I’ve always found the large amount of mispronunciations on this channel to be a fun quirk, but goblin matron hit me hard. I don’t even know how you come to the conclusion that is right.

Another one that also got me was when he tried to pronounce every single letter in Lhurgoyf. I know it’s not a real word, but that had to have felt 100% wrong in his mouth. Granted, he probably hasn’t seen the flavor text on the original Lhurgoyf to get him in the Nordic/Germanic pronunciation headspace that I went to immediately, but 🤷🏼‍♂️

At this point, I treat those and the typos as easter eggs or an in-joke.

This is the first video that I've seen on this channel. That mispronunciation hit me hard too. I said out loud it's not Matrón! Great Video!

I take it you’re not much a tequila drinker

My ‘Horde of Notions’ deck loves ‘Crib Swap’,’Nameless Inversion’.

I don’t care what anyone says, Tribal is a great mechanic mainly cause it made spells have an identity, and adds at the very least a small difference between stuff like Shock and Tarfire since we got a lot of similar cards before

I think Tarfire should have some mechanic difference from shock to make it more goblin related, like costing 1R if you don't control a goblin. But I agree that it is a great idea, I'm sad that they retired it. It would be nice if the made a handful in some sets.

Tribal is less a failure than it is very hard to balance between useless and overpowered

yeah, the reason they dropped it was that they wouldn't use it enough for it to be worth the rules issues of adding another card type nor the text real estate of having to errata or write tribal onwards

@im gauge, for me, it would be ok if it was used only rarely for cards with stronger synergies and if they said that they wouldn't change old cards to avoid confusion and sudden unpredictable balance changes. I find it so interesting that I'm sad that it was abandoned.

@thomasfplm i think that couldve worked. hell, i don’t know if its even too late for them to do this. maybe if they released a futuresight remastered or something

It seems that this is an issue of the cardpool in most formats being limited to a couple of sets. In a format with all released cards there'd likely be something to do with Tribal cards (or without them) eventually.

if that’s not a failure then what is?

A correction about the origin of Tribal: they've been using Tribal as a word for *ages.* Wizards was using Tribal to refer to creature types all the way back in Onslaught block at a minimum, because that's the earliest I remember it being used. Which makes sense, because keywords and card types typically existed informally for a long time before they get codified as a mechanic. Walls and Defenders, or Vigilance for example.

To add here, the lord cards were some of the first tribal themed support in the game. We’ve had Elf, Goblin, and Merfolk support in the game since nearly the beginning.

@Brigham Magnusson You shall not forgett the Thrulls!

@Undervalley93 or old school full deck of rats.

Yeah, really got me off track when he said we call elf decks 'tribal' because of future sight... they could have googled a few decks or articles and noticed people used 'goblin tribal' and 'elf tribal' long before it was mentioned in tarmogoyf's rules text.

For a video Idea, since it seems like your target audience seems to be either non mtg or newish mtg players, you could do a video on why Enchantment Auras have never been super good, and showcase some of the Auras that saw play for either their raw power in limitied formats (angelic destiny) or some that saw constructed play like Rancor and Curious obsession as they were able to get around the inherent flaw to the card type (card advantage)

Pauper heroic

Bogles! Can’t get two-for-one’d with my friend the invincible frog.

Tribal is one of those mechanics that could be used in cases where it fits and the only really thing it does is make some stuff more playable. It needed more support and focus but they abandoned it, kind of like Arcane, before they could do anything really interesting with it. Tribal probably would have been better on permanents only because then the design space would be more focused and it could be more 'justified' on having a specific tribe build or enchant something a specific way that reflects they made it. It shouldn't be used all the time but when it feels appropriate, Ikoria and Innastrad were some places where some tribal stuff would have been interesting.

Arcane was supposed to be a parasitic mechanic, this is kind of like World Enchantments, which is a shame. I've asked why Tribal counts for Tarmogoyf but World doesn't, so I wonder if eventually, Tribal won't count either

@captainwow The reason Tribal counts but World doesn't is because Tribal is a card type (like instant, sorcery, creature, etc.), where World is a supertype (like Basic or Legendary). Tribal *feels* like a supertype, but per the rules of the game, a supertype can't have subtypes, and the entire purpose of Tribal is to allow non-creature cards to have creature subtypes, so it got stuck being a card type. They can't make Tribal not count without pretty drastically changing one of the most fundamental aspects of the game's structure.

