I was kinda sidetracked half way through writing this. I’m not entirely sure what to cut, or even if I should cut. I’m no Hunter S Thompson, so trust me when I say my divergences and overwrought metaphors are going to annoy a lot of people (especially Ekelly Edigges (the Es are silent)). I advise you jumping until you see a title section you like, and ignore the rest of the article. Lords knows it’ll make me look cleverer.
Found Waiting
Three days from when you read this, or eight days from when I write it, the servers will turn on and be immediately avalanched with users as Planar Chaos goes on sale. I am at this point lasting out the last of the drought, knowing that soon-ish I’ll be able to talk about what the set’s like, and talk from actual experience. I try to avoid writing speculatively in this game of ours, because any idiot can do that. Of course, I also have a relativist view of card power, which makes it very tricky to make hard statements once I actually do achieve hard knowledge. After all – it could just be that my opponents suck, it could just be that my opponents are great, perhaps I got a large number of anomalous draws – and so on.
So this is the last week – I promise – where I will be talking about non-PC stuff until such time as the new deal becomes Future Sight and you all run off to play with your “real cards.” With that in mind, perhaps it’s best to do a quick roundup of minor topics. If I had the means to do it, now would be a great time to drop a cat amongst some pigeons – but I don’t have any cats. Rivien’s been regaling me with tales of how Green has the fewest 5/5 tramplers of all colors, or something (and by “or something,” he informs me, he means something completely other to what I just typed), but really, I can’t get worked up about it right now.
I could write a column about having nothing to write about. Then I’d feel cheap because I’d have to go and dig up the guy everyone references when they do that, and act like it was anything even vaguely clever. I could talk about speculative deck lists, and about the format as PC impacts it, except you all know it already. I can only thank god that most pros are busy talking about Extended, because otherwise everything I have to say would be worthless.
I think part of the problem with my writing is that I hit the edges of big ideas a lot of the time. Then, stunned at the scope of what I stand next to, I stagger away, blindly groping for something I can manage. I don’t have the confidence to try and climb the mountain, the self-assuredness required to state my opinion as if it were a fact. It’s a sad truism that the squeaky wheel gets the grease – in our society, being noisy and confident can make up for a complete deficit of actual facts.
With Better, I attempted to bring the idea of relativism to the game. To slowly and hopefully awaken in the minds of the audience the idea that the “best deck” phraseology espoused by the top writers in the game, while practically useful, was still fundamentally flawed. In my last article, I brushed on the edges of the idea of the Predator and Prey, something inspired by Craig’s own writing on Cats and Mice. And every time I reach out to touch these big ideas, these grand theories, I pause, look at what I’m doing and snort.
If it’s that good an idea, I silently say to myself, Why hasn’t someone else covered it?
Do you know how hard it is to be a casual writer on this site? There are some premium writers who, god bless them, are pretty terrible writers, but whose play is enough, whose insights are enough, to propel them to the state of Premium writer quickly. Some free-side writers have only minimal deckbuilding or sideboarding insights to offer, but offer something unique (such as Evan’s video articles). Some of us free writers focus on a forte and a type of deck or format – like Eli with Sealed, or Abe with pure casual.
Me? I’m caught constantly between the FNM and the PTQ.
Found Wanting
Let me tell you a story, oh reader, about a reader of mine. Perhaps you know him, or have run into him. I don’t really know much about him – hell, I barely brushed the guy when we “spoke.” A few months ago, Rivien was getting into competitive play. He was smashing the hell out of the 8-mans on MTGO with a deck that was scornfully being referred to as “junk,” and nowadays is being referred to as “MGA, So will you shut up about Green being underpowered.” At the time, he wanted to help me get into it as well, with the very good idea that if I earned tickets and made money playing the game, I’d have more cards to work with, more ways to play, and more fun with the game. Such logic wasn’t readily assailable – after all, the nature of 8-man queues is that they are not that time intensive, and I do love winning. Theoretically, at least, they’re also not so hard, if you take a good deck and play it well… and mercifully, Rivien could loan me the bits I’d need for a Good Deck.
Biting the bullet was easy. There was no hollow specter of death over the cards as I picked them up from a friend’s binder. No dread visage saying that I COULD NEVER RETURN THEE HAENCE [sic] as I looked for a decklist from Karsten. Really, it was piddlingly simple.
First things first was getting a deck, then a decklist for that deck, then the deck. Very zen.
