Awesome card! This card is a true Test of Endurance :)
stygimoloch
★★★★☆ (4.1/5.0)(7 votes)
Not always terribly effective but there are so many fun things one can do with it... especially in multiples, or with the Wishes or Ring of Ma'ruf!
runway
★☆☆☆☆ (1.1/5.0)(17 votes)
Time consuming, distracting, abusive, wordy, stalling, unelegant and just wrong. One of my bottom 3 cards ever, next to Mindslaver and Warp World. If you play this, my theory is that you don't really like MTG.
UNBAN_SHAHRAZAD
★★☆☆☆ (2.1/5.0)(7 votes)
Hands down the best card ever printed. You can keep your Black Lotuses and Yawgmoth's Wills. This card reads: 2 Mana equals 10 damage. It doesn't get better. The claim that this card is "disruptive" is overblown. This card is just plain fun. I certainly hope I can play this card again in a tournament soon!
hehe... Izzet Guildmage.... Twincast so much fun... You love this card if you truly love magic like only a Timmy/Johnny can
ASIC_MTG
★★★★☆ (4.1/5.0)(7 votes)
Imprint this onto a Panoptic Mirror and watch your opponent cringe...
Dragon_Whelp
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.8/5.0)(5 votes)
Easily the most annoying card ever printed.
Keegan__
★★☆☆☆ (2.8/5.0)(5 votes)
As a proxy-player, I'm surprised with myself that I've never played this.
Guest57443454
★★☆☆☆ (2.0/5.0)(5 votes)
This card is pure casual fun...I do agree that this card should not be played in tournaments however...
Mr_T_868
★☆☆☆☆ (1.1/5.0)(10 votes)
STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!
ratchet1215
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(7 votes)
I love this card. It's hilarious. I'd never put it into a competitive deck, but just thinking about the joy of Twincasting this makes the immature, annoying little kid in me shriek with delight.
GainsBanding
★★★★☆ (4.4/5.0)(11 votes)
Cards like this made it ok for designers to experiment. If Richard Garfield could meta-reference his own game and acknowledge that it was a fantasy world represented in a table-top game in a card in the very first expansion set, later generations could do anything... Wishes, Goblin Game, Battle of Wits. Whatever.
darkfury
★★★☆☆ (3.2/5.0)(3 votes)
this card can really screw people over, because it can be played once the opponent has played all of their good cards, so that when this is played, they are going to loose
Electrichead3188
★★★☆☆ (3.5/5.0)(5 votes)
So stupid this card is banned. Restricted I could understand.
1SsqueezV1
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(4 votes)
this card is awesome. its... there are no words for what it does to your opponent.
Catmurderer
★★★☆☆ (3.8/5.0)(4 votes)
With hivemind this is even better! (plus twincast XD)
Mode
★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0)(9 votes)
Notably this is the very only non-Ante, non-Chaos Orb/Falling Starish (or otherwise self-evidently banned) card in Vintage which is banned nontheless, and not just restricted.
The way it was abused might have made games a very long exhausting procedure, and although a single exemplar of this would already cause a mess, one of it in a Vintage deck would in my opinion not be gamebreaking - at least not less than most other cards on the restricted list.
Zoah
★★★★☆ (4.1/5.0)(7 votes)
This combined with twin cast, hive mind, Sigil Tracer, and Djinn Illuminatus and then merge all of these into a blue white, "halt game/stop" that's designed for frustrating slow, and irksome game-play. Then watch your opponent writhe as everyone else in the tournament has already moved on to the next round, five hours ago. A pity its not legal...
base rating: *** abuseability: +** banned: -*
Although, as its not quite as "un fun" as some cards I have seen, I could see someone letting my play it. Poor them...
MrPink343
★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0)(40 votes)
YO DAWG! WE HEARD YOU LIKE MAGIC SO WE PUT A MAGIC GAME IN YO MAGIC GAME SO YOU CAN PLAY MAGIC WHILE YOU PLAY MAGIC!
A3Kitsune
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
What would really be fun? Twincasting an opponent's Shahrazad. Especially if there is a Hive Mind in play, you're playing multiplayer, or (for pure awesomeness) both.
Maraxas-of-Keld
★★☆☆☆ (2.0/5.0)(6 votes)
5 stars for MrPink343's comment.
mrredhatter
★★★★☆ (4.3/5.0)(10 votes)
MTG please un-ban this card!
Gilder_Bairn
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(5 votes)
LEGAL IN EDH!!!!!
Aun
★★★☆☆ (3.5/5.0)(6 votes)
This card is just so lulz.
Ace8792
★☆☆☆☆ (1.8/5.0)(2 votes)
How is this card not banned in EDH
Mage24365
★★☆☆☆ (2.7/5.0)(7 votes)
The reason it's banned is possibly because of the Shahrazad-Mox Pearl deck that was legal in the beginning of the game. Here's the list: 125xShahrazad 125xMox Pearl There was no 4-of limit at that time, so this was a legal deck. However, the only was it could win was by decking (or 5 activations in a single game). There are about 7 subgames in order to deck someone, so the total number of games is 1+5+5^2+5^3+5^4+5^5+5^6+5^7 to win the main game.
Well theres a card that will never be on MTGO. Say goodnight servers!
The_Grand_Artificer
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
This was actually a fairly fun card for early white weenie. Nothing like facing off with an opponent with a deck full of power nine, having him fireball/otherwise work you down to little to no life, and then use Shahrazad. For extra fun, mirror universe them if you lose.