Had they committed to Tribal cards early on, I would’ve loved it, it would make tribal decks really interesting and would allow you to run more non-creature spells in what would otherwise be very creature focused

Relatedly, I think the Type "Tribal" was doomed either way, as if they swung deep into the concept of Cards with Creature Types like players perhaps wanted on all the tribally aesthetic cards, "Tribal" would become sort of unnecessary and they probably would have phased it out in favor of just denoting creature types, since the term Tribal has no actual effects aside from saying "this non-creature has a creature type, which you would know if you moved your eyes half an inch to the right anyway"

@Syrel A player can move their eyes half an inch to the right, but the Comprehensive Rules can't. Tribal as a type exists to allow creature types to go on card types that wouldn't be able to have them without some awkward workaround, and phasing out tribal would involve rewriting the rules enough that it's not really worth the effort. Which is kinda another knock against the mechanic, come to think of it.

@Nathan L At this point in time, yeah, my point was more about if they'd stuck to it from the start, such a rules tweak had a chance of occurring in the face of it possibly becoming ubiquitous, if everything is tribal, why denote it?, at this point there's technical and legal commitment involved that makes such a move unthinkable

As a note, a single copy of Tarfire is often included in actual goblin lists due to it being a tutorable removal spell.

I actually like that things like Eldrazi Conscription, All is Dust, Etc are Eldrazi spells specifically, so their cost can be reduced by Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple

For similar video ideas I'd like to see you go over deprecated mechanics and obsolete terms. Deprecated mechanics would mostly be comparing/constrasting two keywords and seeing what the new one does compared to the old one, while Obsolete terms would be interesting to go through a lot of changes to the game and see how rules have been simplified.

My reply bands with this comment

I Fear Landwalk Regeneration Interrupts.

A video about the rebel tribe specifically would be interesting.

My suggestions for failed mechanics to cover (although that term is a bit looser in MTG than in YGO) would be Cumulative Upkeep and Banding.

I always thought tribal should have been a supertype, but I realized why it isn't when it comes to the technical rulings. Also, love that Crib Swap art lol

Would love to see why the Bringer or Nephilim Creature types haven't been touched on after their initial releases

It's a pity that tribal isn't really supported anymore, I really like the idea. But I see the problems and here is how I'd do it: Don't errada old cards and use it only in a strong flavour case (ironicly like goblin grenade)

The problem becomes "Where do you draw the line?", when you have cards associated with tribes heroes, but aren't particularly flavorful, you easily get into problems, and of course early Tribals like Tarfire just immediately set the bar too low and inconsistent to easily pull it back

@Syrel, I would say that a card related to a hero is not related to the tribe, unless directly related to the tribe. Kiki Jiki's ability is not a goblin characteristic.

Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading! Personally, I miss Tribal.

One benefit i enjoyed of tribal cards is with my Emrakul Promised End EDH deck. as it does count as one of the types to reduce her casting cost, so things like All is Dust and Conscription can help make her easier to bring out to close the game.

This is great idea for a series, can’t wait to learn more failed mechanics

PSA: Atraxa might not mention tribal in its reminder text, but it's still a card type. You can find Tarfire and Bolt off a single Atraxa trigger.

I remember seeing Tarfire in some prowess decks a few months ago to improve speed with which you could turn on DRC.

At any point in time I would love for you to talk about Ante and companion as mechanics even if they haven't failed so to speak but have become so degenerate almost everyone seems to hate them and I would love to hear more of a description on why that is the case. Another fun idea would be to talk about the joke cards in Magic that are printed in joke sets just because of how wacky they are

I would really like to see the strongest creatures regardless of summoning condition. Just the top 10 creatures you never want to see on the other side of the board.

Tribal really doesn't see print anymore mainly because it sometimes can be a bit confusing but it also ends up being broken in some decks for some of the cards. See the changeling key word with Tribal Shapeshifters. As all shapeshifters had it on them.

How about a video covering Patrol Hound and other cards that required players to discard cards from their hands to get interesting effects?

I would love to see another video on old mechanics that had their heyday before passing into obscurity. Like Exalted or Champion.

One of my most fun decks is a Vintage Mono Blue Tribal Illusion Deck. ( It's pretty much just Illusion Creatures + some card draw ) there are no removal or counter spells, it's just chill creatures :)

Great video. Informative for newer players and a fun revisit for vetted players. But my biggest take away is Goblin "Muh-trone" --- cant resolve him with a shot of PATRON to pair lol.

