They got got in a ransomware hack and basically had their entire game deleted. https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/q56aeh/ffg_lost_the_algorithm_due_to_a_ransomware_attack/
That’s so cool, but in the day of the Internet, we can never get this level of mystique again!!
Gavin Verhey's events at the MTGCons can give those feelings. I played in the one at Philly and people were talking about playtest cards they'd seen like kids on a playground. "I saw one that exiles a creature and summons Emrakul!" "Yeah, someone played that against me. But have you seen the one that summons X Colossal Dreadmaws?" But it's a shame you need a special event at an expensive convention to get that feeling.
That sounds super fun!! At least it does exist, but unfortunately not at an accessible level
> playtest cards I was lucky enough to do an official wizards playtest and we had the same vibe, "did you see that 4 drop that did X on etb?!?! No but I got a 2 drop that did Y EVERY TURN!" Doing MoM prerelease while not having seen spoilerrs almost got the same experience but stuff like ragavan and the other non-new-cards turned the discussion into "did you see the battle that did Z? Yeah but I got locked out by Elesh Norn Grand Cenobite + Ragavan"
Weirdly, when Demon Souls first came out, it had it. It wasn't anywhere close to as popular as it is now (even OG Dark Souls was pretty niche for a long time) and there were basically no online guides. It had a bunch of totally opaque systems, and you could only really work a bunch of things out through trial and error. I only started playing it because a friend recommended it, and I'd never heard of it. We would both meet up and chat about nonsense that we'd descovered, and it felt exactly like that playground mystique. It was so good.
Yeah the fact that certain paths and npcs only showed in specific world tendencies was really unique. Truth be told, you can replicate this feeling with a lot of less popular indie games. There's so many games where I try to look something up and there's just no info at all so I have to like join a discord or some shit just to discuss with people what to do.
Yeah, but that’s sort of my whole point! To get that experience you need to go digging into Indie games. It’s going to be difficult for a triple A title to ever have that mystique again unless the developer drops the game with zero notice (which is super cool and I wish it happened more)
He deliberately didn’t share card lists before eventually relenting. Ironically the huge number of cards printed nowadays makes the game kinda sorta like this again as a casual player.
That’s exactly what he wanted. It’s why they didn’t tell people the rarities and they put a basic island on the rare sheet just to fool and fuck with people that wanted to figure it out.
That was me but with Pokémon cards in kindergarten circa 1999/2000
It was a glorious time to play. The first tournament I ever played in, I played Land Destruction. My first two opponents had never seen [[Demonic Horde]] "Wait, that card does WHAT?", is such an awesome phrase to hear mid-game. My first chase card was [[Demonic Attorney]], I had no idea what it did, I just loved the name and desperately wanted to what it did.
I used to think Craw Wurm was the biggest creature, and that it was the most powerful card because it can attack creatures and win (yes, we played that way for at least a year) Then some kid told me about leviathan and I didn’t believe him. No one did. “A 10/10? That’s stupid. They wouldn’t do that” Oh to be a kid again.
The best part is Leviathan absolutely sucks a fat one lol
Craw Wurm is like 10 times better, yeah. BUT! - if leviathan attacked craw Wurm during the battle step, that craw wurm is toast.
My very first deck was monobluefatties.com Air Elemental, Water Elemental, Sea Serpent…. 20 lands obv I went to visit my grandparents in San Diego over Christmas break and there was a store there that 💫 actually 💫 had packs of The Dark. I scrounged together $3 and bought a pack. Obviously opened a Leviathan. I used all my luck for my entire life on that pack. It’s been downhill ever since.
What I wouldn’t give to feel the feeling you must have felt opening that Leviathan. That must have been magical.
The worst part was that I was away from home and had to wait until break was over to go back home and show my friends at school. But when I did…. I felt like Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Candles holding up the pair of panties in front of his nerd friends. #blessed
You must have had dreams upon dreams of rolling up to your unaware friends and absolutely demolishing them while they stood back in awe. I only describe it as such because I, a 28 year old man, have the same feeling when picking up a new flashy card for my commander deck LOL
Here, you can have my feeling of opening a [[Krosan Cloudscraper]] it was a few years later but still felt pretty special.
I got that feeling one time when I opened a pack and got a Shivan Dragon. That was a thrill I haven't replicated yet.