DeathDark
★★☆☆☆ (2.7/5.0)(3 votes)
Dangit MrPink
I still got to post it in the Unhinged version.
Kirbster
★★★★☆ (4.3/5.0)(8 votes)
Throw it on Panoptic Mirror and see what your opponent does.
TheSwarm
★★☆☆☆ (2.8/5.0)(3 votes)
Throw it on a panoptic mirror and watch every friend you have leave you from boredom
GrimjawxRULES
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(2 votes)
I would love to see a mirror match between two decks each running 4 of these .... >_>
Ps. Use with Children of Korlis if you're scared that you might lose the Shahrazad game :P
tcollins
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(5 votes)
Use with Hive Mind to play Inception the gathering
channelblaze
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
I am so making an uyo, silent prophet edh deck with this is in. I want to copy it like 5 times. I wonder tho, if the spells would stay on the stack during all of the shahrazad game (if the game is part of the resolution, so the next spells don't resolve if they're done) or if you'd have a bunch of game within a game within a game situations.
does anyone realise that on the card it says that the player who loses loses half their remaining life points rounding *down* yet on the magic de***ion it says rounding *up*. That's a fail magic
kontanshikaku
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.9/5.0)(4 votes)
Deck my friend wanted to make: A lockdown/stasis deck running 4 Shahrazad and 4 Isochron Scepter. The only way to win was by opponent concession.
Deck we all refused to play against: See above
allmighty_abacus
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
The only way this card could be better is if it was an instant.
kontanshikaku, your friend's idea doesn't work. Don't feel bad about not realizing it, though. You are just one of many who have invoked the Isochron Scepter in card comments sections without knowing what it actually does.
--Nate--
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(14 votes)
This card is the definition of trolling. :(
Radagast
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Years ago, my brother and I proxied a pair of decks that each had 4 of these silly things in them and then played against each other. We managed to get 7 games deep before successfully completing a sub-game before another Shaharazaad went off. Now, sure, that was back when Magic was only a few years old, but still... wow... this card shoudn't be allowed in any real format.
hozz101
★★★★☆ (4.4/5.0)(16 votes)
this card should be renamed inception
JWalks82
★★★★☆ (4.6/5.0)(13 votes)
Don't just Panoptic Mirror it. Next you must get out your Paradox Hazes. And in that subgame, do the same thing, rinse and repeat.
And then stop playing Magic. For God's sake.
Nathreet
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(5 votes)
It's legal in EDH since you can't deck someone simply by having this and a larger deck than your opponent. For that matter it's hard to mill people out in general in EDH.
HolyOrdersX2
★★☆☆☆ (2.8/5.0)(2 votes)
Okay, I like playing this game as much as the next guy, but I refuse to play about six or seven games just to get through one round. I like cards like Goblin Game because at least they are funny, but using this is just asking to be hurt. You are wasting people's time who have better things to do than to play 20 games of magic with the same deck and the same opponent, all in a row. /nerdrage
boneclub
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(7 votes)
Yo dawg! We heard you liked playing magic, so we put a game in yo game so you can play magic while you play magic.
Lol you guys are funny. The reason this is banned now, is because back when it was printed, Fork wasn't restricted, and you could play with 10. So the ideas was get them in so many sub games within sub games that eventually whoever had a bigger deck started winning. Twin casting this isn't anything compared to someone with 20 Black Lotus in play and a hand full of Forks.
EDIT:
I saw a lot of people talk about how it's the only non physical movement or ante based card banned in Type 1 / Vintage, which is in itself funny, but, remember, Mind Twist was once banned in Type 1 / Vintage too, because in about 1996 or so, no matter what the finals were for Worlds, entire games were basically decided by whoever played it first.
Zacklar
★★☆☆☆ (2.8/5.0)(2 votes)
this makes me want to get a set of this things and a lot of replicating stuff, ok friends, we are going to play magic with about 50 sub-games!
Dewxgong
★★☆☆☆ (2.8/5.0)(2 votes)
Game within a game within a game? WE NEED TO GO DEEPER.
dragonking987
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
wait why is this banned.
scumbling1
★★★★☆ (4.4/5.0)(7 votes)
"Lol you guys are funny. The reason this is banned now, is because back when it was printed, Fork wasn't restricted, and you could play with 10. So the ideas was get them in so many sub games within sub games that eventually whoever had a bigger deck started winning. Twin casting this isn't anything compared to someone with 20 Black Lotus in play and a hand full of Forks."
Patently false. The limit of four cards of a name per deck was imposed long before there was even a sanctioned Type 1 format that could have had a restricted list. Shahrazad was banned on September 1st, 2007, after it had had a long time to exist next to an unrestricted Fork / Twincast. Nobody put them together in a competitive Vintage deck.
Want to know why it actually was restricted? Here's the word from Aaron Forsythe: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/af186
Richochet_Shaman
★★★☆☆ (3.8/5.0)(4 votes)
I'm so effin happy someone made an inception joke.
bluemaxx
★★☆☆☆ (2.8/5.0)(2 votes)
love how people likes to play this with twincast and fork :)
play this with twincast to someone you like (as long as she also plays magic) = mini-magic date. :)
NuckChorris
★★★☆☆ (3.9/5.0)(4 votes)
Would the wins and losses of subgames be recorded on the record of pro players at sanctioned events? Are they worth half a point or something?
Arachibutyrophobia
★★★☆☆ (3.8/5.0)(2 votes)
WHY IS THIS BANNED! it's fun!
JFM2796
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(10 votes)
This is the weirdest card I have ever seen.