I personally think it didnt fail because it was bad but because it had the potential to go out of control if you paired it with other non-creature types and R&D realiced it quite early. For example, Nameless Inversion + Haakon, Stromgald Scourge its a good sinergy and shows how they had to be very carefull on the wording of cards.

I’m just glad they printed the Changeling tribal instants before they phased them out, I’ve run Nameless Inversion in tons of decks. Zask is a recent one I’ve particularly enjoyed, where it’s infinitely re-usable removal.

0:30 i love how you say "to make it less confusing for new players, they omitted tribal from the type list of cards that mention all card types". while showing a card that mentions a NON-EXISTENT type, which would totally not be confusing for new players :D

I wish tribal was still around I love it

I'm quite sad they abandoned the tribal type. It was one of my favourite ideas they implemented. And it would be fine for me if they said that they wouldn't revise older cards to avoid confusion and sudden changes in balance, as well as if they only use it on cards that have strong connections to the creature type specifically (and not to one specific creature of that type).

Was Soulbond ever a viable mechanic? Maybe that could be a topic to cover. I also remember when I first played MtG back in the Innistrad block there was an archetype of cards based around controlling only a single creature (like Lone Revenant, Demonic Rising, and Homicidal Isolation) and it was...not good. But I don't know if really had any significant card presence outside of Innistrad.

If you want to look at a mechanic that probably won't be reprinted, I'd look at the storm scale. Also, Storm itself. I feel like the implication of this series is mechanics that are underpowered where I feel like that's fair, but super overpowered mechanics that won't ever be reprinted can work (shoutout to storm, love you and miss you)

And yet storm Isn't the mechanic least likely to be reused. You even still get 1 or 2 of them every now and then in a non-standard legal product. It's technically not the highest on the storm scale. Since Banding is also a 10, the strictly even worse "Bands with other" has the prestigious storm score of 11/10. Though truthfully, the mechanic that is least likely to ever be reused has to be Ante, as it would literally be illegal to do so due to gambling laws. That or Substance, a mechanic that has never appeared on any printed card, but still exists within the comprehensive rulebook. It's effect is that it does nothing.

Bitterblossom and faeries were extremely good on release in standard and extended.

I really liked tribal, it just was hard to pull off

If youre looking for video ideas, there's an entire thing called the Storm scale that lists mechanics too good or problematic to return to the game. That's a good spot to start.

Yugioh is my main card game and I love archetypes, so when I started playing Commander my first instinct was to make Tribal decks. I really wish they kept tribal types for instants, sorceries, enchantments etc. since I have a vampire deck with Edgar Markov as my commander. My other tribal decks are Elf and Cats, and I've been thinking about making Birds or Soldiers as my next deck project.

Weird thing that might make the game more fun for you: scryfall lets you search by art. Art:vampire will show all cards with vampires for example. So you can still pretend tribal is a mechanic.

Since there isn't alot of different play formats in other card games you could discuss a number of the different formats in mtg and how they differ from each other

That's actually a video already!

I love the blond-spot giant. A bleached giant is pretty scary! 😅

I feel like Wizards is afraid of making “good” tribal cards because it could potentially get way out of hand and break formats, leading to bans. Making tribal cards that don’t have much potential was probably a way they found to test the mechanic but since they were mostly useless no one cared and the designers found themselves in a tight spot: do we try to make strong tribals and see if people like them or do we give up? What if they turn out to be way stronger than we thought? What if people end up not liking them anyway? Look what happened to companions.

I don't think it was a failure, it was a powerful effect and hard to balance. I wish it came back

A powerful effect or a useless effect? Hard to balance or didn't matter? Unlike Yugioh, tutoring is a pretty rare effect in Magic and the majority of effects that affect cards of a certain creature type don't really do anything if that card isn't also a creature. Overall, tribal has had only a few niche uses in exchange for the number of extra words needed in the card type. "All is Dust", for example, came out just before I started playing magic and having "Tribal" and "Eldrazi" on the card were far more confusing and useless as a new player to understanding it as a colourless "Day of Judgement" type effect. Having other players tell me that only the word "Sorcery" in that line generally mattered seemed like such a waste of time to me. For a comparison, the later Eldrazi that introduced colourless-mana-matters and "Wastes" were so much cooler for a tribal mechanic than just putting the word "Tribal" on a card type that would otherwise not be colourless.

