Top 10 Cards That Took YEARS to be Good



In Magic the Gathering, if a card is good, it is usually obvious how and where that card is good right away. However some cards take far longer to find their niche. All it can take is one new card or a shift in meta for a card that has existed for years to suddenly become playable. In some cases cards have gone from outright unplayable to genuine meta threats in the top tiers of play.

Script by Uncrowned Jules
Editing by Pumkinswift
├ The List
Intro: (0:00)
10. Mystic Remora: (0:18)
9. Inverter of Truth: (2:17)
8. Goblin Lore: (4:30)
7. Mycosynth Lattice: (6:09)
6. Mishra’s Bauble: (8:26)
5. Death’s Shadow: (10:13)
4. Summer Bloom: (12:13)
3. Grindstone: (14:02)
2. Indomitable Creativity: (15:43)
1. Dark Depths: (17:25)

#mtg #tcg #magicthegathering

(Just a note, we have people who actually know the game very well making the scripts for this channel. As the owner of the channel (Theduellogs/hirumaredx) is a total newbie to the game.)

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43 thoughts on “Top 10 Cards That Took YEARS to be Good”

  1. I think you clearly left off Bazaar of Baghdad. This card was at one point just $20 and was literally considered trash. Then people began to realize the kind of stipulations with graveyard shenanigans, and now it’s VERY banned in Legacy and is a huge staple in vintage

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  2. there's a fine line between "cards that are useless now but will eventually be good" and "cards that are useless now but will eventually be banned"

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  3. Mycosynth Lattice and Inverter of Truth really got the ol' Halq Treatment; getting banned because a newer, infinitely more toxic card got released and "we can't ban a card we're currently selling!"

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  4. As someone playing since early 1994, I can assure you that casual players have been playing multi-player since the very beginning. Commander may have been the first multiplayer format that WOTC intentionally and consistently designs for, but it is absolutely incorrect to say that in the beginning there was only 1v1. Couldn’t be further from the truth.

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  5. you missed one thing with deaths shadow there's also the printing of "Phyrexian Unlife" which basically changes damage to poison when your life is 0 but most importantly you don't lose the game.

    the key of why it's so good with death shadow is you can loophole the clause with life loss or payment since that's not damage with the shocks and fetches basically negative life it gets +1/+1 for each -1 of life

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  6. There's a lot of incorrect info in this video. Not gonna claim it's intentional, but figured I should correct some changes:

    1. Death's Shadow deserves to be on this list, but its time to shine dates a little further back than Khans. Both fetches (from Zendikar, in the same block) and shocks (from original Ravnica) were available before Khans block. Suicide Zoo predated Khans by a couple sets (first becoming a deck with the unbanning of Wild Nacatl during Theros block), but it stayed tier 2 until the Khans ban of Birthing Pod. This pre-Khans deck used cards like Street Wraith and Dismember alongside the fetches, shocks, and Thoughtseize to control its life total, and playing a more agressive, go-wide strategy than more modern Jund and Grixis Shadow lists.

    2. Mishra's Bauble saw significant play long before MH1. Jund Death's Shadow became a major player in the format during Shadows Over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon, using cards like Tarfire and Bauble to ramp up Tarmogoyf and to activate Delirium for Grim Flayer and Traverse the Ulvenwald. 4 copies were also played in Lantern Control, you'd often see a couple one-off cards like Bauble and Seal of Fire to grow Goyf in "boomer Jund" lists, and decks like UB Tombstalker and Soulflayer Surprise often ran 4 copies as ways to both add consistency (by making the deck effectively 56 cards, a strategy often referred to as Turbo Xerox) and fill the graveyard.

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  7. You didn't mention how Bauble works exceptionally well in Delver, the best Legacy deck:
    -It's a noncreature spell, which triggers Dragon Rage Channeler, immediately giving more value than intended (surveil 1).
    -It goes to the graveyard by itself or can be surveiled by DRC, at which point it's a new card type for delirium.
    -By going to the graveyard and drawing afterward, it's essentially a cantrip so the floor is very high. And it's an easy extra card in the graveyard for delving Murktide Regent.
    -Although you can only look at the top card and not move it, if you don't like your top card, you can use a fetch land to shuffle your library, essentially working as card selection.

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  8. The section with Myco Lattice is wrong, the card became popular and good with the release of Dark Steel Forge and Nevs disk. Allowing you every turn board wipe everyones board but yours.

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  9. Commander does not matter for Comp, never will, stop pretending it does. It only makes Comp harder to obtain by increasing random cards that would cost a Buck to like 50. Remora was always about Vintage, especially both helping and battling combo

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  10. The Beamtown Bullies should had been mentioned with Inverter of Truth.
    Urza, Lord High Artificer uses cards like Mishra's Buable" as a mana rock specifically. The fact the "construct token" gets bigger with each artifact was just a nice bonus but normally it's tapped for a blue mana, never attacking, and never blocking. Grind Stone is specifically powerful because of Painter Servant, which i believe should not had been on this list depending on how long after the second card was printed. However, they must be on this list for that same reason.
    Dark Depths? that's your number one? There are SO MANY cards that got good after a new card was released. Take Ruxa, Patient Professor for example, until he was released NO ONE PLAYED VANILLA CREATURES. Suddenly, anything and everything that just makes a 4/4 beast, or 1/1 Squirrel was sought after.

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  11. I'm suprised flash wasn't on this list… printed in mirage. Was never played at all.. all of a sudden it won a PT with protean hulk and was emergency banned. Being able to win on your opponents first upkeep via gemstone caverns and discard mana was kinda game breaking.

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  12. For me, the most common example was Krark Clan Ironworks, It appeared in fifth dawn and it didn't do anything during those days until someone used it in the infamous KCI combo deck.

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  13. Eater of Days was a rubbish bulk rare where it forces the controller to skip their next two turns. It was like that until Beamtown Bullies came. That turned that card into something to expect in a Commander deck as a staple with Beamtown Bullies as the Commander. Didn't make any waves, but it shows that something pointless and garbage today could become very useful tomorrow with the right card(s).

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