Rise of Eldrazi began a fundamental shift in the game of Magic that’s still coming into its own as the oppressively powerful Alara block rotates out of Standard. The shift, of course, is to move Magic up the curve, to make the game about spells that cost between four and eleven rather than two to five. Design talked about this change as a change to Battlecruiser Magic; a Starcraft reference about how the game is about building up to your most powerful units, rather than merely riding the first cards you play to victory, as may have happened in the past, when Dark Ritual–Hypnotic Specter went unanswered or a string of Lightning Bolts cleared the way for a turn one Jackal Pup to put the opponent in burn range. M11’s titans took significant steps to further this progression, and now its time to really explore the world they’ve set for us.
Foundations
In Pro Tour San Juan, I played the extremely well performing Mono Green Eldrazi
Monument deck, but I personally didn’t do well with that deck. Most of my
preparation for the format had been working on U/W Control. The problem with U/
W Control in that format was that it had a bad matchup against dedicated Eldrazi
decks, but I had to try to do everything I could to fix that before giving up on the
deck.
It became clear that it was almost impossible to plan to win a long game against the
deck. You could maybe try to fight Eye of Ugin with Spreading Seas and Emrakul
with Mindbreak Trap, but it was an uphill battle. A better play was generally to
attack with Celestial Colonnade early and often. Sometimes you had to just start
powering your Jace up to ultimate right away. You weren’t set up well to be a
beatdown deck, but you didn’t have a choice. It was your best plan, so you had to
know how to do it.
This is why many U/W players sided Coralhelm Commander and/or Horizon Drake, to
better allow themselves to become a beatdown deck when they were against decks
with unstoppable late games.
Before States
When I tested the Mono Blue Eldrazi deck I posted last week I eventually concluded
that Lux Cannon was basically too slow against everyone but Blue control decks
(also, somehow I had gotten the idea that it exiled rather than merely destroying
things–destroying is substantially worse). I cut Lux Cannons and Voltaic Keys for
Galvanic Blasts to help the aggro matchups. Unfortunately, when I tested against
Mono Green Eldrazi Ramp, it became clear that Primeval Titan is not a man you can
compete with on his terms. I decided I wanted to attack, and I wanted to do it in a
way people wouldn’t be prepared for.
I played an inconsistent but explosive Grand Architect/Vengevine/Molten-Tail
Masticore deck alluded to at the end of my last article. It used Hedron Crab, Enclave
Cryptologist, and Riddlesmith to set up Vengevine and Grand Architect allowed those
creatures to take full advantage of Molten-Tail Masticore, who really impressed me in
testing. Sadly, I almost never drew the Masticore in States. I dropped at 1-3, and
I’m not recommending the deck. What I learned from States I learned primarily as a
spectator.
Watching States
Adrian Sullivan played U/R Control with Frost Titan, Volition Reins, and Destructive
Force, with an Ulamog. After I watched a match, I asked how similar it was to
GerryT’s deck. Adrian said he had been working on a R/U control deck, but that
Gerry’s list showed him how to fix a lot of the problems he was having with it. He
felt Gerry didn’t get it quite right though, because Gerry was trying to do something
slightly different with the deck. Adrian saw the deck as an update of Eminent
Domain, his States deck from just after Ravnica came out.
That deck played Annex and Dream Leash to power devastating Wildfires. It could
be called a control deck, but it had an extremely proactive game plan, and was really
just trying to resolve a big spell. It’s not sitting around and winning eventually, it’s
stealing your stuff and knocking you out of the game.
This set the foundation, but the real lesson came from watching the finals of
Wisconsin States, where eventual champion Jed Grimmer (playing U/R), faced Alan
Canode’s G/W Eldrazi Ramp deck. In game one, Jed had 4 lands. His hand was
something like Everflowing Chalice, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Mana Leak, Frost Titan,
Frost Titan, Volition Reins. His opponent had five mana in some combination of
lands and Joraga Treespeakers or Overgrown Battlements, I don’t remember the
exact mix, but he hadn’t missed a land drop.
