Since I’m going up to Richmond Comix for Standard FNM this week, I thought I might touch on some choices for decks to play based on what we’ve been seeing from the PTQs and recent StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Opens. However, looking over the Top 8 decklists has just gotten me depressed and angry all over again. Rant time? Nah. I’ve beaten that horse to death pretty effectively in the past couple a’ months (Standard Milkshake, The Good, the Bad & The Ugly). I’ve already laid out my case as to why Standard is so stale and horrible so there’s no point in covering that again, because nothing’s changed.
(Though if anyone knows Chris Moen I’d love to get in touch with him regarding his incredibly cool non-Doran treefolk deck from the Top 8 of the Minneapolis SCG $5K, my email address is at the end of the column.)
Instead, I decided to take a more positive note and lay out some analysis of what we have going on in Magic 2010, especially since it appears that the busy bees at MTGSalvation.com have the complete spoiler available at the time of this writing. Now, there is going to be no shortage of writers weighing in with their opinions on the new cards (heck, it’s already begun), and I’m going to do that too. However, given that there are always a few hiccups in the spoilers leading up to the prerelease, I thought it might be handy to look at M10 broadly – from a 5000-foot level, as it were – and read what the tea leaves tell us regarding what the good folk at Wizards have in mind for the game as they reboot the Core set.
Reprints
The first thing I was curious about – just how many reprints did Wizards pick for each color? Let’s take a look at the reprints:
WHITE (13/41) 32% : Ajani Goldmane, Armored Ascension, Celestial Purge, Excommunicate, Holy Strength, Mesa Enchantress, Pacifism, Razorfoot Griffin, Righteousness, Serra Angel, Soul Warden, Tempest of Light, White Knight
BLUE (24/41) 59%: Air Elemental, Cancel, Clone, Coral Merfolk, Fabricate, Flashfreeze, Horned Turtle, Jace Beleren, Jump, Levitation, Merfolk Looter, Mind Spring, Negate, Phantom Warrior, Polymorph, Ponder, Sage Owl, Snapping Drake, Telepathy, Time Warp, Traumatize, Twincast, Unsummon, Wind Drake
BLACK (24/41) 59%: Assassinate, Black Knight, Bog Wraith, Consume Spirit, Deathmark, Diabolic Tutor, Drudge Skeletons, Duress, Gravedigger, Haunting Echoes, Hypnotic Specter, Liliana Vess, Looming Shade, Megrim, Mind Rot, Mind Shatter, Nightmare, Relentless Rats, Royal Assassin, Tendrils of Corruption, Underworld Dreams, Unholy Strength, Wall of Bone, Weakness
RED (27/41) 66%: Ball Lightning, Bogardan Hellkite, Canyon Minotaur, Chandra Nalaar, Dragon Whelp, Earthquake, Fireball, Firebreathing, Goblin Piker, Ignite Disorder, Kindled Fury, Lava Axe, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Elemental, Mana Barbs, Panic Attack, Prodigal Pyromancer, Pyroclasm, Raging Goblin, Shatter, Shivan Dragon, Siege-Gang Commander, Sparkmage Apprentice, Stone Giant, Trumpet Blast, Wall of Fire, Warp World
GREEN (15/41) 37%: Birds of Paradise, Craw Wurm, Elvish Piper, Elvish Visionary, Enormous Baloth, Fog, Garruk Wildspeaker, Giant Growth, Giant Spider, Howl of the Night Pack, Llanowar Elves, Might of Oaks, Naturalize, Overrun, Rampant Growth
ARTIFACT (14/17) 82%: Angel’s Feather, Coat of Arms, Darksteel Colossus, Demon’s Horn, Dragon’s Claw, Howling Mine, Kraken’s Eye, Ornithopter, Pithing Needle, Platinum Angel, Rod of Ruin, Spellbook, Whispersilk Cloak, Wurm’s Tooth
LAND (1/7) 14%: Terramorphic Expanse
I have to admit, I was pretty much expecting there to be a pretty good balance of reprints across the colors, if not an exactly equal distribution, so this result was very surprising – we’ve got a whopping 66% reprint rate for Red cards at the top of the scale, down to 32% for White cards! Green’s right there at the bottom too with a 37% reprint rate. What is this telling us? I figure it means that throughout Magic history Wizards has been able to produce cards that adequately convey what it means to be Red, Black, and Blue; conversely, White and Green are in for some change.
Before we chew on this too much, I do realize that there are a fair number of “new” cards that are actually functionally the same as new cards, but for whatever reason Wizards decided to rename the card and maybe make some slight changes. Let’s take a look.