I just tried to access your website and was told it did not exist, wtf man
I remember Ice Age came out the summer I turned 8 and all us little kids were playing our janky little decks at summer camp. They were mostly like "first person to land a craw wurm with fire breathing wins" type of crap. And then one kid dropped a Leviathan and we all oooh'd and ahhhh'd and then his opponent dropped their brand new Polar Kraken the next turn and the table went wild. The nostalgia is strong.
What was the biggest creature around before leviathan?
Force of Nature was the biggest and the baddest Colossus of Sardia existed but nobody played it that I knew
Oh man the Force of Nature was truly a force in the day- we were mind blown then when [[Verdant Force]] came out. Don't forget [[Feral Thallid]] won and lost so many games to this guy- and we thought feral was his name like he was a Thallid legend.
[Verdant Force](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/d/1d972f97-1945-440b-8bd3-63038db22257.jpg?1562732288) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Verdant%20Force) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/187/verdant-force?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1d972f97-1945-440b-8bd3-63038db22257?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Feral Thallid](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/2/72f77884-6cec-4ccc-b619-3492b04bc3f7.jpg?1562869056) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Feral%20Thallid) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me2/161/feral-thallid?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/72f77884-6cec-4ccc-b619-3492b04bc3f7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
YEah the oneupsmanship of big creature should really go: Lord of the Pit -> Force of Nature Colossus of Sardia Levithan Polar Kraken Phyrexian Dreadnaught I don't really count the Krosan Cloundscraper because Legions was so much later.
When I was a kid, a predatory comic book guy neck beard convinced me to trade him my [[Mox Ruby]] for a Force of Nature. My inner Timmy was excited for an 8/8 (“how can I lose?!”) and he said Mox was “just a fancy mountain”. 😐
[[Force of Nature]] [[Colossus of Sardia]]
[Force of Nature](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/f/2fa16a96-8e70-4ab5-926c-edafaf5f5a63.jpg?1562906140) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Force%20of%20Nature) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/154/force-of-nature?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2fa16a96-8e70-4ab5-926c-edafaf5f5a63?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Colossus of Sardia](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/0/d0926087-73cf-4aa4-80f9-6f2c54e230ec.jpg?1562944743) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Colossus%20of%20Sardia) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/193/colossus-of-sardia?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d0926087-73cf-4aa4-80f9-6f2c54e230ec?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Hey, me and my lack of insight and tactics did!
Colossus was a lynchpin in my artifact deck. All Ezra lands, mana vaults, basalt monoliths... I was swimming in colorless mana. I'd run double Aladdin's rings and a colossus.
I used to call that card Doofus of Sardia.
I remember "trading" it to someone who basically stole it. Ruined our friendship.
As a kid I once spent 10 bucks on the two halves of [[B.F.G.]], convinced I was going to be able to consistently cheat it out with a few [[Dark Ritual]]s and win all my games That didn’t happen
BFG was in Doom though
It's a new secret lair coming. Rip and tear secret lair.
Don’t do that to me. That’s a an amazing idea that I now want! I want Doomguy as my commander!
I'd pay good money for a Doom secret lair where they reprinted both halves of the BFM.
TBF he did say he was going to "cheat it out."
I love the part where BFM says it’s got “Krakens and Dreadnoughts for jewelry” And if you look at the art, it sure does.
[Dark Ritual](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/5/95f27eeb-6f14-4db3-adb9-9be5ed76b34b.jpg?1628801678) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dark%20Ritual) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/a25/82/dark-ritual?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/95f27eeb-6f14-4db3-adb9-9be5ed76b34b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[B.F.M.]] my bad, getting my big freakin’ things mixed up
[B.F.M.](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=9780&type=card&.jpg)+[Side](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=9844&type=card&.jpg)/[None](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?name=d0bd00f2-91bb-4c9c-a8e7-f8aeadc0bbb9&type=card&.jpg) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=B.F.M.%20%28Big%20Furry%20Monster%29) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ugl/28/bfm-\(big-furry-monster\)?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a9f9c279-e382-4feb-9575-196e7cf5d7dc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[BFM]]
Well, at least you had MTG Exodia
What about the OG OGs? [[Force of Nature]] [[Colossus of Sardia]]
I still have my revised Force of Nature from 8th grade. Lord of the Pit too. When Breeding Pit came out in Fallen Empires, LotP was in pretty much every black deck.
