How They Brew It - Try This At Home
The Twelfth Doctor | Illustrated by Alexander Mokhov
On this episode of Try This At Home: we've all seen the movie stunt where the sharpshooting sunset rider ricochets his trusty six-shooter's bullet off a coin, but does it work when you upgrade to your dad's sawed-off? Then: do birds of a feather really flock together? Find out as we release pigeons, cardinals, and penguins from a homemade hot air balloon and see which direction they all fly. And finally, it's time to look at a common myth about the ordinary, everyday household AA battery: does it microwave?
The Hard-Triers tackle your most challenging scientific problems using only supplies you -- yes, you -- can find around the house. They're Pasquali Fontina, winner of seven Nobel Participation Trophies in Physics, and Monty Hyenaman, who, for his neutral special, wields a nail gun. Together with their trusty build team of seventeen actual, real-life giraffes, they have one goal: to be put on the projector when your teacher is out sick with her new boyfriend. Their problems are insane, and their solutions even more so. But no matter what they're up against, they're always willing to Try This At Home.
Try Me A River
Welcome back to Try This At Home, the only show brave enough to tell you to go ahead, it's not our fault. I'm your host, Michael Celani, and I'm filling in for Pasquali Fontina, who died.
Everyone's familiar with that famous Time Lord, Doctor Who, who goes around in his phone booth saving the universe from such iconic villains as the Daleks and the Cylons with his trusty Sonic Spinball. Today, we're figuring out what tropes in his long-running show could really happen in a universe within the realm of reality, and this time, we're not testing alone. Our guests have a great understanding of the science-fiction method. It's that delightful demonstrate duo: The Twelfth Doctor
With The Twelfth Doctor
Science Rules
It's a myth that's persisted in the Magic: The Gathering community for ages: can you really cast spells from outside your hand? The urban legend states that, with the right combination of clever tactics and specific cards, you can play the game from your graveyard, exile, or even the top of your library. But how do we put it to the test? For that, we have to go back to the not-drawing board, and the boys have been hard at work coming up with their own methods to the madness. (Spoiler alert: madness
A Little Off The Top
Impulse draw spells, like Wrenn's Resolve
Banishing Buddies
But those individual impulses aren't the only way you can turn exile into extra cards. Permanents like Outpost Siege
Ready, Set, Go
There will be times where you'll want to wait before you rip the top card of your library, though. Perhaps you've just set up the perfect target with your Mystical Tutor
Give Them a Hand
After their disastrous first attempt, which backfired and caused an entire acre of lush, verdant jungle to be vaporized and replaced with a modern suburbian township complete with off-brand fast food restaurants, dilapidated parks, and stroads, it's clear that the boys have hit a snag. How can you recover if you draw the card you really wanted to demonstrate? After a long night of experimenting, a few extra tweaks, and a clever application of twenty dollars, they've built in some extra machinery that can correct when that happens. Here's how it works:
As Foretold
One of the easiest ways to handle drawing the card you wanted to demonstrate is to simply punt it into exile by force. Luckily, there's plenty of ways to accomplish that. Edgin, Larcenous Lutenist
Pitch and Roll
Foretelling your cards gives you complete control over when you'll ultimately cast your target spell, but you can also get a bit of extra card advantage for exiling from your hand if you're willing to compromise on that flexibility. Conspiracy Theorist
Making an Imprint
Just casting the card you exile is one thing, but getting to cast those cards multiple times is another, and instants in particular have a lot of support for making multiple copies of them. Imprint any good instants you're looking to pitch onto Elite Arcanist
Just Don't Draw It
Of course, the absolute best way to handle drawing the cards you'd rather demonstrate is to simply not draw those cards in the first place. Outside of dumb luck, we can accomplish this via Kaho, Minamo Historian
The Pitfalls of Plagiarism
After thirty-six straight hours of tinkering, engineering, and wire fraud, the boys have come up with a well-tuned machine that casts spells from outside their hand. But one final question remains between this part of the episode and the end of the episode: what spells are we willing to let our opponents try at home? Surely, it has to be good enough that it's worth going through all this trouble to get two or three of them, but it can't be so good that letting an opponent have one for free allows them to win the game. How do you walk that razor-thin line? It turns out that there was a bit of a mythconception here: we're not demonstrating spells that we want to have multiple copies of, but instead spells that our opponents definitely don't want to have any of.