Jed said Alan was probably going to play Primeval Titan next turn. Jed also knew
Alan was playing Summoning Trap. When he said that, I assumed his play would be
to play Jace and bounce one of his opponent’s mana creatures so that he would have
to replay it next turn and Jed could have Jace in play.
Instead, Jed tapped out for Everflowing Chalice.
Alan played Primeval Titan, as expected, and Jed untapped, missed a land drop, and
tapped down the Primeval Titan with his Frost Titan.
From there, Alan used the mana from Primeval Titan to ramp to Ulamog, eventually,
but not before Jed was able to play his other Frost Titan, and when Ulamog hit play,
Jed just took it with Volition Reins and won the game.
I haven’t discussed this line of play with Jed, but I assume that he considered both options,
but knew that if he got the Chalice down he could execute in a way that would
end the game in his favor without needing to hit any more lands, regardless of what
his opponent had. Playing the Jace might buy time, but he didn’t need time – he
already had the win.
Conclusions from States
Blue decks these days can’t just sit around. Valakut, Eldrazi, and Primeval Titan
will not allow it. Their key spells cost 4-6 mana, which, oddly enough, puts them
somewhere in the middle of this new world. Frequently, decks built like control
decks have to become stange aggro/control decks in which Frost Titan serves as
a giant mockery of an aggressive beatdown creature. When building blue decks,
players need to be aware that they won’t always be able to sit back and play
control. More fundamentally, merely playing blue and having more card advantage
than your opponent does not necessarily give you inevitability. Some cards are
powerful enough to beat a very large amount of card advantage.
Adrian and I discussed Frost Titan and how extensively he’s outperformed initial
expectations. It makes sense, Adrian explained. In the world that existed before
Frost Titan, he was nothing special. Some people noted early that he beat any
other titan in a fight, but that was generally more of a cute observation. It took
awhile for the fact that the new world is all about titans, and that beating the other
titans is exactly what you need to do to really sink in. Frost Titan is a monster now.
I feel reasonably confident that Venser, the Sojourner is on the upswing as well,
similarly for reasons of U/W’s positioning in the metagame. If U/W had inevitability,
Venser wouldn’t be necessary. He costs a lot of mana and doesn’t do a lot to
stabilize a board. However, he’s an extremely potent threat, and that’s something
U/W is very much in the market for.
Powering up to do what you want to do is amazing for a planeswalker. Consider
Sorin Markov, who Mike Flores has compared to Cruel Ultimatum in impact on a
game. Draining something for two isn’t that big of a deal, but netting a card while
getting two extra loyalty counters is that big. Venser does that for a much more
reasonable 5 mana. Surely drawing a card is frequently better than making a 1/
1 soldier, and it takes almost no work to make Venser draw a card. Venser may
cost one more than Elspeth, Knight Errant, but he powers up twice as fast. More
importantly, the threat you’re powering up to is absurd. It may not be as powerful
as Jace, the Mind Sculptor’s ultimate, but it requires five less loyalty. It is more
powerful, on average, than Elsepth, Knight Errant’s ultimate. Venser isn’t a support
planeswalker, he’s the show – the other cards are there to support him, and he’ll win
the game.
Looking more Broadly
A look at the results from states right now shows that, at the top, we have a very
small, predictable metagame, in that over half of the decks that finished in top
eights were either U/W control or Primeval Titan Ramp. Looking beyond that, we
see Elves, Mono Red, and U/G/R. Understanding that Elves is the evolution of the
Mono Green Monument deck, and that Primeval Titan just levels up the Mono Green
Eldrazi Ramp decks, we essentially see the same metagame as Zendikar Block
Constructed. I’m not sure there are many lessons to take from that, since the new
cards definitely change the power levels of the deck and some of the matchups, but
it’s an interesting note.