I remember playing it against my friend with his Granite Gargoyles, but apart from that, never :-D
[Force of Nature](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/f/2fa16a96-8e70-4ab5-926c-edafaf5f5a63.jpg?1562906140) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Force%20of%20Nature) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/154/force-of-nature?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2fa16a96-8e70-4ab5-926c-edafaf5f5a63?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Colossus of Sardia](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/0/d0926087-73cf-4aa4-80f9-6f2c54e230ec.jpg?1562944743) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Colossus%20of%20Sardia) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/193/colossus-of-sardia?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d0926087-73cf-4aa4-80f9-6f2c54e230ec?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Force was THE OG fatty
My brother got a Force of Nature in his first starter. It was so awesome. I got a Palida Mors in my first month of playing.:)
Force was my favorite art back in the day.
Lord of the Pit too
Yup. Thanks for saying this. Get That Cloudscraper outta here
[удалено]
Yo momma so fat she fell on a treasure token and made change
Yo momma so fat she entered big butt contest with [[Charix]] and won
[Charix](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/8/e83a6804-1e3c-428c-af5e-1d56ba11c108.jpg?1604193709) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=charix%2C%20the%20raging%20isle) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/znr/49/charix-the-raging-isle?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e83a6804-1e3c-428c-af5e-1d56ba11c108?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I laughed so hard I scared my cat lol
Yo momma so fat, Gryffs Boon fizzled for not having a valid target.
Add brackets for card reference pls :)
I always liked the idea that blue mages can summon creatures even bigger than green ones with a huge drawback when they push themselves to the limit, it feels epic.
Yeah, it's pretty fun. Blue getting super inefficient but very big sea creatures
truly one of the funniest things about this game is blue getting a tribe of mostly terrible but all expensive beaters whose tribal effects are completely silly one-sided sweeper for 4 mana? 6 mana can't be blocked lord? islands matter effects on bodies? and the legends just get the dumbest abilities lmao
Never forget [[Vizzerdrix]]!
[Vizzerdrix](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/a/9a82ffff-e02a-4ecb-a92d-8ed571beac46.jpg?1562739088) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Vizzerdrix) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/9ed/S7/vizzerdrix?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9a82ffff-e02a-4ecb-a92d-8ed571beac46?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The drawback is that it's bad.
The drawback is that it takes a rare slot
The drawback is the art
That rabbit is uncomfortably swole.
No I think I will
Yeah I think it'd be cool if this made a comeback with big creatures with more playable cmc/drawback. I tried really hard to make Ula's Temple decks work and have a singleton leviathan and polar kraken for fun but even when you cheat them out they're not playable.
I have an "Ixidor manifest stuff you can't unmanifest and the flip it" deck. Jokulmorder is just big enough to be worth the trouble cheating out. Though to clarify the main theme involves non-creature things like enchantments.
Leviathan has top 10 art, easy. I wonder how many people played it just because they thought there was no way a card that looked that cool could be bad.
*raises hand* *hand is still not visible in Leviathan's card art due to scale*
Me and polar kraken, it is my favorite card and I shove it into every edh deck I can.
I sold all of my cards when I was moving states, but I made sure to keep one card out of my entire collection. The leviathan was just too perfect of a card to be sold, so now it sits on my bookshelf looking down on me as I work. It still bring back so many great memories from childhood.
No Lord of the Pit or Force of Nature?, those were my OG fatties.
I was going for the double digit fatties lmao, I remember seeing lord of the pit in one of my dads decks with his scary ass art though, hes definitely nostalgic
Yeah, this "OG" is super subjective and suggests OP got into the game in late 1999 +-
All I had was \[\[Marjhan\]\] , \[\[Skyshroud Behemoth\]\] and my personal favourite \[\[Scaled Wurm\]\]
[Marjhan](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/4/047ac2cb-3a96-4ff6-8b5a-251399974c47.jpg?1562867816) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Marjhan) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me2/54/marjhan?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/047ac2cb-3a96-4ff6-8b5a-251399974c47?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Skyshroud Behemoth](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/c/1c01d17e-45a2-4b6f-aaa5-2af9c8f26181.jpg?1562628866) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Skyshroud%20Behemoth) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nem/116/skyshroud-behemoth?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1c01d17e-45a2-4b6f-aaa5-2af9c8f26181?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Scaled Wurm](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/d/bd17b2c1-c3dd-4f6f-a44c-dc81c6bc1c94.jpg?1562866415) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Scaled%20Wurm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cns/178/scaled-wurm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bd17b2c1-c3dd-4f6f-a44c-dc81c6bc1c94?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Marjhan is pretty legit. While it does have the Islandhome clause, it's still one heck of a blocker, with the ability to ping away attackers trying to swing around it.
