Can someone who explain how this card is good? I don’t understand the tradeoff for paying 1 life to get a card and skipping your draw step but I’ve never actually played the game.
Like, even clicking through like 3 sets of links to get to the Polygon article about it barely explains what the fuck it does
Others have already explained it, so I’ll just add some history. This card:
…resulted in what was called “Black Summer of 1996” where 8 of the top 8 of every tournament was a Necro variant. Necropotence is an incredibly well-balanced card. You can’t pay a bunch of life to go over your maximum hand size and use that to discard a creature to Reanimate. You don’t get the cards until your turn is over. More importantly, it was printed with this card in mind:
At the time, Black Vise was used as a four-of in every aggro deck. So it’s not like you could play Necropotence on turn one, draw back to 7 cards, and being able to survive long enough. You’d end up locking yourself out of being able to draw more cards by the time your second turn started because you’d take a bunch of damage to the face.
In the spring of 1996, Black Vise got banned in Type 2/Type 1.5/Type 1.5x and restricted in Type 1. By summer, people figured out Necropotence was absolutely busted when your life total wasn’t under pressure each turn from multiple copies of Black Vise being in play. You could play a bunch of low-resource cards each turn, then pay 4~8 life to draw more cards and repeat. Non-Necro decks couldn’t keep up with the card draw.
Black Summer would end in fall of 1996 not with a ban, but with the creation of a deck called “Turbo Stasis” that prevented each player from accessing all of their resources each turn. It didn’t matter if Necro drew zero cards or 60, they wouldn’t be able to play any of them.
Since then, Magic’s designers have been trying to make fixed versions of Necropotence. One of the earliest attempts to do this was Yawgmoth’s Bargain. They thought maybe Necropotence had been too good because it could be played on turn 1 with the right combination of cards. So, they increased Bargain to 6 mana, instead of 3. This also turned out to be a mistake because players still figured out how to cheat it into play on turn 1. Worse, it didn’t have any of Necropotence’s restrictions. This meant you could perform absurd combos since you got the cards right away, one at a time, rather than at the end of your turn when you had to discard down to 7 cards.
Yawgmoth’s Bargain ate a ban along with a whole bunch of other cards from the set it was released in across every format. It was restricted to a single copy in Type 1 (now known as Vintage) for almost two decades until 2017 and remains banned in every other format.
Thank you for coming to my MtG history lecture. Tomorrow I will be discussing why you should play Four Horsemen together with Eggs in your Battle of Wits deck.
Dang this is a great history lesson, thank you! I didn’t make the connection to black vise getting banned and the necropotence popularity surge.
It’s funny, they are still trying to fix necropotence. Their latest attempt is Necrodominance, just released a few months ago (here are both prints, because I couldn’t decide which version to post):
It has the same cost and all of the restrictions of necropotence, plus a reduction in hand size, and the exiling of discarded cards penalty has been expanded to include any card or non-card (tokens) going to the graveyard from anywhere, not just from your hand.
I don’t think it’s seeing a lot of tournament plays atm but I’m not paying that close attention to the tournament scene right now.
Necrodominance is Necropotence #2 in many edh decks. Still very powerful.
Unlike potence though, dominance makes you draw the cards rather than just put them into your hand. This is relevant with cards that care about drawing like that awful new Sheoldred.
Basically, you want to get Necrodominance into play and leave a black mana up. Then you draw as many cards as you have life (or your whole deck if you have Sheoldred out) and pitch them all to cast March of Wretched Sorrow to one-shot your opponent. Once again, R&D has messed up because they made the cards go to your hand during your end step, not cleanup. Because of this, you can play instants out of your hand before you have to discard.
People are even playing a Legacy version where they make sure their cards all have flash then they go for a storm kill at the end of their turn. The only reason it isn’t doing as well there as it is in Modern is because Doomsday and regular normal-ass normal Storm are already strong decks with draw engines.
edit: It’s also funny because Necropotence was a “fixed” Liche, which could one-shot people with Mirror Universe.
Yeah Nadu definitely stole the spotlight. That is honestly the first Necrodominance deck I’ve looked at so far. I’ve really only been paying attention to the casual side of mtg for the past year so I don’t really know anything about the current competitive meta. That’s a bummer that they missed the mark again. It’s not really a great casual or commander card so I don’t really see it ever.
Haven’t played mtg in years, but I think even I’ve heard of Nadu. That’s the super OP card everyone’s been talking about, right?
Looking it up, it does seem pretty damn good. I feel like they’ve done this before with OP 3-cost blue or green cards, at least I have a vague memory of such, I think…
Oko, Thief of Crowns and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath are probably what you’re thinking of (and they’re both stupid).