On some level it speaks either to the weakness of Scars of Mirrodin as a stand alone
set (I believe a lot of cards in Scars will see much more play than they do now once
they have the rest of the block to support them, but for the moment, there just isn’t
quite enough there to build a deck), or players’ failure as a whole to quickly find
decks with new cards. [To be fair, States came really early this year – the window for playtesting was a bit extreme. – CardGame] I think it’s a combination. I think there are decks with more
cards from Scars to be found, but I really think a lot of the cards just don’t have the
help they need yet.
I think it’s a huge oversight that none of the Elf decks in States play Molten-Tail
Masticore. When you have a lot of mana and a lot of creatures in your deck, this card gives you a fantastic additional angle of attack. Once you realize that they
usually had Fauna Shaman, the first Molten-Tail Masticore should essentially be a
given.
Fundamentally though, I don’t think this is an easy format to break. The best decks
are very good, and there’s no one deck that beats all of them (I’m not sure there are
many that consistently beat any of them). Instead, I think this is a format that will
strongly reward people who can correctly assess their role in a game and quickly find
lines of play to put it away.
The Great Designer Search
I’m participating in the GDS2. Yesterday I tried looking at the wiki for the first
time. I found myself completely overwhelmed. The amount of content is huge,
and very daunting to sift through, but more importantly, for me, I felt like I had no
idea how to use it to put up content. I haven’t used a wiki or the Wizards board
before, and I felt like, if I tried to create a page, it would almost certainly be posted
in the wrong place. I didn’t look long, but I didn’t find clear instructions on how to
post things about GDS2 specifically. I’m sure this is all very easy once you know
anything about it, and I feel like someone from my parent’s generation when I just
look at it and say, “This is too much, I give up, maybe I’ll find someone to show me
how it works later,” but that’s where I found myself.
Anyway, the result is that I’m still not ready to dive into that community, so I
figured, in case you’re curious, that I could just put my answers to the first essay
questions here. Feel free to stop reading if you’re not interested; we’re done with
strategy content:
1.
I’m a level 6 pro and a premium writer for StarCityGames.com. I have a BA
in philosophy from Beloit College. What makes me exceptional is the depth and
breadth of my expertise in gaming. I’ve been playing Magic since around June of
1994. I played D&D before that, and Bridge, Chess, and classic board and card
games before that. Throughout highschool and college I held leadership positions
in several gaming organizations. When I graduated college, rather than going to
grad school and moving into academia as I had once imagined, I opened a game
store and spent my time playing games. I’ve played a wide variety of party and
German/Euro style board games, and I know a large number of CCGs. When
Dreamblade came out in 2006 my career shifted toward professional gamer rather
than game store owner, and I spent much of that year traveling to play Dreamblade
and Magic. When Dreamblade was discontinued I focused entirely on Magic, left my
store, made the train, and started Magic writing.
Throughout school I was an avid casual player. Most of my games were multiplayer,
and I particularly loved the “rainbow” or “star” five player format. I was a long time
five color highlander player. I was one of the few players who loved that PT San
Diego was 2HG. I’ve put countless hours into making and perfecting a cube, and I’ve
recently written about EDH.
I’ve been playing Magic Online from the beginning (though not the beta). I’ve
played every kind of game one can play on MTGO.
When I travel I try to meet and talk to new people everywhere I go.
As a store owner I organized and judged tournaments.
I know games and gamers, I know exactly what it’s like to have every possible kind
of relationship with Magic. I would love to try to get involved with Development,
Sales, and OP at Wizards as well as Design.
2.
For the most part I’m very happy with the color pie, and most of the reasonable
shifts have been done by planar chaos, like red bounce, white countermagic, and
blue discard. I could see giving green access to more different kinds of effects as
creature abilities, but that’s not really shifting an ability. Black could get more direct
exiling, but that’s pretty subtle. Instead, I think I’d consider giving white the ability
to put extra lands into play. From a flavor standpoint I think it could be justified
as conquest/expansionism, and I think there’s room for a second color to have play
additional lands as long as color fixing as not part of it without making green lose
its identity. White could have Explore, but not Rampant Growth, though it could
maybe have Nature’s Lore for Plains. To be honest, card names like Explore and
Exploration almost make more sense as white cards to begin with. They’re very
human activities, and very intellectual for green cards. It has a clear feel of humans
trying to go out and learn about nature, which is the first step from green into blue,
which makes white feel like a natural home for it.