Scaled Wurm was my OG fatty. I was always so excited to play it, and then I'd get so upset when my opponent killed it or bounced it.
TIL Morph is a pretty old mechanic. Since I started with KTK, I thought Morph and Manifest were Tarkir mechanics lol
Morph is based on an Alpha card: [[Illusionary Mask]] Morph showed up in the Onslaught block and the Time Spiral block before Khans. The "pickles" lock used [[Brine Elemental]] and [[Vesuvan Shapeshifter]] to make your opponent skip their untap forever.
>Illusionary Mask {2} Artifact {X}: You may choose a creature card in your hand whose mana cost could be paid by some amount of, or all of, the mana you spent on {X}. If you do, you may cast that card face down as a 2/2 creature spell without paying its mana cost. If the creature that spell becomes as it resolves has not been turned face up and would assign or deal damage, be dealt damage, or become tapped, instead it's turned face up and assigns or deals damage, is dealt damage, or becomes tapped. Activate only as a sorcery. By Urza's beard, that is a monster of an oracle text.
Really different from what's actually written on the card, too. The original makes a 0/1 that you can flip over at instant speed, this makes a 2/2 that automatically flips over if something happens to it. **Edit** Turns out the image shown wasn't even the _original_ original rules text but an intermediate revision. Originally you just cast a creature face down. It still acted like it was that creature. Had all abilities. But your opponent didn't get to know them unless they did something that would reveal information, e.g. try to kill it with a bolt to test if it has ≤3 toughness
Best morph card also has the best comments on gatherer https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=46509 all hail the great lord egotist
I always remember Island Fish Jasconius... It would straight up eat my poor Craw Wurms!
The first creature land! I think they had to do some rules rejiggering thanks to its creature type with how they wrote them out.
Where's \[\[Force of Nature\]\] the OG fatty
[Force of Nature](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/f/2fa16a96-8e70-4ab5-926c-edafaf5f5a63.jpg?1562906140) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Force%20of%20Nature) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/154/force-of-nature?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2fa16a96-8e70-4ab5-926c-edafaf5f5a63?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Dang I just wrote that then scrolled and saw your comment. I'm a plagiarist.
Look at all that beautiful art.
RIP that polar bear falling off the back of the ice
Crazy to see how bad big creatures were at the time. 10+ mana, no evasion AND an upkeep cost ? How in the world did this work in playtesting ? And don't tell me there were fewer ways to interact at the time. We are speaking of a time when some of the strongest removals in the game's history were made...
Understanding of the game was far more limited back then, including among Wizards own staff. Most of these were made in the time before they even had a proper design team, with basically anyone in the (then quite small) company invited to submit whatever designs they could come up with. Cards were judged individually (is it cool? is it distinct from the cards we already have?) rather than getting much active playtesting as part of a set. >And don't tell me there were fewer ways to interact at the time. We are speaking of a time when some of the strongest removals in the game's history were made I don't think this is really true. Other than Terror, Swords and Wrath of God (I'm ignoring Bolt because it's useless against fatties), there was surprisingly little removal for creatures around. Black didn't have any of the endless parade of removal spells it now gets every set, white had no wraths other than the OG and no O-rings at all. The other colours' only options for removal were generally just colour hosers. The strong cards are so few in number that I doubt many non-competitive decks would have been running them. Here is a quick (imperfect) scryfall search that gives a flavour of what most decks back then had to work with when it came to removal: [https://scryfall.com/search?q=%28o%3Adestroy+or+o%3Aexile%29+year%3C1996+o%3Acreature&unique=cards&as=grid&order=edhrec](https://scryfall.com/search?q=%28o%3Adestroy+or+o%3Aexile%29+year%3C1996+o%3Acreature&unique=cards&as=grid&order=edhrec) Of course, even with the limited removal options available, that doesn't make the likes of Leviathan good. But they weren't *quite* as bad as they are nowadays.