Didnt Faerie Tribal (both the card type and the deck build) completely dominate standard of its time?

i always thought they should bring it back yeah they made it simpler but i do perfer the way the machinc worked and should hone in more on it

Top 10 mana rocks that tap for colorless Top 10 colored artifacts (artifacts that require mana of specific colors in the mana cost) Top 10 1 mana burn spells Top 10 non blue counterspells (there should be 10 at least) Top 10 unsummon/boomerang cards (blue cards that send something back into the hand) Top 10 white card draw pieces Top 10 worst french vanilla creatures Top 10 mana reducing creatures

I always just wondered why they didn’t just make it a supertype since it can’t exist without being attached to another card type, the same as Legendary.

Dude I had no idea it wasn't a supertype. That's so weird.

I've only ever used tribal cards in a casual treefolk modern deck. Crib swap and Nameless Inversion were good removal combined with Bosk Banneret to reduce the costs and Leaf-Crowned Elder to cheat them off the top of the deck.

Crib swap is honestly a really cool card. Like it uses this weird mechanic super well.

At the end you mentioned you needed more ideas for topics. I think an interesting topic might be the different design philosophies that have been used over the years. I've sometimes heard about FIRE design and know there was some stuff that came before it too, but don't know much beyond that.

The reason Tribal doesn't appear on the list of types true, but not because it's been phased out for so long. Tribal was never a type on its own. Tribal was a supertype, used to describe or modify a type. It was used the same way as Legendary or snow, which also never appear on lists of card types

I'm interested in your take on the Atog creature archtype

So, if I get this correctly, Tribal was basically meant to link certain instants/sorceries/enchantments/lands to creature types, as to make them less generic and make them properly integrated into a creature type, resulting in those cards being able to be searched for and named when cards mention you can for instance search for a goblin? Is that the purpose of Tribal? Sounds like it could've worked well, if they didn't have to retroactively change so much. It also feels like a way to have the deck/archtype specific spell cards that yugioh has in mtg. Which I guess could still be done, but it would require so much work (maybe they should've done it during the creature overhaul, to rip that massive bandaid of in 1 go)

Tribal's also just in a really weird space rule-wise. It's the only card type that that can't exist on its own, and it behaves differently than all the other card types. It functions like a supertype (e.g. Legendary, Basic, Snow), but it needs to be its own card type for weird rules reasons. It's not just unclear what cards should be tribal, the whole mechanic is pretty arbitrary and unintuitive.

From a certain viewpoint, you could say that mechanics very high on the storm scale are also failed mechanics, because they also aren’t reprinted just for different reasons. So a video covering the “storm scale”, and then certainly ones on at least “storm” and “dredge” would be good. “Affinity” as well. You could also cover “banding” and “walls”. “Desert” maybe, as well. Maybe even “snow”.

Why not do a video about cards that ignore the legend rule? Maybe also explain how legends became legendary creatures

What if, making any cards that were not already a creature having a "creature type" was the mistake in the first place? It would be easier for WotC to just do a rules errata that all non-creature cards are to be treated like they do not have a creature type, except the ones they put the keyword "Changeling" on as it's part of what the card does versus a card like Bitterblossom where now it's just an enchantment that does not count as a fearie.

I don't think it "failed." I think they just lost interest in it. I would have loved to see it continue, and I don't care if they didn't go back and errata a lot of stuff. Maro has said the Grand Creature Type Update was a mistake, so I'd support them not doing it again.

For something more recent and failed maybe Mutate? It works fine on Arena but is very unpractical in paper magic and seems unlikely to return as is.

"Failed" might be a bit too harsh, Ikoria limited was very fun and if I remember correctly no constructed deck piled enough mutates on the same creature for it to feel clunky. I agree it's unlikely to return in a standard set, but that's more due to being a very narrow design space than to being intrisecally "bad"

Where Tribal may be most missed is if/when you ever want to make decks for the Tribal Format that require 1/3 of the deck be cards of the given tribe. Without any support from other tribal cards that means that you'll have to have at least 20 creatures in your 60 card deck to meet that. Cards like Dragon Fodder which only creates Goblins or Goblin Grenade which requires a Goblin to use really SHOULD be counted as a "Goblin" if you were trying to build a Goblin Deck for tribe wars. Had the criteria for any grand errata with Tribal come about only applying it to those cards that already dealt exclusively with the given creature type. The bigger question of course is if Tribal should have been EXPANDED to include more "tribes" and thus gain some synergies that way. I see mention of Arcane being a precursor to Tribal but my understanding is that Arcane is just a subtype like Legendary is.