This wouldn’t be useful in aggressive white decks, but white is already split between
aggro and control, and this allows white players a way to try to summon Angels
faster, which feels very much like something white wants to do. Specifically,
when combined with the conquest motif, this starts to feel exactly like missionary
work–expanding territory to expand religion–if the goal is to summon an Angel.
3.
I don’t closely follow the flavor and story angles of Magic. I’m a gaming
enthusiast rather than a fantasy enthusiast. Therefore, I know that when the flavor
really captivates me, its because it was done well with design. Ravnica is the block
where I was really captivated by the flavor. I wanted to play a roleplaying game
in that setting (but I never did), and later, I found out about a D&D game that was
being run in Ravnica independently. The guilds all had a great unique feel that
helped explained the interactions of the colors generally while painting an excellent
picture of relationships in that world. Most of the mechanics were very appropriate
and flavorful. Some of them weren’t perfect. Streetbreaker Wurm is an awkward
member of a guild, in that it can’t really interact with politics or the guildpact in
anyway, and Gruul probably should have focused more on the disenfranchised and
cards like Tin-Street Hooligans are perfect as members of that guild.
Transmute, while a clear blue/black mechanic, doesn’t do much to demonstrate the
secretive nature of the guild (in fact, when you transmute you have to broadcast
your plans by revealing the card you searched for at sorcery speed, so it actually
feels very much the opposite in play) or on the agenda of gathering information. It
felt like a good fit for the colors, but a bad fit for demonstrating the role of the
guild. Meanwhile, the milling theme fit very well. You win by intellectual superiority/
exposing all of their information (which had a great feel in team drafts, when
you could actually function as a scout for your team). It seems narrow to have a
mechanic that explicitly plays into an alternate win condition, but it’s possible that
Dimir would have been better served by a milling based keyword, or something like
morph (but not morph) that hides what exactly you’re doing.
4.
I don’t like using this answer because it’s obvious, but it’s so clearly correct that
I have to suggest cutting the seven card hand limit. Any other rule I can think of
eliminating is something I feel like Magic could get away with losing, but this would
actively help the game. As I see it, there are two primary reasons to have a hand
limit. The first is to prevent players from being overwhelmed by the number of cards
in their hand when they’re holding 15 cards and can’t look at them all at once. The
other is a fear that somehow having too many cards would be overpowered. The
first isn’t as much of a problem as early design might have imagined because, in
general, players will have been building up from a manageable number, and, like
understanding what’s happening on a complex board, it will be easy to process
because the information has come in small pieces. The power level concern has
been demonstrated to not be an issue by cards like Spellbook and Reliquary Tower,
that can break this rule at a minimal cost, but they’re rarely taken advantage of
competitively.
There are several advantages to cutting this rule. First, it’s an extra rule people
need to learn when they learn the game that has nothing to do with anything
else they’re learning, so it’s just an unnecessary complication. Second, and more
importantly, it has several negative implications for the play experience. Players are
already miserable when they miss their second or third land drop. The fact that they
have to discard on top of it makes the experience even more depressing. It stops
players from tuning out of games they just want to get over with because they have
to make the agonizing decision of picking which of their cards they want to discard
each turn. As the opponent, you feel bad for making them discard cards when you
could beat them even if they weren’t doing that, and bored waiting for them to make
a decision that won’t even matter.
5.