Functional Reprints
WHITE (6): Blinding Mage (Benalish Trapper), Divine Verdict (Neck Snap), Elite Vanguard (Savannah Lions), Griffin Sentinel (Skyhunter Prowler), Silvercoat Lion (Fresh Volunteers), Stormfront Pegasus (Mistral Charger)
BLUE (3): Convincing Mirage (Phantasmal Terrain), Essence Scatter (Remove Soul), Zephyr Sprite (Flying Men)
BLACK (5): Doom Blade (Terror/Dark Banishing), Dread Warlock (Severed Legion), Kelinore Bat (Dusk Imp), Warpath Ghoul (Python), Zombie Goliath (Dreg Reaver)
RED (3): Act of Treason (Threaten), Goblin Artillery (Orcish Artillery), Viashino Spearhunter (Sabertooth Tiger)
GREEN (4): Borderland Ranger (Civic Wayfinder), Centaur Courser (Nessian Courser), Runeclaw Bears (Grizzly Bears), Stampeding Rhino (Fangren Hunter)
Okay, so if we add the functional reprints to the actual reprints we can adjust our practical reprint numbers thusly: White is up to 19 (46%), Blue 27 (66%), Black 29 (71%), Red 30 (73%), and Green 19 (46%). Man, that’s a huge difference between Blue, Black and Red at the top of the reprint scale, and White and Green at the bottom! I think there are some interesting guesses we can make from this data, namely that M10 was not really created in a precise and systematic way. Rather, it grew organically, with R&D hammering out what they wanted each color to present in the Core Set, and setting out to illustrate that either with old cards where they could find them, or making new cards where needed. Obviously there was a pretty big gap in what they wanted out of White and Green, and what was available to them in previous sets.
(An aside on the functional reprints – I will be very curious to find out why Wizards chose to make brand new versions of many of these cards rather than just going with what was available. Was it to boost the “new card” count as a selling point? Was it for flavor reasons? Creature type reasons? Card name reasons? Some of it seems really arbitrary and downright weird, but I’ll wait and see if it gets addressed over on the mothership in the coming week or two.)
So what was Wizards trying to exemplify in each color? Let’s do a rundown of mechanics and themes present in the M10 spoiler (asterix* indicates only a single card with this):
WHITE
Gain life
Flying
Protection
Lifelink
First Strike
Soldiers
Vigilance
Exile black or red, undead
Angels
Damage prevention
Creature boost, toughness boost
Mass destruction (nonlands)
Enchantments
*Plains matter
*Tap creatures
*Indestructible
*Token creatures
BLUE
Flying
Counterspells
Copy creatures, spells
Merfolk
Draw cards
Unblockable
Steal creatures
Library manipulation
Tap creatures
Milling
*Change type
*”Nettling”
*Tutor (artifact)
*Islands matter
*Extra turn
*Bounce
BLACK
Lose life
Destroy creatures
Swamps matter, Swampwalk
Zombies
Vampires
Lifelink/Drain (damage=life)
Tutor (anything)
Graveyard manipulation
Regeneration
Hand disruption
*First strike, protection from white
*”Fear”
*Draw cards (cards=lifeloss)
*Trample
*Sacrifice
RED
Deal Damage to creatures
Deal Damage to players
Haste
Dragon
Flying
Randomness
Power boosting
Goblins
First strike
Can’t block
Mountains matter
Sacrifice
*Steal creatures (temporarily)
*Trample
*Must attack each turn
*Flash
*Destroy artifacts
*Token creatures
GREEN
Destroy artifact or enchantment
Deathtouch
Insects
Token creatures
Forests matter (Forestwalk)
Mana creatures
Regeneration
Reach, anti-flying
Elves
Trample
Creature boost
Can’t be countered
Shroud
*Destroy land
*Mana ramp
*Tutor (land)
*Gain life
*Tap creature
*Fog
*Protection from blue and black
*Retrieve card from graveyard
*”Lure”
Basically, I just went down the spoiler and compiled keywords and themes as I noticed them. So, what do these particular lists tell us? There seems to be some cool tension between Green and White’s good creatures and creature-pumping, versus Red and Black’s creature control. Meanwhile Blue is drawing cards and countering stuff. I think it’s interesting to note that Green and White appear to have more “stuff” going on with larger lists than Blue, Black and Red. However, these three colors remain strong because they retain themes inherently powerful due to the structure of Magic: Blue’s ability to counter spells from being played, and it’s ability to draw cards; Black’s mastery at killing creatures; and Red’s ability to both kill creatures or deal damage directly to players, often economically in the same card. Throughout the history of Magic, these themes have been powerfully and flavorfully realized in these colors over and over again, so I suppose it’s not surprising that their volume of reprints is high.