Call it a failure all you want, I loved tribal and lorwyn as a whole

I run a bitterblossom in my Extus commander deck. One of multiple "Beginning of turn, token." Cards. Fairies, snakes, a zombie army... The deck aims to cast his modal back face card (Which is a sorcery that can be reduced in cost by saccing creatures) multiple times a turn. Only time I've hit double digits for commander tax count. And then Skullstorm is a Hell of a threat.

Tribals are my favorite types of decks, me and my friends have many tribal decks.

"Matron" is pronounced like you would say "Sun" or "son"... not like "bone" (Mat-ron vs ma-trone)

I like tribal, and would argue its primary downside is just in how much history the game has. If you had started making an MtG-like card game from scratch, you could easily incorporate Tribal and non-Tribal non-creature cards into it so long as you paid attention to your design space. But yes, one Grand Creature Type Update was enough for most players, and a Grand Tribal Card Update would probably break the bridge.

A video about cards and strategies that have been phased out of modern/legacy formats

I’d argue tribal and instant should be supertypes like legendary and snow, but too late to change now I guess (tribal allows creature types, instant basically just gives flash, eg an instant sorcery or instant creature)

I'm pretty sure it'd clean up the rules a lot if they just allowed supertypes to have subtypes, and made tribal a supertype, since in every other sense, it's a supertype. Notably, you can't have just a tribal card, which is kind how you'd define a type compared to sub/supertypes prior to tribal's introduction. Don't think I exactly agree with instant though. Instant predates flash by a fair bit, and there's a lot of interactions that'd change between giving something an ability versus modifying the typeline. Though along that line, I think the basic supertype should be expanded to be applicable to any creature type. So Relentless Rats, for example, would rather than having the ability to have any number in your deck, just be a basic creature. Decisions that happen at deckbuilding like that make a lot more sense to be controlled by the typeline of the card, rather than an ability in the textbox.

Yeah, we agree on instants, its too late to change now, but if I could back in time to change it, I think it would make more sense.

Though looking back, there was never really a good opportunity to do so. Back in the beginning there were actually 4 different types with their own speeds (mana source, interrupt, instant, and sorcery) which got folded down into instant and sorcery, with mana source halfway sticking around with its own timing restrictions but no card types anymore. It also doesn't help that main descriptor they use for can't cast at instant speed is "at the time you could cast a sorcery", which wouldn't work with instant sorceries.

Companion would be a good failed mechanic, but for being too good for the game than too bad

So with the addition of the new Atraxa to the game, the one that cares about card types and actually lists the card types, is Tribal no longer an official card type to be counted for cards like the new Atraxa and Tarmogoyf?

Reminder text (The text in italics) is not rules text. The fact that Atraxa doesn't mention it doesn't change anything. Tribal still exists.

1:27 “goblin matrone” Lmao

I'd love a vid on why madness isn't printed no more also all the token artifacts like blood food and clues maybe there are some I don't evne know! :o

I think tribal is unique in that it didn't fail for power level reasons, it failed for mechanical reasons. Were Wizards to commit to it, it would cause tribal decks, normally one of many sorts of strategies in Magic, to become a much bigger emphasis of the game. It wouldn't have distorted the game around it power level-wise, but mechanically. Because it's a card type and not a mechanic, it would have had to be in many more sets than normal 1-off mechanics, and thus altered limited environments and even set design as a whole. I think it's great mechanically and flavorfully but ultimately is a threat to the paradigm Magic currently exists in, which is why it was left to the wayside.

Very well put friend.

@JOSEPH WODARCZYK Thank you.

Do a video on ***Arcane!*** :o that never comes up nowadays. Examples: Kodama’s Reach. Goryo-Vengance. Or perhaps go over ***split second*** not really failed but way to good.

Here's a vid idea: plains MTG won't return to. They have the Rabiah scale to describe how likely a plain is to return and everything.

Love playing GB rock in modern in 2023 four mainboard goyfs and three bitterblossom in the side for a surprisingly good piece of tech against murktide so nice to keep history alive lol

An idea for future vids could be to go over the competitive scene of MtG for every year sanctioned tournaments have been legal. Defo a lot of work but one that will net you a good 30ish vids.