SentByHim
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Anyone else notice the change made by exiled? Peviously this card used to wreck by using crypts and other cards to RFG (old school) your opponent's cards so they wouldn't have anything to play with. Now that strategy is no longer valid (and not so fun).
This card cannot be unbanned because it abuses the format of a tournament. If the player can't win the player attemped to use this card to intentially go to time.
Totema
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(9 votes)
I want to build a deck with four of these cards, and name the deck "Magiception".
The Inception of Magic cards! (especially if you do what JWalks82 suggests)
dingophone
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
Best card ever. Or at least most silly.
Shadoflaam
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
Mah deck. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/inception-annoyance/
DarthParallax
★★☆☆☆ (2.0/5.0)(3 votes)
you know how cards like Barren Glory and Nevermore are cards in REAL Magic that came from Un-sets?
Shahrazad could be the opposite. They could reprint it, exactly as is, in the next Un-Set. Into the Dungeon is needlessly excessive. Just reprint Shaharazad itself, with new art. It would be a fantastic Trolling of the players by Wizards if they did such a thing. :p
Shahrazad is not legal in EDH. EDH uses VIntage legal cards plus its own banlist, and while Shahrazad isn't on the EDH ban list, it's not a Vintage legal card either. Someone tried to make the case that Un set cards are EDH legal too, because they aren't on the banlist. :/
There used to be an explicit exception for Shahrazad to make it EDH legal but they dropped it, probably because it's not a very fun card to play against.
@NuckChorris
Since you can't use this in sanctioned events, the question has no real answer; but back when it was legal, I'd presume that the subgame isn't recorded.
swords_to_exile
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
This is not legal in commander people. The Gatherer doesn't have the official commander bannings. Check the actual Commander website for the true list.
Subtle_Kay
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Definitely the BEST CARD EVER PRINTED.
Axelle
★★★☆☆ (3.7/5.0)(3 votes)
Yo dawg, I heard you like playing, so we put a game in your game so that you can play while you play.
j2los
★★★☆☆ (3.0/5.0)(2 votes)
Yo dawg, I heard you liked to play magic...
atemu1234
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
@darthparallax it would break tournament play. You could end up playing twelve games in a single round with this out, more if there is something like panoptic mirror out. EDIT: I did the math, you can actually, without replicate or Mirror or other nonsense, fifteen rounds in a tournament style match. If you run a panoptic mirror (or Four) you've got about infinite subgames. Seriously. Your opponent would probably rage-quit.
Stinga
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
I've always wanted to use this with djinn illuminatus and infinite mana (perhaps from myr). "We will play thirty thousand more games. Oh, whats that? You don't have a century to spend playing magic with me? Well I guess you forfeit then." :3
Salient
★★★★☆ (4.6/5.0)(6 votes)
IT DOESN'T EVEN EXILE ITSELF.
TheKazu
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
So, just wondering: Am I allowed to resign the subgame? If so, it doesn't seem as banworthy in vintage as everyone makes out. Its strictly worse than {W}{W}: Your opponent halves their life, rounded up, which, by vintage status, isn't even that bad. If you can't resign the subgame, you make a ruling that you can, and unban it in vintage. Simple.
TheWrathofShane
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
Rulings: Events in a Shahrazad sub-game do not normally trigger abilities in the main game. And continuous effects in the main game do not carry over into the sub-game.
I am curious to know, which card will affect the main game now. They used the word "normally", so its got to be something. An unhinged card maybe?
SereneChaos
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Shahrazad, enter subgame, cast Burning Wish to get the Shahrazad off the stack from the real game.
azure_drake222222
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Legal in Commander!
abrodock
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
We heard you liked Magic, so we put some Magic in your Magic. Now you can play Magic whenever you play Magic!!
GrayWizard
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
If used in commander, can you still use your commander in the subgame? If so, what if your commander is in play during the main game?
Claytoon
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Yo dawg, I heard you like Magic, so we made a mini Magic game inside a Magic Card.
blurrymadness
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
It's banned (as explained in an article I can't locate at the moment) because of logistical restrictions (time and space) in tournaments.
I would troll my friends with this all day if it weren' t so expensive :D
BigBer
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Extra errata: Whenever you play this, all other players may punch you in the face.
GhostCounselor
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Please explain to me what playing a game of Magic within a game of Magic was supposed to do for the player that cast this spell? What was the goal of doing such?
Aquillion
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Use Elixir of Immortality to put it back into your library before it resolves and the subgame begins, ensuring that it's available to you inside the subgame as well. This will also ensure that you have your entire library, while (as you go deeper) your opponent will have less and less to work with and eventually have to start conceding.
WHY ON EARTH is this legal in Commander!? Wasn't this banned because it's annoying as {insert various expletives}?
I refuse to play with anyone that runs this in their Commander deck. It is no fun to play against. One game of Commander is already long enough, two games is just ludicrous. Don't get me wrong, I love Magic, I love Commander, but there IS such a thing as "too much of a good thing", and this card shoves it down your mouth.
Mooby
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
does anyone realise that on the card it says that the player who loses loses half their remaining life points rounding *down* yet on the magic de***ion it says rounding *up*. That's a fail magic
No, the card says the player's life total is halved rounded down. So if you take half of 15 you get 7.5, rounded down is 7.
The oracle text says the player loses half rounded up. So if you lose half of 15 that's 7.5, rounded up is 8, 15-8=7.
The wording is functionally equivalent.
Secksee
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
.
