<bold>APOCALYPSE AND JAR JAR BINKS<bold>
Apocalypse is either going to be the best or worst thing to happen to Type 2 in a long while. If it is the best, then go ahead and start comparing it to fan
favorites like Alliances. If it is the worst, then go ahead and start comparing it to the unbalanced Urza cycle. Those three Urza sets may have been popular, but they sure messed up my enjoyment of Type 2.
Oh, I love the IDEA of Apocalypse. I love bringing back opposing-color gold cards and blowing archetypes out of the water. I love that I can make a mono-U, U/W, U/B, U/R and U/G merfolk deck now, and they’re all completely viable. I love that so many decks are occurring to me that my brain is cramping. I do. I love all of that stuff.
But there are a few cards — seven, actually — that bother me to no end. They are, in my opinion, just too powerful and do not accomplish Wizards of the Coast’s goals. Cards that are too powerful unbalance the environment; they mean that whenever I make a deck, instead of making my best deck I have to instead use odd cards that are foils to the ultra-powerful ones. It means that if I make a deck that cannot beat X-deck, I might as well not enter a tournament. I hate all of that. I really do.
Reading the spoiler of is a bit like seeing a terrific movie with a bad ending. Or reading a book with one horrible logical inconsistency. It might even be like finding someone who you love except that they do that thing.
In some ways, having something be almost perfect is worse than something that is outright bad.
I can live with (and actually enjoy) Tomb Raider with all of its cliched characters and ridiculous plot elements, because it is so far from good, why bother? Just sit back and revel in the campiness of it all. I have a harder time with, say, The Phantom Menace because of that damnable Jar Jar Binks. It is hard to overcome Jar Jar. My wife would agree that I left the theater after watching Tomb Raider considerably more happy than when I left Phantom Menace… And there is no question which is the better movie. (Well, I thought Tomb Raider sucked wet moose farts and Phantom Menace was merely annoying, but to each their own — The Ferrett)
So Apocalypse frustrates me. I wish a few cards had either not been printed or been printed differently. It would have made me quite the Apocalypse zealot. As it stands now, every compliment I can offer on the set usually has a caveat.
Here are the cards that bother me, why they bother me, and how I would change them. It feels a little silly to say these things, since it is obviously too late, but I would appreciate if my dissenting opinion can at least be noted by Wizards R&D.
SPIRITMONGER
Spiritmonger
3BG
Creature – Beast
6/6
Whenever Spiritmonger deals damage to a creature, put a +1/+1 counter on Spiritmonger.
B: Regenerate Spiritmonger.
G: Spiritmonger becomes the color of your choice until end of turn.
A lot of people think Spiritmonger is the bee’s knees. According to Jeff Donais, Spiritmonger represents R&D’s recent attempts to make fatties playable in Type 2. Again, I love the IDEA of playable fatties. And unlike most people, I am not yet sick of Blastoderm. Without a Fires of Yavimaya on the table, I can live with Blastoderm’s effects on the environment.
Spiritmonger is probably either undercosted by one or should have been a 5/5 for five mana. These are not the changes I would make, however. R&D clearly wants to make opposing-color cards more powerful than their mono- or allied-color brethren, so I can live with one of the only B/G creatures available in the environment being a ridiculously good deal for the cost.
I can even live with the fact that it gets bigger a la Sengir Vampire. And it regenerates. Damn, that is one tough beastie.
But it changes color? Okay, now I am officially depressed.
Giving Spiritmonger the ability to change its color means that the card can have no foil. Oh, sure, a regenerator like Spectral Lynx might do the trick, but black has access to a variety of spells that kill regenerators. No, the cards you would want to sideboard (or maindeck) as an answer to Spiritmonger would be things like:
But alas, with the color-lace ability, none of these are sufficient. In fact, these are all virtually useless cards in the face of Spiritmonger. Now, whenever I build a deck, I am forced to think: Do I have a regenerator? Is this regenerator black to protect against black removal? If the answer is”no,” I will very likely lose to any deck with Spiritmonger in it.
I hate that. I really do.
In my world, Spiritmonger would read:
Spiritmonger
3BG
Creature – Beast
6/6
Whenever Spiritmonger deals damage to a creature, put a +1/+1 counter on Spiritmonger.
BG: Regenerate Spiritmonger.
Look, it is still an undercosted fattie that gets bigger and regenerates (albeit with slightly more difficulty). It would still be the talk of the Timmys in the crowd. People would still complain that Spiritmonger was too powerful. And yes, it would still be a Constructed-worthy card and one of the tops in the set.
But you know what it would not do? It would not automatically render a lot of decks unviable.
Feh.
PERNICIOUS DEED
Pernicious Deed
1BG
Enchantment
X, Sacrifice Pernicious Deed: Destroy each artifact, creature, and enchantment with converted mana cost X or less.
Seeing Pernicious Deed on the Apocalypse spoilers prior to the pre-release had me convinced that the spoilers were fake. I mean, Wizards got rid of Nev’s Disk and said that we should not really expect it to return. Yet this little number improves on the Disk. There was no way I thought this card was real.