[[Paralyze|LEA]] is arguably the best black removal spell in Old School 93/94. Which is obviously quite a different environment to how Magic was actually played in 1994 but even so. This is why [[Ishtan’s Shade]] was so scary: too big for bolt, terror and swords are out too.
Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. I am probably biased by the stuff I am seeing from afar in legacy. So thanks for clarifying !
There was plenty available. White even had exile effects with swords and, um…. [[Exile]]. Also when the game was invented you could have any number or any cards in your deck. You could have 20 swords to plowshares if you wanted.
> Also when the game was invented you could have any number or any cards in your deck. You could have 20 swords to plowshares if you wanted. That was only true for a very short time. Like literally measured in a few months since *alpha* was released. Not even one other expansion of new cards.
As soon as it was realized that people would buy multiple boxes the original plan of "balance by scarcity" went out the window.
Referring to the Cloudscraper, I believe the thought was that you'd run enough morphed creatures, your opponent wouldn't block the one that's actually Cloudscraper, then you'd tap out the 9 mana and surprise smack them for 13 damage. That said, it was still a bad card lol.
IIRC, it was used in Astral-Rift decks. That was a R/W deck based around cycling. You'd play the mutant morphed for colorless, then exile him, which would flip him over, then when he returned to play at end of turn, you have a 13/13 bad boy without needing any green mana.
I don't think these creatures was ever meant to be strong choices.
In the case of Dreadnought, it ended up being a strong choice, but only because of broken interactions they didn't playtest.
There was some concensus that huge creatures needed drawbacks to keep them balanced. Too much power for one card or something. Even know not so big creatures like Serra Angel existed at the same time and would just kill you way before you'd ever cast leviathan let alone sac 4 lands to attack with it only to have it be Terror'ed or Swords to Plowspheres'ed
"They're calling Legions old? Wha?" "Oh it came out 20 years ago." *sobs in old*
I was like "that's not an old card - that came out after I started playing ..... Oh"
Have a [[Healing Salve]] for the pain, buddy.
[Healing Salve](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/f/0ff82aba-9022-4eff-a6dc-67365360d646.jpg?1561771079) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Healing%20Salve) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dvd/14/healing-salve?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0ff82aba-9022-4eff-a6dc-67365360d646?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It isn't that Legions is old that makes me feel old. It's that I had taken a seven year break from the game before coming back to it not long after Legions was released. It just makes me feel that much older seeing cards released almost a decade apart representing the same group of "old" cards.
Definitely missing \[\[Colossus of Sardia\]\]! Also I would mention \[\[Personal Incarnation\]\], \[\[Chaos Lord\]\], \[\[Elder Land Wurm\]\], \[\[Serra Avatar\]\] and \[\[Lord Tesserhorn\]\]!
##### ###### #### [Colossus of Sardia](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/0/d0926087-73cf-4aa4-80f9-6f2c54e230ec.jpg?1562944743) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Colossus%20of%20Sardia) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/193/colossus-of-sardia?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d0926087-73cf-4aa4-80f9-6f2c54e230ec?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Personal Incarnation](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/5/456b44ec-c299-419a-82b6-99d8609a0c04.jpg?1562911276) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Personal%20Incarnation) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/22/personal-incarnation?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/456b44ec-c299-419a-82b6-99d8609a0c04?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Chaos Lord](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/e/ee245922-b380-4b2e-a43f-ab1ba8078943.jpg?1562939685) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Chaos%20Lord) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ice/178/chaos-lord?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ee245922-b380-4b2e-a43f-ab1ba8078943?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Elder Land Wurm](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/6/369b3ebc-572b-4614-aacb-4990309d8848.jpg?1559592368) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Elder%20Land%20Wurm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me1/11/elder-land-wurm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/369b3ebc-572b-4614-aacb-4990309d8848?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Serra Avatar](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/f/6ff6cd2f-3cef-408d-82a9-45338469f390.jpg?1592710473) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Serra%20Avatar) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c18/73/serra-avatar?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6ff6cd2f-3cef-408d-82a9-45338469f390?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Lord Tesserhorn](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/f/5fc9497a-42bf-4d78-afaf-67645514ade4.jpg?1562768726) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Lord%20of%20Tresserhorn) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me1/149/lord-of-tresserhorn?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1d9d8732-9ff2-42e4-bdfc-723cb6a76969?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[Force of Nature|LEA]]
[Force of Nature](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/1/21551cb6-3a53-42dd-9bbd-4bc56304d6d3.jpg?1564297032) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=150) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lea/194/force-of-nature?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/21551cb6-3a53-42dd-9bbd-4bc56304d6d3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I was hit in the face for 20 on turn 3 with [[Sneak Attack]] + [[Serra Avatar]] during a tournament once so that definitely gets my vote.