Xineombine
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
It's a game within a game...GAMECEPTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
DaLucaray
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Does anyone else notice it's name is pronounced the same as Charizard? (Shut up, you know what Charizard is.)
CogMonocle
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
@GhostCounselor things that look symmetrical can be useful (read: Wrath of God, Time Spiral) In those cases more obvious, but still.
@Aquillion almost, but it doesn't go into the graveyard until it's resolved.
Mr_Bubbles
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
"Shahrazad" is an alternate spelling of Scheherazade, the narrator of Arabian Nights who tells her husband Shahryar a new story each night. Shahryar originally plans to have her executed but becomes so enthralled by her stories that he falls in love with her and spares her life. Using a story to present one or more other stories in this way is known as frame narrative and is beautifully represented here by the subgame.
Gotta love the flavor of some of these older cards.
TomWarleader
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
As long as you have more free time than your opponent you win the game... But lose at life.
Art and flavor wise there's a hooka in the corner so the story goes -all players get " distracted " for awhile and play a side game of magic.-
anhsieh
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Great with the new Chandra, Pyromancer.
DeaTh-ShiNoBi
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
How is this card rated so highly? It's a crap card with awful design that's purely intent on annoying people and isn't fun to play against, but I guess in some sort of twisted (trollish) way, it could be fun to play (for about exactly one time). The reward for winning the sub-game isn't even very powerful. Is it really rated highly just because it's freaking weird? Or maybe it being "banned in Vintage" has given some people the idea that, even if they don't see it, it must be an uber-broken card in some way, shape, or form (hint: it's not; it's banned in Vintage because it's a ridiculous card). I mean, admittedly the flavor of the card is pretty cool, but that shouldn't warrant such high ratings alone.
Only Vintage legal cards are legal in Commander, (in addition to the EDH banned list) so this card isn't legal in Commander.
Lifegainwithbite
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
I only met one person who was crazy enough to run a deck that infinitely recurs Shahrazad in EDH (before it got banned). He's now under our local shop's floorboards.
green4456
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
@DeaTh-ShiNoBi Read Mr_Bubbles explanation. Then refer to the corresponding Wikipedia article. This card is one of the most fluffy cards ever printed. It literally foretold the forthcoming expansions and what the themes used in them would be. So the question is, is Wizards going to stop printing the game after 1,001 sets?
NemataGG3
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(8 votes)
The History of Shahrazad: Part 3 of 3
The players had roughly the same chance of winning the subgame as they did of winning the main game. This brings us to a part of Shahrazad’s history that many players are not familiar with. For a time, Shahrazad was one of the most powerful cards in Magic. When Shahrazad was printed, the exile zone hadn’t been invented yet. In fact, Arabian Nights introduced the concept of manipulating cards outside the game with Ring of Ma’ruf, a concept so radical at the time that they italicized the words “outside the game” on the original card just to show how awesome it was. Then Antiquities brought us Bronze Tablet, a card so bizarre you’ll just have to look it up yourself. Basically, removing stuff from the game was weird back then. Then, after Legends, The Dark came along and made removing from the game a regular thing, but not nearly as prevalent as exile is now. When stuff got removed from the game back then, it was really gone. In fact, if it got removed from the game during a Shahrazad subgame, it was gone in the main game too. As graveyard recursion and removing from the game became more commonplace, Shahrazad became not only a nuisance (it was one of the first banned cards) but it also became a powerhouse. As soon as you could resolve a Shahrazad, you could just slowly pick away at an opponent’s library within subgames until their deck was removed from the game. Then you would just win the main game due to the empty library draw rule.
Another potential abuse strategy was to use Shahrazad in a tournament sideboard. You would win the first game of a match as normal, on your deck’s own merits. However, in sideboarding your deck would transform. Rather than trying to win, you would try to drag the game out forever, resulting in a draw for the second game of the match due to time constraints and an overall match win. Sadly, stalling and delaying is still a tactic sometimes employed by more unscrupulous tournament competitors, but Shahrazad made it absurdly easy and effective. The process of mulligan-taking for a single game alone could eat up several minutes. This potential for abuse is what ultimately led to the banning of Shahrazad in Vintage and Legacy formats.
For a long time, Shahrazad was up there with Contract From Below as terrifyingly powerful cards that would dwarf the power 9, if only they were legal. Of course, with the introduction of the exile zone, cards exiled by Shahrazad now return to the original game, taking away its extreme power, though not its extreme capacity to annoy. For years most copies of Shahrazad lay squirrelled away in binders, unused and forgotten. With it being banned in all formats, Shahrazad would very rarely show up in an actual game, and even then only as an eccentric novelty.
Shahrazad has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity lately. For a short time, the card was allowed in the official Elder Dragon Highlander rules. The single-card rule prevented game-within-a-game headaches. The casual tone of the format makes delaying tactics pointless. Furthermore, EDH is the perfect place to use strange and silly old cards. Unfortunately, those in charge of the official EDH rules realized that the average player can’t be trusted not to copy and recast Shahrazad and run games into oblivion, and it has again become an outlaw in all sanctioned formats.
So what’s the situation with Shahrazad now? Well, for one thing, it’s valuable. You can expect to pay about $40 for a used one and even more for one in mint condition. Ironically, it’s also much easier to obtain than it used to be 20 years ago. The savvier internet shopper could arrange to have one sent directly to his or her mailbox at the lowest available price in the world within a minute of finishing this sentence. In the rare circles of friends that can resist the urge to ruin games with it, Shahrazad is even cast in EDH or casual games every now and then!