Yet, I think it’s clear that Wizards sees just how potent these themes are and they’ve made some moves to “share the wealth.” Green’s getting more creature control now, with exclusive rights to Deathtouch in M10, a reprint of Dehydration (Entangling Vines*), and a flavorful spin on the classic Green “Tracker” ability in Master of the Wild Hunt. Green also gets a taste of drawing cards with the cantrip Elvish Visionary. White gets a dose of card drawing tied to its enchantment theme, the once-Planeshifted reprint Mesa Enchantress. White gets a little more creature control too, with the awesome and flavorful Harm’s Way, and a number of express tickets to Exile.
There are still some big disappointments here. Green by and large is still locked into its own main phase, and the only creature with flash being the Mythic Bogardan Hellkite. No matter how cool, flavorful, or efficient the creatures are, they’re still “dumb” when it comes to the mechanics of the game. Can’t evolution, can’t Darwin’s laws be considered Green to give us more cleverness in our Green creatures? I keep linking to Chad Ellis‘ great article on this (Why Clever Is Better Than Power) over and over and over through the years in the hopes that the message will permeate the halls of R&D… Sigh.
Other Big Picture Observations
LD took a hit – It’s interesting that cheap land destruction is gone; no Stone Rain, no Rain of Tears. The land destruction now costs five mana and it still only hits one land, more pinpoint tool than a disruption plan. With Armageddon a distant memory, I guess the message is that people like to play their spells, and if opponents mess with their lands they can’t play their spells. I can’t say that this direction bothers me, because I’ve never enjoyed playing a heavy LD component in my deck, and I’ve certainly never enjoyed being victimized by it.
Creature sweepers took a hit – I’ll admit it, I was not swayed by the rumors that Wrath of God was going away. I just didn’t believe it. Granted, as someone who loves playing out their creatures, I always hated it when my opponent played Wrath of God against me (and by the same fashion I certainly loved cards like manlands, Saffi Eriksdotter, and Dauntless Escort, that gave you resistance to creature sweepers). But that didn’t mean I hated the actual card. I’m actually fairly sure a card like Wrath is critical to a healthy Constructed metagame as a way to prevent Magic games from degenerating to huge creature stalls like it often does in Limited. An overly expensive version of it like Planar Cleansing doesn’t cut it. With no Wrath, and not even Damnation, what’s to stop the creature hordes from going bonkers? I’m hoping that the rumors I’ve heard are true – that Wizards pulled Wrath from the Core set so they can make better Wrath variants in the expansion sets (to better balance Block Constructed) without flooding the Standard metagame with too many good Wraths – and thus making playing creatures a strategy just for suckers.
Savor the flavor – Over top of all the observations, it is definitely clear that Wizards hit a home run in the flavor department. You’ve got Angels battling Demons and Dragons. You’ve got a wild Huntsman siccing his wolves on you. You’ve got levitating armies, warping worlds, Planeswalkers, multi-headed hydras, holy and unholy strength, black and white knights, earthquakes and fireballs, and lords leading armies of merfolk, zombies, elves, and goblins. As a player I love the utility of Acidic Slime, but I also appreciate the “story” behind it – how creeping mold destroyed that artifact, enchantment or land, and then arose as a toxic slime that is now lethal to creatures. I love the old school card Stone Giant, how the mechanics so nicely realize the concept of a giant picking up a smaller creature and throwing it through the air… to its eventual death.
Overall, I’m pretty excited about the new cards coming our way, and certainly plan on investing in a box or two, the first time I’ve bought any Core Set sealed product since… well, probably since Revised. I suspect I’m not the only one, and I think it’ll be good for the prices on some of the staple singles in the base set. For instance, Pithing Needle is still ridiculously expensive despite being in 10th Edition, because… well, nobody bought 10th Edition in any quantity. I’m hoping a year of cracking M10 packs will bring down the price to where I can pick up a couple more.
Okay, that’s it for this week. Have a great weekend!
Take care…
Bennie
starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com
*My regular readers may be interested in what I thought about this card:
Entangling Vines – 3G
Enchantment – Aura (Common)
Enchant tapped creature
Enchanted creature doesn’t untap during its controller’s untap step.
Considering I made the argument for Green getting “Twiddle” effects in its color pie in A Bigger Slice of Green, I found this card both amusing and irritating. Amusing, because this is a real, honest-to-goodness creature-control card for Green that is kinda-sorta a tap effect; they took Dehydration and made it green. Unfortunately, Dehydration is only a Limited-worthy card, even in Green, so that was a little irritating.
What was really irritating was this card:
Sleep – 2UU
Sorcery (Uncommon)
Tap all creatures target opponent controls. Creatures that player controls don’t untap during their controller’s next untap step.
This card makes it obvious that my Twiddle for Green argument fell on deaf ears…