WotC came out and said “Nadu was designed with EDH in mind, so we didn’t think it would be abused in Modern,” to which everyone pointed out Lightning Greaves is one of the most played cards in the format.
Oko was 100% the main one I was thinking of, because I think that was around the last time I dabbled in mtg online. With the damn elk. It was in every freaking deck lol. Uro also looks insane, think I had heard of that one more secondhand. How do they keep making the same mistake? That’s hilarious that that’s happened multiple times won’t that combination and cost.
If you built your deck to win with a certain combination of cards you can just sacrifice life until you have them all in your hand and then win, all in one turn.
It’s kind of a lazy deck archetype that typically doesn’t require you to pay attention to what your opponents are doing or interact with them in anyway. You just sort of play solitaire until you have your combo. Victories with this strategy feel cheap and hollow, and losing to it feels worse. The general strategy of sacrificing life for card draw is still valid though, but wotc usually designs mechanics like this to make sure the risk vs reward feels fair (a hallmark of black cards). However, this particular card was too easy to exploit and is no longer legal in most formats.
There are some cards that cause you to gain 1 life whenever you draw a card, which would negate the cost of this ability and let you draw your entire deck, which would also be bad for you if you ever had to draw another card for some reason (such as from your draw step) and would cause you to lose the game from the “not being able to draw a card from your deck” rule. unless you had a way to put cards back into your deck so you could keep drawing from the top of it, but at that point what are you even doing lol
That’s all the lore I have to dump out of my brain about this particular topic. I hope someone can find something in it that is useful or insightful in some way.
I just realized this was the dunk tank. Oh no my time
it is interesting in painting a psychological profile of vance that his preferred MTG strategy is one that trolls others and is generally perceived as toxic
You play it, then draw 10-15 cards. Only your last life point matters, so just go nuts with it. It’s really easy to win on the spot when you have an extra dozen or so cards in your hand.
Can someone who explain how this card is good? I don’t understand the tradeoff for paying 1 life to get a card and skipping your draw step but I’ve never actually played the game.
Like, even clicking through like 3 sets of links to get to the Polygon article about it barely explains what the fuck it does
Others have already explained it, so I’ll just add some history. This card:
…resulted in what was called “Black Summer of 1996” where 8 of the top 8 of every tournament was a Necro variant. Necropotence is an incredibly well-balanced card. You can’t pay a bunch of life to go over your maximum hand size and use that to discard a creature to Reanimate. You don’t get the cards until your turn is over. More importantly, it was printed with this card in mind:
At the time, Black Vise was used as a four-of in every aggro deck. So it’s not like you could play Necropotence on turn one, draw back to 7 cards, and being able to survive long enough. You’d end up locking yourself out of being able to draw more cards by the time your second turn started because you’d take a bunch of damage to the face.
In the spring of 1996, Black Vise got banned in Type 2/Type 1.5/Type 1.5x and restricted in Type 1. By summer, people figured out Necropotence was absolutely busted when your life total wasn’t under pressure each turn from multiple copies of Black Vise being in play. You could play a bunch of low-resource cards each turn, then pay 4~8 life to draw more cards and repeat. Non-Necro decks couldn’t keep up with the card draw.
Black Summer would end in fall of 1996 not with a ban, but with the creation of a deck called “Turbo Stasis” that prevented each player from accessing all of their resources each turn. It didn’t matter if Necro drew zero cards or 60, they wouldn’t be able to play any of them.
Since then, Magic’s designers have been trying to make fixed versions of Necropotence. One of the earliest attempts to do this was Yawgmoth’s Bargain. They thought maybe Necropotence had been too good because it could be played on turn 1 with the right combination of cards. So, they increased Bargain to 6 mana, instead of 3. This also turned out to be a mistake because players still figured out how to cheat it into play on turn 1. Worse, it didn’t have any of Necropotence’s restrictions. This meant you could perform absurd combos since you got the cards right away, one at a time, rather than at the end of your turn when you had to discard down to 7 cards.
Yawgmoth’s Bargain ate a ban along with a whole bunch of other cards from the set it was released in across every format. It was restricted to a single copy in Type 1 (now known as Vintage) for almost two decades until 2017 and remains banned in every other format.
Thank you for coming to my MtG history lecture. Tomorrow I will be discussing why you should play Four Horsemen together with Eggs in your Battle of Wits deck.
Fantastic post, really appreciate it
Dang this is a great history lesson, thank you! I didn’t make the connection to black vise getting banned and the necropotence popularity surge.