I hope you enjoyed reading about Shahrazad! If you have an interesting story about Shahrazad, if you know something I don’t about the card, if I’ve included something untrue, or if you’d just like to chat with a fellow geek, I’d love to correspond. Please get in touch with me using my email: nematagg(atsign)gmail.com.
NemataGG2
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(9 votes)
The History of Shahrazad: Part 2 of 3
Okay, that’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about the flavour of a card. Yet that’s just the start of the story of Shahrazad. Let’s discuss how the card itself has been used (and abused!) since it was printed 20 years ago.
When Magic was first created, nobody imagined what it would become. It was printed with the assumption that local groups would just buy a few cards. There wasn’t supposed to be more than one or two of any given rare in the few hundred groups of hardcore roleplaying/hobby enthusiasts that would actually buy more than the starter sets. When Arabian Nights was printed, the game had been out for about 3 months. It was starting to take off, but so far only Alpha and Beta had been printed and the assumption that rares would actually be rare still held. In fact, there wasn’t even a “4-in-a-deck” rule. It just wasn’t necessary because it was impossible to get that many copies of a rare. Unless you were some sort of technology wizard, you probably hadn’t even heard of the internet, let alone online shopping. If you lived in a major city that actually had a hobby store they wouldn’t have even thought to sell individual cards from the game Magic: The Gathering. You can imagine why those who are lucky enough to have those cards are able to sell them for thousands of dollars today.
So where does Shahrazad fit in? Well, it made the card usable. Fun and balanced even. If somebody actually had a Shahrazad in their deck, they probably just had the one. On the rare occasions somebody played it, it just added an interesting element of diversion to the game. Once the card hit the graveyard, it was probably going to stay there. The players had roughly the same chance of winning the subgame as they did of winning the main game. Of course, every statement in this paragraph became completely untrue as the game evolved… let’s go through them.
It made the card usable. Fun and balanced even.Shahrazad is the only card outside of ante cards to be banned in every Wizards-sanctioned format. Sure, it’s a weird, crazy card, but why did it get banned? Keep reading.
If somebody actually had a Shahrazad in their deck, they probably only had one. On the rare occasions somebody played it, it just added an interesting element of diversion to the game. As Magic grew, this became completely untrue. People started finetuning decks and collecting multiples of powerful cards. The 4-of-a-card limit had to be introduced. Playing a subgame of Magic once every few games might be fun, but playing 2 or 3 subgames in every game is just tiresome. This makes the most terrifying element of Shahrazad to the table. If you have more than one in your deck, you can play a subgame within a subgame. This is VERY tiresome. If you thought the film Inception was confusing, try keeping track of 3 (or more!) sets of life totals in a Magic game with multiple copies of Shahrazad. It’s not as fun as it sounds, and it doesn’t sound all that fun.
Once the card hit the graveyard, it was probably going to stay there. In the original game of Magic, the graveyard was not nearly as much a part of the game as it is now. Today’s exile zone is more accessible than the graveyard of those times. Occasionally, a creature might gruesomely be returned from the dead by black magic. But that creature probably got to the graveyard the fair way, by dying in combat. When it came to reusing spells, only the unique green spell Regrowth could do that, although the temporal manipulation of Timetwister could also do it in a roundabout way. If anybody ever did make a Shahrazad/Regrowth deck, I’m sure it was a great joke but quickly became unpopular. 2 or 3 subgames is just tiresome. Nowadays, cards in the graveyard are almost as easy to play as cards in your hand, if not easier. If somebody does have a Shahrazad recursion deck, you can expect to play 2 or 3 subgames every single turn of the main game. Ugh. Not to mention that it can easily be copied by spells like Fork. That’s not even considering the possibility subgames within subgames. I shudder to think.
NemataGG
★★★★☆ (4.6/5.0)(11 votes)
The History of Shahrazad: Part 1 of 3
To this day, Shahrazad remains a unique and infamous card. However, few players are familiar with its long and colourful past. I hope you find the history of this card as interesting as I do.
I’ll start with the flavour of the card. Arabian Nights was the first expansion for Magic. It introduced some… interesting cards. This is the set that gave us such historical gems as Moorish Cavalry and Jihad. It also contained Aladdin, Aladdin’s Lamp, and Aladdin’s Ring. That doesn’t seem too odd, until you consider that Disney’s Aladdin had just come out on videocassette a month or two before the set’s release! It suffices to say, the paradigm for Magic’s flavour was completely different back then.
Shahrazad is the name of a main character from classical piece of medieval Arabic literature, One Thousand and One Nights. The spelling of the name itself is pretty interesting. Rather than using the correct scholarly transliteration of the name, Scheherazade, Richard Garfield and the other Magic designers decided to use the same stylized spelling used in the translation by Sir Richard Francis Burton, a legendary adventurer/philosopher known for infiltrating Mecca, publishing the Kama Sutra in the west, and serving as a captain in the East India Company among many other things. Shahrazad’s role in the story is that of the narrator. After betraying her husband, the king Shahryar, she tells him stories to delay her execution. That is to say, she tells a story within a story, just like Shahrazad the card creates a game within a game. Also, each story ends with a cliffhanger so that the story never really ends. Doesn’t that remind you of how the card works in a game of Magic? If you’re about to lose, just pull out Shahrazad and play endless games so that you never get executed. It really is an amazingly flavourful card.