Now green can kill creatures en masse and black can kill both enchantments and artifacts en masse. And it does not cost either a turn to do so, nor must they do it at sorcery-speed. Goody.
Weenie hordes beware: You cannot beat the Deed. Control decks, rejoice! You now have the ultimate tool in board control.
Again, we see that opposing-color cards are very powerful. The nice thing about the Deed over the Disk is that blue cannot use it. This is a good thing, to be sure, and now a deck must be restricted to two opposing colors to reap the rewards of sweeping board control.
But Pernicious Deed falls into green’s sway, which had the best color-diversification abilities anyway, and it also strays into black’s territory, whose previous only restriction was that it could kill your creatures, hand, and land but could not touch your CoP: black.
Moreover, the Deed does not necessarily cost a turn to do its thing. In the two colors with the best mana acceleration, it is more than probable that a player can”pop” a Deed before a weenie swarm can ever get started. Even enchantment removal will not help you. Again, there is no foil to this card… What will you sideboard in against it?
Oh, and it is in the same colors as Spiritmonger. Yay.
In my world:
Pernicious Deed
1BG
Enchantment
XX, Sacrifice Pernicious Deed: Destroy each artifact, creature, and enchantment with converted mana cost X or less.
Now the card is still the ultimate in board control. It still can be used the same turn it comes into play. But now it has a very important restriction: It requires quite a bit of mana to use well. This means a deck will either have to expend resources on disposable mana-creatures or wait awhile to blow up the world. And a player will have to wait until five mana to kill even the 1-mana permanents on the board right away.
Still good? Assuredly. Still tournament viable? Yes indeedy. And now, arguably, the card has even better synergy with the big Spiritmonger.
Feh. And double-Feh.
THE NEW PAINLANDS — ALL FIVE OF THEM
You all know these, but here is one of them:
Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
Land
T: Add one colorless mana to your mana pool.
T: Add R or W to your mana pool. Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] deals 1 damage to you.
I understand that Apocalypse needed opposing-color lands. And I also understand that a reprint of the Tempest painlands would not have been sufficient. Since Apocalypse is likely the only set in which off-color cards occur, those cards need a) a lot of power to ensure they will get used, and b) mana to support them available to all of the opposing colors.
Further, I know that having these lands be duplicates of the Invasion tap-lands would not have worked. Then there would be too many come-into-play lands in the environment, which would mean that decks could either be allied colors or opposing colors, but probably not both. A three-color deck would simply be too slow.
Instead, R&D decided to print off-color versions of the 7th Edition painlands. Substitute”U” for”R” above and you have Adarkar Wastes instead of Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author].
What bothers me about these lands is that they are no worse than their
allied-color counterparts. But — and this is the tricky part of the
logic — spells using opposing colors are significantly more powerful than their allied-color counterparts. Thus, we now have off-color spells that are more powerful and just as easy to cast. This makes absolutely no sense to me.
Opposing colors are opposing for a reason. They are colors that do not naturally go together in a deck. I am fine with the eventual conclusion of these facts, because it means that opposing-color spells should be really powerful. I am not at all happy with the idea that opposing-color spells are now easy to cast.
In my world:
Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]
Land
T: Add R or W to your mana pool. Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] deals 1 damage to you.
Taking away the colorless potential is a small but significant change to these lands. Now if you want mana from an opposing-color land, you will be paying life for it no questions asked. These lands will always hurt you, because — dammit — opposing color decks are painful to make.
Yet in this incarnation the lands are no Cities of Brass. Rishadan Port will not kill you, nor will Opposition. These cards will simply restrict your mana as they were meant to do. When you are able to tap these guys for mana, though, it will sting.
Feh. Feh. And triple-Feh.
“THIS SHOULD NOT BE”
In some ways, I am unhappy that I thought of what I consider to be superior versions of these seven cards. Because now every time I am holding a Slay and getting beaten by Spiritmonger, or my whole side of the board gets easily cleared by a Deed, or my opponent’s U/R deck is just as consistent as my U/B one, I will be supremely annoyed.
My wife likes to say that unhappiness is the state of thinking”this should not be.” Unfortunately, I am already starting to feel this way about Apocalypse as my Type 2 playtesting has begun. For all of the set’s goodies — and there is a lot to celebrate in Apocalypse — I am starting to think I will enjoy its rotation out of Standard in a few years. I am already sick of Black Fires with Spiritmonger. I am already sick of Indian Summer. I am already sick of having no sideboard answers for my opponent’s bombs.
Am I a crybaby? Maybe. I sure feel like one. But whereas Type 2 a couple of years ago was so unbalanced that it was ridiculous to try and point out its inadequacies, Standard is different now. The environment today feels almost like I can build my best decks and succeed. But that”almost” keeps getting in the way. Seven cards is not a lot to complain about in a set, but I cannot help thinking those seven cards are going to make all the difference as I forge into July’s environment.
In some ways, having something be almost perfect is worse than something that is outright bad.
Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar
[email protected]
“doctorjay” on IRC
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