And now ... The new Atraxa could search even for tribal card or not (they are not specified on the card)???

As far as failed mechanics goes, you should definitly talk about ante

I'd say the lack of futureproofing would count as a failure tbh

Very cool. I love your format

Isn't Tribal a supertype? That would be why Atraxa doesn't have it on her reminder text, because she grabs types, not supertypes or subtypes

Bizarrely, no. According to the scryfall search filters, it's a type just like creature or artifact. Atraxa just omits it for reading ease.

I was about to step in and be like ONSLAUGHT WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A WORD.... But then you mentioned modern design and yeah... That makes sense

Tribal as a card type was redundant. Creature types benefit from having spells sharing a creature type cast, making a deck full of a specific tribe stronger. But giving non-creature permanents and instants/sorceries tribal types required their effects to be held back to prevent it from being too powerful.

I will always be sad we lost tribal

I feel they could have defined tribal as "non-creature spells & permanents that's text box mentions specific creature types" & everyone would have grasped it fairly easily. You mentioned the grand creature update, but what contemporary players fail to understand is that you couldn't always go by what the card said even back in the 90s. Mono, Poly & Continuous artifacts were overhauled to streamline artifacts as a whole, and a lot of cards from before the change in revised will never be reprinted again. Despite that, everyone knows you're supposed to tap a moxen to get the mana from it even tho there isn't one w/ the correct errata. (Magic30 doesn't count) Most people don't know what an interrupt was or how it worked. But it's not hard to wrap your head around that they're instants now. The trick is making it a simple enough trait for the average player to figure out on their own.

On a similar note, I feel it might also be in R&D's interest to go thru & clearly define traits that make something a specific creature or class type. Some are kinda easy - for example, most druid creatures are either dorks or have something to do w/ lands; phoenixes are flyers that have graveyard recursion; wizards usually either deal w/ instants or sorceries, or are pingers; lords pump the board; shapeshifters have changeling; soldiers tend to have combat tricks & come in bulk; & zombies are a pain in my ass. This is less impactful for players than it is for R&D. It would help them determine the kind of cards they would need for certain sets to be more balanced. Also, I feel Magic would just be better if tribal was more... Well, tribal.

Make that specific interaction with one creature type and I think it works better. "Text box mentions" includes more than just rules text but if/when I have a spell that only can make X tokens then that should be an X type card.

@nobodyimportant72 TBH if R&D clearly defined race/class features it would be even better. Take the Eldrazi tribal cards for example - Eldrazi are big, colorless creatures that are connected to the Annihilator mechanic. All of the Eldrazi tribal focus on those features: - Eldrazi Conscription makes a creature huge & gives them annihilator - All is Dust benefits players for playing colorless - Not of This World becomes a free counter if the spell is targeting a massive creature - Skittering Invasion just straight up makes Eldrazi tokens The problem is, while those cards do a good job of showcasing what makes an Eldrazi an Eldrazi, some creatures are harder to define. Like what makes a Rebel a Rebel? The first wave of Rebels during Masques block had them searching for stronger Rebels. However, after that Rebel was only really included on a creature for flavor reasons - this creature is a rebel because the lore says they are. For example, there isn't much that thematically ties the Rebels from All Will Be One. There's *kinda* an equipment theme going on, but that's only on half the rebels & Neyali, Suns Vanguard (the rebel commander) doesn't synergize w/ equipment at all. So what kind of instants, sorceries, enchantments, artifacts or lands would be considered support for such a generic creature type? IDK, but I *do* know I like the idea of tribal getting similar treatment to archetypes in YuGiOh. It's no secret that there's a lot of players, especially newbies, that favor a particular race or class - I'm a giant fangirl of Unicorns myself. This would just encourage a different style of deck building & diversify the game.

As a new-ish player I struggle to understand why there even was the discussion on why a card got the tribal mechanic while others don't. Like, yeah, goblin granade is more of a goblin than tarfire, but I'd feel way less cheated if my goblin tribal enemy tutored a ping 2 that also triggered goblin ETBs and LTBs instead of doing that with a deal 5 spell. What is the criteria for tribal? wouldn't balance not be a valid criteria?

with that said yeah, "Tribal" was a bad mechanic, but I feel like it's because it hasn't been properly explored, the best "Tribal" spells were already good regardless, so having tribal meant nothing to them. What if instead you release a set where there's a ton of Tribal sorceries of a certain creature type and then offer a creature that can give flash to that type, now you can play those cards + your creatures as instants. Or what if they release a lot of cheap weak instant tribal pings but once you have creatures that also ping when that certain type enters or leaves the battlefield you have in your hand a ton of cards that at worst case lightning bolts the enemy player. A party archetype where after you already assembled your party you can use creature tutors to instead find instants and sorceries. "Tribal" does nothing on it's own, if there's nothing to combo with it it does nothing more than just be a normal spell

Suggestion! Top 10 best common cards or top 10 worst mythic rares.