The art on the card is awesome too! It oozes flavour. It may look a little cartoonish compared to the quality of the cards now, but look at Giant Strength, Celestial Prism, Word of Command, Pyramids, or most of the cards of the time for that matter… they didn’t exactly have the same standards then as they do now. Now look at that lamp on Shahrazad.The magic lamp story is so overdone that you don’t really get to see a lamp used as an actual lighting device anymore, but you do on Shahrazad! Plus how many other cards have a woman beckoning to you from a bed? Here’s a final interesting tidbit: tobacco wasn’t introduced to Persia until the Europeans brought it back from America. Therefore, since One Thousand and One Nights comes from long before this, the hookah in the foreground marks the first and to my knowledge only depiction of cannabis use on a Magic card.
Anaxie1
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
My buddy kept on saying how we had to play a multiplayer game as soon as possible. So my playgroup all got together, and the game lasted 2 hours longer than it should have. My buddy hit all copies. Ughhh
Kryptnyt
★★★★☆ (4.6/5.0)(6 votes)
Day 6 The Magic game continues. Though I vowed long ago to never concede a game, the need for food and water is overcoming me. I check my opponent's graveyard again. Maybe he has an extra Healing Salve, and is playing an illegally constructed deck? No such luck. His Moat holds back my creatures, and walls of counterspells keep me from dealing with it. I've tried to deck myself several times, but he seems to always have a Timetwister right on time. Each time I come close to breaking through, another wall is in my path, and he punishes me by playing another Shahrazad. Even when I manage to beat him in the subgame, it's a shallow victory, because this true game continues. I cannot go on, but paradoxically cannot surrender. It is what he wants. After this long, I cannot allow him to win. I draw my card for turn, and sigh.
shotoku64
★★☆☆☆ (2.5/5.0)(1 vote)
The reason this is banned in vintage is NOT because it is annoying as hell, or time restraints. It is because in a tournament setting, there is simply not enough room or resources for players to start subgames, especially multiple subgames. Also, calling a judge over to ask a question in a subgame is ludicrous
yuvalg
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(1 vote)
yo dawg...
seahen
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
So what formats CAN I play this card in?
Hercynian
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
I kind of want to make a Blue/White Mill deck with this. Because you are pretty much playing the same game and your opponent is the only person who suffers from this.
Stuflames
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
The face does look comical, but the rest of the picture is actually pretty nice art.
Comments (111)
The way it was abused might have made games a very long exhausting procedure, and although a single exemplar of this would already cause a mess, one of it in a Vintage deck would in my opinion not be gamebreaking - at least not less than most other cards on the restricted list.
base rating: ***
abuseability: +**
banned: -*
Although, as its not quite as "un fun" as some cards I have seen, I could see someone letting my play it. Poor them...
125xShahrazad
125xMox Pearl
There was no 4-of limit at that time, so this was a legal deck. However, the only was it could win was by decking (or 5 activations in a single game). There are about 7 subgames in order to deck someone, so the total number of games is 1+5+5^2+5^3+5^4+5^5+5^6+5^7 to win the main game.
I still got to post it in the Unhinged version.
Ps. Use with Children of Korlis if you're scared that you might lose the Shahrazad game :P
Shahrazad x4
Twincast x4
Panoptic Mirror x4
pyromancer ascencion x4
izzet guildmage x4
etc.
"We play another game, any objections mr. blue mage?"
"Dude, I have no hand..."
"Ok, twincast, twincast,twin cast, and izzet guildmage"
"...wtf"
A lockdown/stasis deck running 4 Shahrazad and 4 Isochron Scepter. The only way to win was by opponent concession.
Deck we all refused to play against:
See above
Oh wait.
And then stop playing Magic. For God's sake.
Gotta love games in a game.
EDIT:
I saw a lot of people talk about how it's the only non physical movement or ante based card banned in Type 1 / Vintage, which is in itself funny, but, remember, Mind Twist was once banned in Type 1 / Vintage too, because in about 1996 or so, no matter what the finals were for Worlds, entire games were basically decided by whoever played it first.
WE NEED TO GO DEEPER.
Patently false. The limit of four cards of a name per deck was imposed long before there was even a sanctioned Type 1 format that could have had a restricted list. Shahrazad was banned on September 1st, 2007, after it had had a long time to exist next to an unrestricted Fork / Twincast. Nobody put them together in a competitive Vintage deck.
Want to know why it actually was restricted? Here's the word from Aaron Forsythe: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/af186
play this with twincast to someone you like (as long as she also plays magic) = mini-magic date. :)
This card cannot be unbanned because it abuses the format of a tournament. If the player can't win the player attemped to use this card to intentially go to time.
We have to go deeper.
(especially if you do what JWalks82 suggests)
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/inception-annoyance/
Shahrazad could be the opposite. They could reprint it, exactly as is, in the next Un-Set. Into the Dungeon is needlessly excessive. Just reprint Shaharazad itself, with new art. It would be a fantastic Trolling of the players by Wizards if they did such a thing. :p
Vintage ..... Banned
Commander ..... Legal
There used to be an explicit exception for Shahrazad to make it EDH legal but they dropped it, probably because it's not a very fun card to play against.
@NuckChorris
Since you can't use this in sanctioned events, the question has no real answer; but back when it was legal, I'd presume that the subgame isn't recorded.
EDIT: I did the math, you can actually, without replicate or Mirror or other nonsense, fifteen rounds in a tournament style match. If you run a panoptic mirror (or Four) you've got about infinite subgames. Seriously. Your opponent would probably rage-quit.
I am curious to know, which card will affect the main game now. They used the word "normally", so its got to be something. An unhinged card maybe?