It’s funny, they are still trying to fix necropotence. Their latest attempt is Necrodominance, just released a few months ago (here are both prints, because I couldn’t decide which version to post):
It has the same cost and all of the restrictions of necropotence, plus a reduction in hand size, and the exiling of discarded cards penalty has been expanded to include any card or non-card (tokens) going to the graveyard from anywhere, not just from your hand.
I don’t think it’s seeing a lot of tournament plays atm but I’m not paying that close attention to the tournament scene right now.
Necrodominance is Necropotence #2 in many edh decks. Still very powerful.
Unlike potence though, dominance makes you draw the cards rather than just put them into your hand. This is relevant with cards that care about drawing like that awful new Sheoldred.
Oh yeah that’s an extremely significant difference, I missed that wrinkle.
Necrodominance is definitely seeing play it was just overshadowed by Nadu, Grief, Fury, and The One Ring so it’s slipped people’s minds lmao
The deck people are using it in is this one:
MtG Top 8
Basically, you want to get Necrodominance into play and leave a black mana up. Then you draw as many cards as you have life (or your whole deck if you have Sheoldred out) and pitch them all to cast March of Wretched Sorrow to one-shot your opponent. Once again, R&D has messed up because they made the cards go to your hand during your end step, not cleanup. Because of this, you can play instants out of your hand before you have to discard.
People are even playing a Legacy version where they make sure their cards all have flash then they go for a storm kill at the end of their turn. The only reason it isn’t doing as well there as it is in Modern is because Doomsday and regular normal-ass normal Storm are already strong decks with draw engines.
edit: It’s also funny because Necropotence was a “fixed” Liche, which could one-shot people with Mirror Universe.
Yeah Nadu definitely stole the spotlight. That is honestly the first Necrodominance deck I’ve looked at so far. I’ve really only been paying attention to the casual side of mtg for the past year so I don’t really know anything about the current competitive meta. That’s a bummer that they missed the mark again. It’s not really a great casual or commander card so I don’t really see it ever.
Haven’t played mtg in years, but I think even I’ve heard of Nadu. That’s the super OP card everyone’s been talking about, right?
Looking it up, it does seem pretty damn good. I feel like they’ve done this before with OP 3-cost blue or green cards, at least I have a vague memory of such, I think…
Oko, Thief of Crowns and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath are probably what you’re thinking of (and they’re both stupid).
WotC came out and said “Nadu was designed with EDH in mind, so we didn’t think it would be abused in Modern,” to which everyone pointed out Lightning Greaves is one of the most played cards in the format.
Oko was 100% the main one I was thinking of, because I think that was around the last time I dabbled in mtg online. With the damn elk. It was in every freaking deck lol. Uro also looks insane, think I had heard of that one more secondhand. How do they keep making the same mistake? That’s hilarious that that’s happened multiple times won’t that combination and cost.
Now do Combo Winter!
Academy is one of my favorite decks of all time. Please don’t make me write a whole ass primer on how to play a deck from 20 years ago lol
Such a cool card, Urza’s Saga was a cool set, even if it did almost kill MTG.
There’s no limit on the pay 1 life to draw a card. So you can draw as many times as you’re willing to sacrifice your future.
If you built your deck to win with a certain combination of cards you can just sacrifice life until you have them all in your hand and then win, all in one turn.
It’s kind of a lazy deck archetype that typically doesn’t require you to pay attention to what your opponents are doing or interact with them in anyway. You just sort of play solitaire until you have your combo. Victories with this strategy feel cheap and hollow, and losing to it feels worse. The general strategy of sacrificing life for card draw is still valid though, but wotc usually designs mechanics like this to make sure the risk vs reward feels fair (a hallmark of black cards). However, this particular card was too easy to exploit and is no longer legal in most formats.
There are some cards that cause you to gain 1 life whenever you draw a card, which would negate the cost of this ability and let you draw your entire deck, which would also be bad for you if you ever had to draw another card for some reason (such as from your draw step) and would cause you to lose the game from the “not being able to draw a card from your deck” rule. unless you had a way to put cards back into your deck so you could keep drawing from the top of it, but at that point what are you even doing lol
That’s all the lore I have to dump out of my brain about this particular topic. I hope someone can find something in it that is useful or insightful in some way.
I just realized this was the dunk tank. Oh no my time
it is interesting in painting a psychological profile of vance that his preferred MTG strategy is one that trolls others and is generally perceived as toxic
Thanks this was way better explanation than “journalists” who get paid to write shit
Yeah that card is way too fitting
It would’ve been simpler and easier to understand if they just lied and said he was a yugioh player
You play it, then draw 10-15 cards. Only your last life point matters, so just go nuts with it. It’s really easy to win on the spot when you have an extra dozen or so cards in your hand.
Thanks