Nissa Revane should not have been printed. Tezzeret is narrow and focused,
Sorin Markov clearly leads his vampire tribe, thanks to his -3 ability. Nissa is too
blunt. Elves don’t deserve a dedicated planeswalker. Leading a specific tribe just
feels beneath a planeswalker. More importantly, it relies on referencing a specific
other card. This should be done only very rarely. Yes, Nissa is a planeswalker and
a Mythic, and that lets it violate some rules. It can mention a specific other card if it
has to, but the payoff here isn’t worth it. The cost is that it’s the one planeswalker
that doesn’t work in formats like cube, and it has an awkward relationship on its
position in regular drafts, where taking it early is something of a gamble. Basically,
the card can be done, and it doesn’t break the game or do anything horribly wrong,
but the ability clearly could have been slightly different to avoid these problems, and
I think the ultimate decision that it was cool enough to be worth doing something
that should generally be avoided was wrong here. If an elf planeswalker should
exist at all, and I don’t think it should, it should have been more cleanly executed. I
think the amount that it frustrates players who want to do things like put every
planeswalker in their cube still matters at this point. Nissa hurts the planeswalkers’
brand as a whole.
The card is fun an balanced and interesting in constructed, I just think there were
much cleaner executions available. It could (if balanced slightly differently) search
for any elf with cmc <3, or reveal cards until it revealed an elf with cmc<3, or it
could make an elf token. Cards should refer to other cards by name only when other
solutions aren't available.
6.
Sleep is probably my favorite card design in recent memory. I like it because its
so flavorful and iconic. The best thing for design to focus on in making the game
accessible to new players is not to lose track of making every base set design as
flavor driven as possible. Cards are much easier to learn and remember if you know
exactly why cards do what they do from a flavor standpoint. Extremely complex
games like Agricola, Through the Ages, and Dungeon Lords are much easier to learn
and play than they would be otherwise because you can understand plays you’re
making on a flavor level, and it makes the strategy more accessible. For Magic
specifically, the game is much more captivating for fantasy enthusiasts if they can
picture what their creatures and spells are doing and why. The cards themselves
should paint a compelling scene (as distinct from flavor text or block development
that may tell a compelling story–the cards should be basic building blocks, single
characters and actions that players combine, not full stories.)
Flavor is the easiest way to digest new material into compartments that already
exist in ones mind, and sets in general, but most importantly for new players, need
to be rooted in taking advantage of that. This means more than just printing cards
like Sleep and Lightning Bolt that have clear effects, this also means clearly spelling
out what each color is doing with its design as a whole. It’s important to help
players build new boxes in their mind that allow them to more quickly digest new
cards. This is why I don’t think Hornet Sting, a very flavorful idea, should exist in a
base set, because it can potentially throw off a new players early understanding of
what green does.
7.
Magic remains attractive to experienced players because it always changes, so
players don’t get bored. Design has a pretty easy job when it comes to pleasing
experienced players, which is why Magic’s retention rate is so high. For the most
part, all that has to happen is that the game needs to stay fresh and fun and
moderately balanced. It’s important not to shatter too many players sensibilities and
expectations, but mostly, it’s just important to keep making new things.
Scars of Mirrodin is probably the set I was least excited about before its release, and
I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve enjoyed drafting it, but I don’t think I’ll remember
it especially fondly. The limited format feels surprisingly similar to Mirrodin the
first time around to me. I like the nostalgic feeling a little, but I’m worried that it
won’t stand out in my mind as a result. Also, its important for appealing to more
casual players who have been playing the game for a long time to print a lot of cards
that can be added to existing decks rather than focusing on cards that force people
to build new decks around them, because a lot of players have a deck they like,
and they’re just looking to tweak a couple cards. This was one of the greatest of
Kamigawa’s several failings.
In short, the best thing design can do for experienced players is make new cards
that are substantially different than old cards, but that still play well with old cards.
8.
