Stronghold l The Resleevables #19 l Magic: The Gathering History MTG

Was awesome seeing you in SanFran Cedric! And always glad for another episode of you and Patrick!

visuals game leveled up from the earlier episdoes

need a worship in that sb

Megrim was good vs cycling when Saga came out.

The disconnect with the en-Kor is that the rules of the time were very different. You could only play their abilities during the damage prevention window, which meant actual damage had to have been done for you to use the abilities. 6th Edition changed these sorts of effects to "shields" you had to activate in advance and it was THEN that you could just activate them a million times, literally. But when they were printed, there was no danger because you were strictly limited to how much damage was already dealt. Unfortunately 6th Edition was just a year later than this set and it was an immediate issue because Angelic Protector was in Tempest. I don't know how far out they planned the rules changes and whether they knew they were going to make, or considering to make, the damage switch when Tempest block was in design.

Certainly the set with Dream Halls, Intruder Alarm and Mox Diamond will be reviewed favorably. Right, Anakin?

Notable cards!

Sully what do you think of the Avs this playoff segment?

I feel like the goal of the "Migraine" deck was to keep Bridge on 2 and swing in with your 2/2 shadow creatures while your opponent's 3/3s were effectively removed from bridge. And if your opponent played their own 2/2 you can dark banish it.

As for the counterburn "Sparkler" deck running intruder alarm, the idea is that your opponent's creatures can't untap because you counter their creature spells, and every turn they don't cast a creature spell you can burn them with buyback on end step. The card may have originally been designed as a lock piece rather than a combo piece.

This is great stuff, I love your videos!

"Is this card [Evacuation] legal in Commander?"
"Scryfall says yes... I'm a little surprised about that"

Laughs in Cyclonic Rift

Stronghold was NOT the last set with non-colored set symbols for denoting rarity -- that honor goes to Portal Second Age.
While the lore is awful, again, it truly reached epic proportions of hokeyness in the comic books. My gawd they are bad. I'm glad to see you made fun of them -- they deserve to be made fun of.

Rooting for a buffoon. Yup, still here for it

Golgari Guy Patrick is a mood

Hermit druid is legal in Premodern. It's a good way to play with it

Patrick ever-so-gradually transforming into an old timey prospector with each passing episode.

Cedric a format where hermit druid and dream halls are both legal and balanced is premodern.

When is the next Tournament Edition? Those were my favorite. I didn't think we'd get 2 whole sets without a tournament inbetween.

Awesome episode, but why was the card ordering so weird in the image gallery in the end? The white cards were distributed weirdly in between.

I agree the story is not the greatest but I gotta admit there is a certain nostalgia for this era of wacky sci-fi fantasy that was everywhere at the time.

When Patrick said that commander was "relatively new" to mtg I was ready to agree... until I realized that the first precons were from 2011. Commander has been an official part of mtg from almost 15 years out of 30. This isn't a gotcha, is just me feeling old

The word "victual" is objectively too hard to say or write, which is how we got "vittles" 🤓

This probably isn't said enough.
The video editor is doing a really good job here.

sacred ground was in oath decks in extended with the enlightend tutor engine like BOB Mahers winning chicago deck

‘Victuals’ is the word from which the more casual ‘vittles’ was derived.

I don't think they sold the "advanced decks". It was a guide on how you turn the precon to be a Standard T2 deck to play in a tournament, using cards from all the "current" formats.

Block constructed was both weird and awesome. I don't miss it per se, but it was definitely hilarious to play to qualify for the pt.

Re: Mana Leak

I remember in the mid-00s in Mono Blue Control in Vintage, we'd play Mana Leak over straight-up Counterspell because you could cast it off Land + Off-color Mox on turn 1. Instantly made it better when the "pay 3" was essentially a straight counterspell 80% of the time.

Ironically Volrath's stronghold would be fine in Standard bc everything exiles anyway.

Gimme Vuel, gimme vire, gimme that which I desire

The Spikes was the first Mtg product I've got!

I was that Counter Phoenix Player with intuution to find my Phonix

Putting every single story beat on a card is maybe the thing I miss the most about older magic sets.

stronghold gives me goosebumps

Hornet Cannon makes Hornet tokens but Hornet Queen makes Insect tokens.

What would happen in commander if you play the “two or more opponents” land and there only one opponent left alive? Would that “shut down” the land, making it enter tapped?

Cinema sins-ing the lore section is pretty funny

I play since Fallen Empires and in my memory Stronghold was received quite well, certainly better than FE and HL for instance (which Patrick gave the same rating). Also I really liked the block format where mechanics were not just around for one set but would be expanded upon in follow up sets.

Pursuit of knowledge with proliferate counters maybe?

I loved the sparkler precon deck! I played it so much, my store had precon tournaments and it annihilated my friends.

I think Patrick is a little unfair to cards like Hermit Druid. Is it overpowered and never should have printed? Yes, of course. However, as far as I know, by this point in time a deck whose entire gameplan was to dump everything in the graveyard and then win had never existed and maybe couldn't exist with the card pool of the time. You could say that they should have expected something like that but magic is the first tcg so I think it might be hard to come up with something like that.

Good episode though! Stronghold definitely not the best set.

That sparkler deck needed modifications but was honestly fun to play. Lock people down and blast them apart. Of course oppenents HATED it, so I used to only bring my version out against people who were being arrogant and then see how long I could string it out for.

4/1 first strike for 2 is crazy. You guys went through all the creatures and just three or four had at least five toughness. How do you ever attack? Brutal.

should update the TOA ad since it is now Pioneer RCQ season, not standard

I had such a different view of each set back in the day than our awesome hosts! I never played standard, and that is such a difference. I never played competitive MTG in a real sense. I was never part of a group that got the spark of "we could win in open tournaments at this game." I got that kind of competitove game spark in 2005 after I stopped playing MTG and found the Smash Bros tournament scene in college. So, to me something like "this set has limited removal" would never have even crossed my mind back in the day. To me, it wouldn't have mattered; I still have all my old removal cards! The only time I did something other than "all cards ever printed are legal" was as Sr.s in HighSchool; when we did a few booster drafts. That was a very cool and very different MTG experience, and I think I would have come around to the way of thinking that serious competitive players had if I'd stuck with it. I think the way my group played with all sets all the time also might have been why I didn't click as hard with sets stories when they were really specific story and character beats, to me that just not what MTG was. To me the game was settings like Ice Age that existed as ideas I could visit in my imagination

Wouldn’t Licids just work in a slightly different way than Mutate creatures do? Doesn’t seem like it would be impossible to implement on Magic Arena.

Gerrard is basically the Leeroy Jenkins of the MtG franchise.

No one's rooting for a buffoon without any admirable characteristics in 2024? I mean, you're American right...? I don't know, maybe in a fiction it wouldn't be believable but, you know what they say...