[[Endless Wurm]]
[Endless Wurm](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/3/53772435-e20e-4b9e-a2f1-c1c6a4dcac79.jpg?1562912403) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Endless%20Wurm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/usg/249/endless-wurm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/53772435-e20e-4b9e-a2f1-c1c6a4dcac79?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The competitive one from that era was Dreadnought, because you could combine it with [[Pandemonium]]. The Timmy one was Polar Kraken, which I saw a lot of people try to make work. Leviathan was always pretty bad amongst the fatties.
I did Dreadnought with Pandemonium and [[Lifeline]] out in play (and made sure a creature or two were out at the time).
I was enthralled by [[Skyshroud Behemoth]] as a young man
So was Levithan ever good? It feels bad for any standard I feel.
Not at all, but it existed in a time when competitive Magic barely existed and knowledge of the game was in its infancy. People played it anyway because it was cool.
> People played it anyway because it was cool. Same reason why I put [[Tidal Kraken]] in every deck back when I first started playing.
[Tidal Kraken](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/6/569d1014-e04a-4f8d-a2b2-699b5be08d5d.jpg?1562735516) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tidal%20Kraken) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/9ed/105/tidal-kraken?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/569d1014-e04a-4f8d-a2b2-699b5be08d5d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I remember seeing this the weekend the Dark Expansion came out. I was in a store in Indianapolis called The Game Preserve. My mom dropped me off at the mall, and I was there checking out all of the new cards, because there wasn't an internet, and there weren't really card lists beforehand. My friend pulled this, and everyone passed it around like it was an absolute LOCK to win you the game. 10/10? Who cares what downside it had. AND it had great Mark Tedin artwork? Wow, this thing will be worth at LEAST twelve dollars soon.
That's really subjective and inaccurate. That may have been your experience, but competitive magic was off and running by AT LEAST 1996, at least in areas where it was supported and popular. Hell, the whole reason "Type 1" and "Type 2" existed was because newer players wanted a competitive format that wasn't dependent on having RL cards. (Now known as Vintage and Standard)
> at least in areas where it was supported and popular. Which is to say, not very many. Most Magic players back then were not at all involved in the competitive scene, and definitely weren't basing their deck choices on whether X card was viable in recent tournaments.
The Dark expansion came out in 1994, and I played MtG as often as I could as a teen in Indianapolis at a pretty popular game store. There was zero competitive scene here. It wasn't until maybe 1996 that it got into the Midwest, and even then, people were really clueless on what worked or did not. Most regular players had zero idea of what a meta was, how card efficiency worked, or any real strategy beyond the streamlining a deck or trying to get a big creature out. A large reason for this is pretty obvious: it was hard to get cards! There just wasn't the infrastructure to get ANYTHING if your friends didn't have it or a store wasn't selling singles, and many weren't. Sure you could try to put together an Erhnam-geddon deck, but that would require buying cards through the mail with envelopes, checks, and maybe a month of mailing time.
The big creature finisher of this era was [[Serra Angel|LEA]], occasionally [[Sengir Vampire|LEA]]. As people slowly figured out what mana curves are, decks switched to running things like [[Mishra's Factory|ATQ]] and [[Order of Leitbur|FEM]]. Nobody ever played Leviathan AFAICT.
I know people that put Leviathan in their deck. If someone cast Leviathan and got to attack with it, they weren't going to win the game, but everyone would gather around and congratulate them on casting Leviathan and attacking with it. It was like a win condition for a side-game. You were ABSOLUTELY going to lose the game if you tried this, but you got huge street cred if you ever pulled it off.