I picked Magnivore for this exercise mainly because it’s the cheapest deck in Standard. Oh, you can claim things about Goblins, or some mono-color waste of space, but let’s face it. At the time I did it, you were tapping Steam Vents, or you’re in second place. Also, actually acquiring my own copy of the deck would be relatively cheap once all was said and done. If I could go Infinite Enough ™ to pay back for the loaner copies, I’d be good. That was, at the time, the dream.
Hilariously, I picked Magnivore also because Ted Knutson said it was going to pillage the world without Eye of Nowhere. I, uh, I don’t quite understand what he was talking about now, but hey, who am to say I know better than him? I gave the deck a shot, found it not to my liking, and moved away. That should, really, be the end of things – and indeed, the entire affair wound up petering out with my throwing a (private) hissy fit and complaining about the format a lot into the soothingly deaf ear of a .txt file.
However, I did run into someone who knew me as I did this practice. By and large my opponents didn’t, or at least didn’t mention it – lending weight to the theory that I am not particularly popular. However, while I was playing, it seems some people did follow me around. A couple of people drifted along, popping in and watching me play. I’m still not sure I’m used to the idea that people would actually waste their time watching me waste their time. And one guy turned up, surveyed the board – featuring Steam Vents and a Magnivore goin’ sideways (as Magnivores do)… and exploded.
“THAT IS NOT A BUDGET DECK!” he cried. “YOU’RE A GIANT FRAUD!”
Well, I assume that’s what he meant. There were some blank spaces by my memory. I didn’t exactly save a screenshot.
It was, however, damn weird.
I didn’t take it to heart, clutching at my sobbing breast and collapsing to my knees as I cried myself into a stupor (hehe, I just noticed I said “breast”), but it did disquiet me somewhat. I’d never heard of the guy – or if I had, I was inconsiderate enough to have forgotten him. Why did people think I was somehow betraying the spirit of Magic itself by playing a non-budget deck?
Yeah, I know, this is just self-inspecting nonsense. But what better time to talk about me? I mean, I do try and make sure I have a relevant subject and all, but right now, I’ve more or less run out. Everyone is, more or less, exhausted at putting up with the idea of me talking more about design work than I already do.
Found… Whiting?
That said, I will posit that White is the New Green. When I started my complaints about Green (that its flavor wasn’t really being explored, that it still lacked the value saturation of the other colors, and that it had no tools to force other players to “play fair” like it did), it was more or less true. All Green did was spit two broken men into play, ignoring their color, and, ideally, win the game on the spot thanks to them. The best Green creature – Eternal Witness – was being used, really, to regrow shuffle effects in Green (to abuse the Top), or some other such nonsense. Really, it wasn’t a good time to be a Green mage because the format was already messed up by artifacts.
I could talk more about Green. But just like in Ravnica, there’s no clear basis for where we’re going. Time Spiral was about history (so it’s entirely okay that Green in the block was designed really stupidly), and Planar Chaos about an alternate present (so we really have no cards that are “representative” being printed).
I stand by my statement from December; Devin Low’s claim that Green’s fatties are better and better – and even the best in Constructed Standard – rings hollow. Ravnica block was not a particularly good period to analyze the color pie. I have a personal theory in this, by the by; it’s that a lot of the color combinations had no functional identity.
Specifically, you can look to Guildpact. B/W and U/R particularly had no real clear goal; the most distinct B/W decks were really Desolation Angel–Rout combo decks… and U/R didn’t offer much historical noise either aside from some ethereal period of “counter burn,” memetically cheeped by players who didn’t so much need meaning to the phrase. Decks like “Counterburn” are as well-contextualised as the “Serra Angel is a good card” trope.
I wonder if the main in my arp is causing my wind to mander more than it normally does as I scrawl this out.
Anyway; Guildpact had to clarify the identity of those color combinations, and it had to do so with what would amount to the past generation’s “iconic” cards. There were no U/R Spiritmongers, no B/W Deeds or the like (indeed, the best-known B/W card is probably Vindicate, with, what, Gerrard’s Verdict in second place?), so the set Guildpact – which apparently was only moderately powerful – had to bring with it cards to fill that void. I once idly wondered if at some distant future point, people would still be referring to the color pairings by the names they were given in Ravnica block. I doubt it, but I do think that when people try to think of amazing U/R spells, they’re not going to leap to Electrolyze as quickly as they’re going to leap to Izzet Signet.
So, Ravnica block had to push the enemy-color combinations harder than these colors “would” be pushed. This means the “standard” parts of the color pie had to be relaxed a little. The relationship between Green and Red, for example (while Pro-Tour Winning) was not lasting, as the influx of Good Lands steadily eroded anything that resembled a color pie in actual deck construction. To summarize: Ravnica Block started the muddying of the color pie, and Time Spiral only stuck its foot in that particular bog.