I would troll my friends with this all day if it weren' t so expensive :D
I wonder how it interacts with Time Machine?
I refuse to play with anyone that runs this in their Commander deck. It is no fun to play against. One game of Commander is already long enough, two games is just ludicrous. Don't get me wrong, I love Magic, I love Commander, but there IS such a thing as "too much of a good thing", and this card shoves it down your mouth.
No, the card says the player's life total is halved rounded down. So if you take half of 15 you get 7.5, rounded down is 7.
The oracle text says the player loses half rounded up. So if you lose half of 15 that's 7.5, rounded up is 8, 15-8=7.
The wording is functionally equivalent.
things that look symmetrical can be useful (read: Wrath of God, Time Spiral)
In those cases more obvious, but still.
@Aquillion
almost, but it doesn't go into the graveyard until it's resolved.
Gotta love the flavor of some of these older cards.
Art and flavor wise there's a hooka in the corner so the story goes -all players get " distracted " for awhile and play a side game of magic.-
Obligatory link to Hive Mind.
Read Mr_Bubbles explanation. Then refer to the corresponding Wikipedia article. This card is one of the most fluffy cards ever printed. It literally foretold the forthcoming expansions and what the themes used in them would be. So the question is, is Wizards going to stop printing the game after 1,001 sets?
The players had roughly the same chance of winning the subgame as they did of winning the main game. This brings us to a part of Shahrazad’s history that many players are not familiar with. For a time, Shahrazad was one of the most powerful cards in Magic. When Shahrazad was printed, the exile zone hadn’t been invented yet. In fact, Arabian Nights introduced the concept of manipulating cards outside the game with Ring of Ma’ruf, a concept so radical at the time that they italicized the words “outside the game” on the original card just to show how awesome it was. Then Antiquities brought us Bronze Tablet, a card so bizarre you’ll just have to look it up yourself. Basically, removing stuff from the game was weird back then. Then, after Legends, The Dark came along and made removing from the game a regular thing, but not nearly as prevalent as exile is now. When stuff got removed from the game back then, it was really gone. In fact, if it got removed from the game during a Shahrazad subgame, it was gone in the main game too. As graveyard recursion and removing from the game became more commonplace, Shahrazad became not only a nuisance (it was one of the first banned cards) but it also became a powerhouse. As soon as you could resolve a Shahrazad, you could just slowly pick away at an opponent’s library within subgames until their deck was removed from the game. Then you would just win the main game due to the empty library draw rule.
Another potential abuse strategy was to use Shahrazad in a tournament sideboard. You would win the first game of a match as normal, on your deck’s own merits. However, in sideboarding your deck would transform. Rather than trying to win, you would try to drag the game out forever, resulting in a draw for the second game of the match due to time constraints and an overall match win. Sadly, stalling and delaying is still a tactic sometimes employed by more unscrupulous tournament competitors, but Shahrazad made it absurdly easy and effective. The process of mulligan-taking for a single game alone could eat up several minutes. This potential for abuse is what ultimately led to the banning of Shahrazad in Vintage and Legacy formats.
For a long time, Shahrazad was up there with Contract From Below as terrifyingly powerful cards that would dwarf the power 9, if only they were legal. Of course, with the introduction of the exile zone, cards exiled by Shahrazad now return to the original game, taking away its extreme power, though not its extreme capacity to annoy. For years most copies of Shahrazad lay squirrelled away in binders, unused and forgotten. With it being banned in all formats, Shahrazad would very rarely show up in an actual game, and even then only as an eccentric novelty.
Shahrazad has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity lately. For a short time, the card was allowed in the official Elder Dragon Highlander rules. The single-card rule prevented game-within-a-game headaches. The casual tone of the format makes delaying tactics pointless. Furthermore, EDH is the perfect place to use strange and silly old cards. Unfortunately, those in charge of the official EDH rules realized that the average player can’t be trusted not to copy and recast Shahrazad and run games into oblivion, and it has again become an outlaw in all sanctioned formats.
So what’s the situation with Shahrazad now? Well, for one thing, it’s valuable. You can expect to pay about $40 for a used one and even more for one in mint condition. Ironically, it’s also much easier to obtain than it used to be 20 years ago. The savvier internet shopper could arrange to have one sent directly to his or her mailbox at the lowest available price in the world within a minute of finishing this sentence. In the rare circles of friends that can resist the urge to ruin games with it, Shahrazad is even cast in EDH or casual games every now and then!
I hope you enjoyed reading about Shahrazad! If you have an interesting story about Shahrazad, if you know something I don’t about the card, if I’ve included something untrue, or if you’d just like to chat with a fellow geek, I’d love to correspond. Please get in touch with me using my email: nematagg(atsign)gmail.com.
Okay, that’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about the flavour of a card. Yet that’s just the start of the story of Shahrazad. Let’s discuss how the card itself has been used (and abused!) since it was printed 20 years ago.
When Magic was first created, nobody imagined what it would become. It was printed with the assumption that local groups would just buy a few cards. There wasn’t supposed to be more than one or two of any given rare in the few hundred groups of hardcore roleplaying/hobby enthusiasts that would actually buy more than the starter sets. When Arabian Nights was printed, the game had been out for about 3 months. It was starting to take off, but so far only Alpha and Beta had been printed and the assumption that rares would actually be rare still held. In fact, there wasn’t even a “4-in-a-deck” rule. It just wasn’t necessary because it was impossible to get that many copies of a rare. Unless you were some sort of technology wizard, you probably hadn’t even heard of the internet, let alone online shopping. If you lived in a major city that actually had a hobby store they wouldn’t have even thought to sell individual cards from the game Magic: The Gathering. You can imagine why those who are lucky enough to have those cards are able to sell them for thousands of dollars today.