You should do a video covering artifacts

I miss Tribal.

It seems like an all or nothing scenario. They either lean into the tribal stuff or lean out. Glad they leaned out

Can't wait for the Banding epusode of this!

The description is talking about Epic, that should probably be fixed

Failed Mechanics: Radiance from Ravnica: City of Guilds. It's notorious for being possibly the weakest guild keyword given to a guild in the 9 main Ravnica sets.

i watched 6 minutes of this video wondering if he would talk about the other nine failed mechanics before i realized the video was titled "tribal - failed cards and mechanics" and not "ten-failed cards and mechanics"

Love this channel

Tribal just needed more work and effort put into it.

0:25 So “Tribal” is no longer listed as a card type, but “Battle” is? I’ve never even heard of a “Battle” type card.

there are none released yet. they will appear in the next set. they reference it in reminder text, similarly to how tarmogoyf referenced the planeswalker card type before it was released back in the day. he touches on this at the end of the video

If at first you don't succeed try try again.

They're doing the same thing they did with Planeswalker back with Tarmagoyf. Back in Time Spiral, there was no planeswalker card type, but Tarmagoyf listed it as a card type to generate hype and speculation. It'd be the next set Lorwyn where planeswalkers finally became a card type. Though in that case planeswalkers were supposed to be a card type in Time Spiral block, but they didn't like the design and scrapped it. That original design for planeswalkers would later return as sagas. Also it's worth noting that the wording on the new Atraxa says "these are card types" and not "these are the card types", meaning it's only listing examples and not an exhaustive list.

How about morph and/or manifest? Judging from how long we didn't have any new ones and from anecdotal evidence how people react to it, I guess it can be sadly considered failed

Gavin Verhey (big time magic designer who does youtube for fun) said last year that they'll probably bring morph back at some point. It's not dead, just been on the been for a while. Waiting.

@JOSEPH WODARCZYK Ty I didn't know that, hope it will really happen :)

You forgot about Arcane, the precursor to Tribal.

It doesn't do any thing like tribal at all?

@Tony Smith wrong

@Joe, just Joe No? Arcane by itself does absolutely nothing, just a superfluous super type that existed just to mess around with a keyword. You could actually remove arcane from the supertypes and the keyword would work just fine. You can have "Splice onto instant" and it's still a working mechanic. Tribal on the other hand actually does some thing by itself. Could it work without the specific typing of "tribal" and just used the creature types? Probably, but the distinction does help. Any ways, it's absurd to think that arcane is a precursor when the two typings and mechanics have nothing in common. Could it had led to the idea of tribal? Any thing is possible, but arcane is NOT tribal prototype.

@Tony Smith two wrong things. 1. Arcane is a sub type, not a super type like tribal. 2. Splice onto instant fails to "Sorcery -- Arcane" Better consult scryfall researches first.

@isocity You're missing the point and being pedantic. They absolutely COULD had introduced the "splice" mechanic without arcanes. Splicing onto instants and sorceries would had totally worked without it. "Arcane" as a sub type does NOTHING on it's own and isn't even needed for it's mechanic to function if they had wanted to.

Failed mechanics: bonding, manifest, sitckers and attractions, cipher, and probably a lot more keywords.

Tribal is interesting because it was explicitly retired because it was *too good* of an idea. They'd need to errata or retain all the old cards to fit if this became the standard moving forward, and it added a whole new layer of complexity to the game that wasn't overly demanding. It was, however, the absolute most parasitic mechanic they'd ever made, and it would reshape the game entirely into something else. Ultimately they decided against reshaping the very fabric of the game for something that, while a thematic slam dunk, could very well double the size of rules text and make the game incomprehensible to new comers. I don't think it should have been retired outright, but I certainly understand why it's not a go-to mechanic.

Sippin' on that Goblin Matrone

Saw your comment the same second he said it. Like wut lol

@Darth Parallax its sorta just a thing he does. nobody knows why