Again, Again
It turns out that red has a lot of spells that allow you to take an extra turn, but also lose you the game at the end of that extra turn. The idea behind them is that you can take one extra turn for extremely cheap, but you have to win before the end of it or it all comes crashing down. This is terrible if you're not sure you can win, and for most of the game, that's the case for ever player. Demonstrating these spells and forcing an opponent to take that risk way too early is how we win. It doesn't matter if it's Last Chance
Protect Yourself
Luckily, that's where white and blue comes in. White can completely negate the concept of losing the game entirely, whether through temporary effects, like Angel's Grace
Demonic Pact
Another class of spells that can force your opponents to bow out are the three Pact spells. These three free spells -- Intervention Pact
The Final Act
But the grandmaster of all lose-the-game spells has to be Glorious End
End Credits
You're watching Sci Discovery History Planet. Coming up next: ever wonder how industrial steel is fabricated? Find out in a riveting new Why Is It Made That Way?. Then at 5:30, is our world just a simulation run by aliens trying to save us from the collapse of our original universe? It's Prepare & Conserve: The PREPCON Conspiracy. And later, those three knuckleheads sure love to misrepresent how valuable that item is in a five-hour marathon of The Word "Pawn" Sounds Kinda Like "Porn" And Therefore Our Broker Will Have A Lewd Name. Only on Sci Discovery History Planet, the network that's to education as pizza is to vegetables.
If you enjoy How They Brew It, please check out the Discord and my other projects at my website. I'd like to take a minute to thank the user Sir Nope, Jank Enthusiast, who initially posted The Twelfth Doctor
Try This At Home (The Twelfth Doctor EDH)
View on ArchidektCommanders (2)
Battles (1)
Planeswalkers (1)
Creatures (16)
- 1 Nivmagus Elemental
- 1 Cathar Commando
- 1 Conspiracy Theorist
- 1 Jacob Hauken, Inspector // Hauken's Insight
- 1 Knight of the White Orchid
- 1 Magmatic Channeler
- 1 Cloudsteel Kirin
- 1 Edgin, Larcenous Lutenist
- 1 Vega, the Watcher
- 1 Elite Arcanist
- 1 Kaho, Minamo Historian
- 1 Yasmin Khan
- 1 Bonehoard Dracosaur
- 1 Elsha of the Infinite
- 1 Ethereal Valkyrie
- 1 Arcane Proxy
Sorceries (6)
Instants (19)
- 1 Intervention Pact
- 1 Pact of Negation
- 1 Pact of the Titan
- 1 Angel's Grace
- 1 Brainstorm
- 1 Enlightened Tutor
- 1 March of Reckless Joy
- 1 Mystical Tutor
- 1 Swords to Plowshares
- 1 Everybody Lives
- 1 Final Fortune
- 1 Soul Partition
- 1 Chance for Glory
- 1 Delayed Blast Fireball
- 1 Generous Gift
- 1 Glorious End
- 1 Teferi's Protection
- 1 Valakut Awakening // Valakut Stoneforge
- 1 Summary Dismissal
Enchantments (8)
Lands (36)
- 1 Alpine Meadow
- 1 Battlefield Forge
- 1 Clifftop Retreat
- 1 Command Tower
- 1 Deserted Beach
- 1 Exotic Orchard
- 1 Fabled Passage
- 1 Glacial Fortress
- 1 Hallowed Fountain
- 1 Hidden Cataract
- 1 Hidden Courtyard
- 1 Hidden Volcano
- 1 Idyllic Beachfront
- 1 Irrigated Farmland
- 2 Island
- 5 Mountain
- 1 Path of Ancestry
- 2 Plains
- 1 Prairie Stream
- 1 Raugrin Triome
- 1 Rogue's Passage
- 1 Sacred Foundry
- 1 Sacred Peaks
- 1 Sea of Clouds
- 1 Shivan Reef
- 1 Spectator Seating
- 1 Steam Vents
- 1 Stormcarved Coast
- 1 Sundown Pass
- 1 Training Center