So where does Shahrazad fit in? Well, it made the card usable. Fun and balanced even. If somebody actually had a Shahrazad in their deck, they probably just had the one. On the rare occasions somebody played it, it just added an interesting element of diversion to the game. Once the card hit the graveyard, it was probably going to stay there. The players had roughly the same chance of winning the subgame as they did of winning the main game. Of course, every statement in this paragraph became completely untrue as the game evolved… let’s go through them.
It made the card usable. Fun and balanced even. Shahrazad is the only card outside of ante cards to be banned in every Wizards-sanctioned format. Sure, it’s a weird, crazy card, but why did it get banned? Keep reading.
If somebody actually had a Shahrazad in their deck, they probably only had one. On the rare occasions somebody played it, it just added an interesting element of diversion to the game. As Magic grew, this became completely untrue. People started finetuning decks and collecting multiples of powerful cards. The 4-of-a-card limit had to be introduced. Playing a subgame of Magic once every few games might be fun, but playing 2 or 3 subgames in every game is just tiresome. This makes the most terrifying element of Shahrazad to the table. If you have more than one in your deck, you can play a subgame within a subgame. This is VERY tiresome. If you thought the film Inception was confusing, try keeping track of 3 (or more!) sets of life totals in a Magic game with multiple copies of Shahrazad. It’s not as fun as it sounds, and it doesn’t sound all that fun.
Once the card hit the graveyard, it was probably going to stay there. In the original game of Magic, the graveyard was not nearly as much a part of the game as it is now. Today’s exile zone is more accessible than the graveyard of those times. Occasionally, a creature might gruesomely be returned from the dead by black magic. But that creature probably got to the graveyard the fair way, by dying in combat. When it came to reusing spells, only the unique green spell Regrowth could do that, although the temporal manipulation of Timetwister could also do it in a roundabout way. If anybody ever did make a Shahrazad/Regrowth deck, I’m sure it was a great joke but quickly became unpopular. 2 or 3 subgames is just tiresome. Nowadays, cards in the graveyard are almost as easy to play as cards in your hand, if not easier. If somebody does have a Shahrazad recursion deck, you can expect to play 2 or 3 subgames every single turn of the main game. Ugh. Not to mention that it can easily be copied by spells like Fork. That’s not even considering the possibility subgames within subgames. I shudder to think.
To this day, Shahrazad remains a unique and infamous card. However, few players are familiar with its long and colourful past. I hope you find the history of this card as interesting as I do.
I’ll start with the flavour of the card. Arabian Nights was the first expansion for Magic. It introduced some… interesting cards. This is the set that gave us such historical gems as Moorish Cavalry and Jihad. It also contained Aladdin, Aladdin’s Lamp, and Aladdin’s Ring. That doesn’t seem too odd, until you consider that Disney’s Aladdin had just come out on videocassette a month or two before the set’s release! It suffices to say, the paradigm for Magic’s flavour was completely different back then.
Shahrazad is the name of a main character from classical piece of medieval Arabic literature, One Thousand and One Nights. The spelling of the name itself is pretty interesting. Rather than using the correct scholarly transliteration of the name, Scheherazade, Richard Garfield and the other Magic designers decided to use the same stylized spelling used in the translation by Sir Richard Francis Burton, a legendary adventurer/philosopher known for infiltrating Mecca, publishing the Kama Sutra in the west, and serving as a captain in the East India Company among many other things. Shahrazad’s role in the story is that of the narrator. After betraying her husband, the king Shahryar, she tells him stories to delay her execution. That is to say, she tells a story within a story, just like Shahrazad the card creates a game within a game. Also, each story ends with a cliffhanger so that the story never really ends. Doesn’t that remind you of how the card works in a game of Magic? If you’re about to lose, just pull out Shahrazad and play endless games so that you never get executed. It really is an amazingly flavourful card.
The art on the card is awesome too! It oozes flavour. It may look a little cartoonish compared to the quality of the cards now, but look at Giant Strength, Celestial Prism, Word of Command, Pyramids, or most of the cards of the time for that matter… they didn’t exactly have the same standards then as they do now. Now look at that lamp on Shahrazad.The magic lamp story is so overdone that you don’t really get to see a lamp used as an actual lighting device anymore, but you do on Shahrazad! Plus how many other cards have a woman beckoning to you from a bed? Here’s a final interesting tidbit: tobacco wasn’t introduced to Persia until the Europeans brought it back from America. Therefore, since One Thousand and One Nights comes from long before this, the hookah in the foreground marks the first and to my knowledge only depiction of cannabis use on a Magic card.
The Magic game continues. Though I vowed long ago to never concede a game, the need for food and water is overcoming me. I check my opponent's graveyard again. Maybe he has an extra Healing Salve, and is playing an illegally constructed deck? No such luck.
His Moat holds back my creatures, and walls of counterspells keep me from dealing with it. I've tried to deck myself several times, but he seems to always have a Timetwister right on time.
Each time I come close to breaking through, another wall is in my path, and he punishes me by playing another Shahrazad. Even when I manage to beat him in the subgame, it's a shallow victory, because this true game continues.
I cannot go on, but paradoxically cannot surrender. It is what he wants. After this long, I cannot allow him to win.
I draw my card for turn, and sigh.