The real loser in this whole bargain has been White. White hasn’t got a lot of ways to play at the big boy’s table. Historically, White Weenie has only been good when it’s been riding the back of Armageddon (a good disruption spell and a card-advantage spell). Hell, I see people putting Wrath in the sideboards of their White Weenie decks because other aggro decks are a problem. Not really a winning thought process, but anyway.
White is a color that, because so many of its powers and effects are iconic, has lost so much in this recent shifting. Thanks to the Boros Guild, the White Weenies see plenty of play, and thanks to the Azorius guild, the control components are as well… but have you noticed how margnialized actually White cards have become?
Honestly, the actual text on Soltari Priest is almost irrelevant. The deck is N bears plus burn, and it’s just that White’s bears are more consistent than Red’s. Plus, it kinda helps out on that Lightning Helix spell. But the best Boros card is Sacred Foundry, just as the best Azorius card is Hallowed Fountain, and the best Orzhov Card is Orzhov Basilica (really!). How else, after all, are the Red decks going to borrow the best of White’s weenies, or Blue decks pick up Wrath and Decree of Justice?
It feels like White’s lot isn’t about to get better, either; the Planeshifted cards bring it one legitimately nasty toy, and that is Mana Tithe – a card that works at its finest with ways to constrain mana, or against tempo-savage opponents who are tapping out each turn. Force Spike was good in Blue control because it meant you rarely had a true chink in your armor, and you bought tempo just with the threat of the card (see also: Daze, Spiketail Hatchling), and because you had a torrent of other counterspells and bounce to deal with what slipped through. In White, it looks like a very, very niche tool and one that will probably not experience wide adoption. It will briefly inflate its numbers in the Standard card pool once some people forget about it and a deck of big-mana spells and badly-played bombs rears its ugly head, but once people remember the card, it will die off. It is Vincent’s Replica – at its finest when you’re pointing it at someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
I find it best to presume that my opponents are not, in fact, tubby, ignorant Tyrones, and try to assume at least a little bit of Bullet-Tooth Tony about them. That way, I’m much less surprised when I lose, and I account fewer things to luck and more things to skill. You can’t beat luck, so you don’t try – you can best skill, so you’d best be making sure you don’t miss those opportunities.
White seems so odd right now. It’s got a veritable raftload of high-profile stars that never seem to do anything. Black has its new Samuel L Jackson, Damnation, who for all that it is over the top, for all that it is gratuitous, and for all that half the time you see it it’s going to be doing something it really shouldn’t, will be awesome every single time. Gloriously over the top, incredibly, insanely well-hyped, and yet, completely amazing at what it does. Every Snakes on a Plane is in the shadow of a Pulp Fiction. It mightn’t even be that good, but it’s still ridiculously cool. Cast beneath it, however, are a cascade of lesser stars, of Black cards that you may not remember by name (ironically, the only names that do leap to mind for this are of black actors – Ving Rhames, Michael Clark Duncan, and Kevin Michael Richardson), but who always put in great performances when you see them.
White, meanwhile is hosting Famous For Being Famous types. Akroma, Wrath, Mana Tithe – All of them, Paris Hiltons and Nicole Ritchies*. They’re shiny up there, they’re impressive, but they don’t do anything. No White decks appear to be coalescing from the mists, running with the new tools they’re being given… And worse, there doesn’t seem to be much room to expand. Just as Counterspell’s presence had to be taken into account when designing new counters, Wrath of God really does squeeze White’s options for “other good cards.”
Have we ever had a format where White was overpowered? Balance-Rack-Library times, back in Bazaaro-land, perhaps? Onslaught Block gave White ridiculously powerful win conditions, but even they weren’t all that great when you consider they had to fight the two-headed beast of Odyssey Madness and Mirrodin Affinity, with Onslaught’s own Goblins showing up to poke whatever holes were left in the defenses.
I don’t think the solution is to give White better wins, just as I don’t think the solution to Green would be giving it a 4/4 for three. I think it’s time Wizards considered White as it relates to the color pie.
First and foremost, let go of Counterspells in Blue. Seriously, guys, it’s pathetic. Few colors have such a clenched fist on a proprietary ability – Black has its discard, sure, but that’s about it. Most of the colors share some abilities. Being the best at counterspells isn’t likely to change – but White is the color that bridges Green (wants things to be naturally progressive, gentle in their motion, to refuse and avoid change), and Blue (understands magic at its core and can therefore unravel it). While I still think Green could own some kind of counterspell effect, White needs it more.