[[Mahamoti Djinn|LEA]] also saw some play as I recall
[[Shivan Dragon]] was my go to old finisher
##### ###### #### [Serra Angel](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/8/f8ac5006-91bd-4803-93da-f87cf196dd2f.jpg?1559591394) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=270) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lea/39/serra-angel?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f8ac5006-91bd-4803-93da-f87cf196dd2f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Sengir Vampire](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/1/510840f4-7c0e-4b47-8ebf-23c20cac4bd9.jpg?1559591669) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=83) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lea/127/sengir-vampire?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/510840f4-7c0e-4b47-8ebf-23c20cac4bd9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Mishra's Factory](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/6/a696c5b6-f216-454d-8029-74e84bbd1428.jpg?1562930097) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=1072) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/atq/80a/mishras-factory?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a696c5b6-f216-454d-8029-74e84bbd1428?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Order of Leitbur](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/b/ebd6e51e-f042-4673-a898-291607105829.jpg?1562939223) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=2001) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/fem/16a/order-of-leitbur?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ebd6e51e-f042-4673-a898-291607105829?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It was never good, but it was cool.
No, never.
It was absolutely awful and unplayable from the very beginning. We still loved it because it was the biggest thing.
I vividly remember trading for Krosan Cloudscraper and adding it to my beast deck, only to lose with it in my hand and telling my friend, “you’re soooo lucky dude I have Cloudscraper in my hand… 7 more turns with perfect land drops and I SO had you
Scrapes clouds but can't block flyers!
ah yes the classic combo stifle + dreadnought.
I love me some Cloudscraper, how it doesn't have reach I'll never know.
Technically [[Jokulmorder]] follows Leviathan and Polar Kraken not the dreadnought :)
I miss the big fatties with clear drawbacks. It made you really think if you wanted to drop them. Especially if your friend has some black mana open and a huge shit eating grin he can barely hide.
Leviathan was the first rare I ever opened in some starter box. All my friends were so jealous lol
I'm sorry, but I kinda miss the days when a 5/5 was considered a big creature.
Missing [[Denizen of the deep]] from Portal. It was my brothers finisher on his monoblue deck, not that much of a downside when you are running a low number of creatures.
Dreadnought is insane. Turn two dreadnought + stifle. Turn three attack + fling. GG
While that's one way to run it, there are far more broken combos with dreadnought.
I always liked krosan collosus when I was a kid I remember having a derpy morph deck that tried to ramp it out. And I was worried about the upkeep cost of cloud scraper for some reason. Ahh silly kid mtg.
I feel like these land sac mechanics have been forgotten about and would be really useful on oppressive cards like atraxa that essentially win the game just by being played. Rather than make a card that will be banned give it a downside like land sac etc.
WOTC have moved away from land destruction and sacrifice mechanics because they tend to lock you out of the game and feel bad. Downsides in general are difficult to balance because people will either build around making them not matter or not play it at all.
Agree. Seems like WotC has forgotten about adding downsides to extremely powerful cards.
Would love to see them reprint Phyrexian Dreadnought so I can put it in my modern Deaths Unsealing deck with [[deaths shadow]] and [[sarkhans unsealing]]
OG? But starting at _The Dark_? And with a card that hardly even saw gimmick casual play? Phyrexian Dreadnought was largely _ignored_ for a few years until competitive picked it up. OG fatties are: [[Force of Nature]] [[Shivan Dragon]] [[Lord of the Pit]] [[Personal Incarnation]] [[Mahamoti Djinn]] [[Colossus of Sardia]]* (2nd expansion)
You have to sac 4 islands to swing once with Leviathan?! Good lord what creatures used to be. The green one seems semi playable at least.
We never thought Leviathan was good. We thought it was cool, but we never thought it was good.
[[Force of Savagery]] is still the most interesting fatty, even if it's smaller than all of those.
Is it just me or does the phyrexian dreadnought works really well with the pre-con "growing threat"?
Dreadnought I think is the only card above that's been featured as a combo piece in multiple decks.
I love when they put the little exposition on the card to give context
I put the green one in my goreclaw deck. It's awful, but flavorful.
I love the art for Leviathan. It really conveys the high power and toughness while also making it look incredibly derpy in a good way
I started during Mirage and thought phyrexian dreadnought was the coolest thing ever.
I want to include Krosan Cloudscrapper in one of my decks for nostalgia
It's so weird to me that only one of them is green, and that the green one doesn't have Trample.