I’m not sure if this counts as a mechanic, but I think it’s eligible since
it was introduced in Lorwyn. The best mechanic in Extended (by far) is
Planeswalkers. There are other mechanics that are interesting and well done, but
planeswalkers substantially changed the game, and did it in a way that’s very fun
and they’re surprisingly balanced for a group of cards that have to be as powerful
as they are. Planeswalkers feel unique and change the way people play the
game. Letting a planeswalker stay in play for a long time is horrifying, but beating them is always rewarding. They create interesting decisions on both sides and
generally make the play experience better for everyone. They threw a significant
curve ball to experienced players and the community as a whole on evaluating their
power level, and they continue to be challenging for players to fully understand and
evaluate. The fact that a planeswalker can feel like planeswalker and a balanced
card at only three mana is just amazing, which is part of why Jace Beleren is my
favorite card.
One thing that makes this mechanic truly great is how much design space it opens
up and how flexible it is. Players know that they’ve only begun to see the kinds
of variations on the mold that Elspeth, Gidion, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor have
demonstrated. Another new area of design that hasn’t been explored as much as it
probably needs is flavorful answer to planeswalkers, although there is something to
be said for just forcing players to be able to attack.
As an honorable mention, if I needed a real mechanic, Landfall is excellent because
of how much it changes players feelings about their draws and how well it plays
outside of its block, because everyone wants to play lands.
9.
Devour, while a flavorful mechanic, basically fell flat. In principle, it
rewards having a bunch of little creatures and then combining them into a super
threat. The problem is that for the most part, a bunch of little creatures are already
a sufficient threat, and when they’re not, there are better ways to take advantage
of them than devour. Even in limited it generally created negative experiences in
which players would either ignore devour cards because most of them were bad, or
play them because they were so powerful they would win the game if the opponent
didn’t have an answer. When that happened, of course, the game would usually
swing one way or the other depending on whether the player had an answer or not,
which isn’t fun. I love having a lot of small creatures, and I love sacrificing them to
do stuff. The Goblin deck that I won the car with or the Sek’Kuar EDH deck I wrote
about recently take advantage of this in fun ways. Speaking as someone who loves
tokens, taking a board I love and putting it into one boring creature just isn’t what
I want to do, so I’m not sure who this appeals to. People who just want one big
creature can get it in much easier ways.
The fact that Jund was the most played deck in standard, but that Jund’s mechanic
wasn’t featured at all is somewhat demonstrative of this problem, particularly when
compared to Exalted, which managed to incidentally penetrate all formats in a subtle
but significant way.
10.
The most interesting plane to revisit to me is Ravnica. This is because
Ravnica is basically just one huge set spread over three sets (which had the
awkward effect of making RRR feel like drafting half a set). Since each set had to
introduce new guilds, there was very little space to show development of a story
or mechanics. We’ve been introduced to Ravnica, now it would be fun to see what
happens there.
The challenge of going back to Ravnica is that it’s too big to fit into a single set,
also, many of the mechanics are not well suited to a full block or not well suited to
revisiting (printing more cards with dredge might not be a good idea). A solution
might be to see the same setting, but possibly after the fall of the Guildpact, and
maybe now alliances are completely different. The idea of the city setting does not
necessitate multicolor guilds, but revisiting Ravnica and not getting a multicolor set
would probably feel too weird to players, it would defy expectations in a way that
probably isn’t good. Restructuring things, maybe to focus on three color wedges,
since colors haven’t really had their traditional allies and enemies in Ravnica anyway
might be interesting. The mechanical shift I’d recommend is changing the way
allied colors work in general, looking at the five wedges, and following them through
a block. I would hate to give up on the guilds entirely, and the set wants to feel
similar, but I think that can be accomplished by using well loved guild leaders like
Niv-Mizzet as major players in the new arrangement.
Wedges were popularly drafted in RGD limited, so I would want to look at how each
wedge played there and try to build mechanics to emphasize that. R/W/U was
generally a control deck with U/W blockers and fliers and red removal. R/W/B was
much more aggressive and had a feel that was perfect for Apocalypse’s Fervent
Charge.
Thanks for Reading,
Sam