Further, what does White get from Green? It gets stupidly good fatties (Eternal Dragon, Exalted Angel, so on), Token Making (which is a stupid mechanic to claim “belongs” anywhere – White has its own token making, just as Blue has its own in the form of things like Meloku), and what, exactly? I propose this following theory:
Green is the centerpoint for mana acceleration. It is the color most attuned to magic itself, to the way it works (which is why, generally, Green can’t affect spells; after all, a storm can’t dictate the path of any individual lightning bolt), and that’s why its enemies – Black and Blue – have to lean on odd, niche forms of mana acceleration (artifacts for Blue, and “Black only” emphasisers like Cabal Coffers). Artificial means, instead of natural means. Of course, Green still has the problem of having great acceleration and nowhere to go with it, and the recent philosophy regarding mana-fixing in Limited (a policy I support) means Blue’s artifact acceleration is probably going to be just as good as Green’s (since that appears to be where they get their costs from), but that bitch is for another article. For now, Green’s allies.
We all can see how Red gets acceleration. It even feeds the kind of things Red wants to do – big, glorious bursts of energy, huge explosive effects that burst out of the gate. The turn 2 Morphling of yore has finally come to the color where it belongs, with Torchling’s arrival hot on the heels of Dragonstorm. Blue is still necessary to temper that furious burst of energy, to direct it, but we’re getting closer and closer. Red’s mana acceleration – a mechanic that bleeds over from Green – is powerful, instantaneous, and generally at the expense of something else. Burn tomorrow for fire today, as it were.
How does White share in this?
I know conventional wisdom – born out of years of Dark Ritual effects – suggests Black should be next in line, but I posit that that’s inappropriate. No, I think White should be the next place to look… but I also think that White should have precisely zero cards that give you extra mana. No Kjeldoran Elf-Watchers, no Mana Bears nor Paradise Suntails. No, White already has a lot of its “mana acceleration” in its efficiency.
White pays less for things (or, at least, it should). Don’t believe me? Blue, the color of flying, gets Wind Drake, White gets Leonin Skyhunter. Viridian Zealot? Meet Ronom Unicorn and Kami of Ancient Law – while not the same, there’s certainly similarity. Destroying all creatures will cost you about seven in Red – White, by dint of squeezing to get more bang out of its buck, gets that for four.
This is the domain White should have. Give it cards that discount themselves if you fulfill parameters. Give them Daze, given them Snapback. Let White be the color that prides itself on peak efficiency. Give White the tax effects, and then, because it has the best accountants, let it ignore the tax. Put Trinisphere on a dude in White. Give White Mana Tithe on a flash flier.
The final part of this is that White should have some mechanics that let it earn card advantage. Magus of the Tabernacle? A good start. Keep doing it. Keep going down this path. You have so many dumb White bears and crappy x/4s that block stuff, and really, as long as you’re producing a few fliers and combat tricks for Limited, the rest of the effects in White will take care of themselves. Let White get Balance effects – but since stripping away opponent’s permanents isn’t fun, let them up the ante. Give them a Tithe that lets them search for the difference in lands between them and their opponent. Give them a Balancing Act that lets the player who controls the fewest men go running into his library to tutor up something unfair. Let White call the cavalry – as much as I love Chord of Calling, it would make total sense in White, as the logical conclusion of Waylay.
Could White afford a Conquer Effect? What about Eminent Domain, the rights of the state? Can White not enforce laws, or even cause revolution to instate new laws? Consider a Rule of Law effect that had an Armageddon effect as a comes-into-play ability, or the like. Consider the idea of Rebels, once more – not these strictly-for-Limited poseurs, but an organized force of soldiers, who deploy, relay, and strengthen one another. Hybrid Rebels and Slivers. See where that takes you.
And honestly? If it’ll let you do more with White – and I speak as a man who owns a playset of them, and actually likes them – Please… take Wrath away. You took away Counterspell. You gave us Mana Leak and told us the format would be awesomely better and you were absolutely right. You took away Fact or Fiction and gave us Compulsive Research, and Blue continues to have fantastic stuff. Formats are filled with six-mana or more creatures, big spells winning games just as small spells cut their legs out from underneath them. You told us the game would be better when you took our beloved toy away…
So if you think you can make it better by doing it… I, at least, am okay with you taking Wrath away.
Just please, don’t take it away then leave us twisting for nine months or something silly.
D’n’M
Talen Lee
talen at dodo dot com dot au
* Damnit, someone had to go and die and mean that the next example would be ‘Too Soonism’. Bah.