When Saviors came out, I remember remarking to one of my friends that Saviors seemed to have a larger number of reprints than normal. Another of my friends pointed it out to me thee following day, and I’ve heard a variety of other people talking about it as well.
On Friday afternoon (July 8), during a slow part of my business day, I logged onto the Wizards homepage and read an answer to a question regarding the apparent number of reprints in Saviors. Obviously, I was not the only one with that impression.
The answer that was given was quite unfortunate. Here is the answer, in the interests of full disclosure:
Saviors doesn’t really have an exceptional amount of throwbacks. I haven’t heard many people point out that in Betrayers we reprinted Spore Frog as Kami of False Hope, or Gaseous Form as Heart of Light, or Phantom Wings as… uhh… Phantom Wings. Maybe it’s just that the cards you mention in Saviors were more memorable and tournament-worthy cards in their day. I guess that makes the question ‘Why did Saviors reprint variants of so many popular old cards?’ One reason is that when we started thinking about the hand size theme we thought it would be a great chance for some of those beloved high-profile cards to do their thing in a new environment. The Maros, Presence of the Wise, and Blood Clock are all examples of well-known cards that gain a lot of synergies from all being in the same environment together.
In regard to Twincast and Hand of Cruelty / Hand of Honor, sometimes the third set is where cool cards that got kicked out of the other two sets end up.*
That was their answer? Their response was, “Your impression was wrong.” I am unconvinced, so I decided to set out and answer the question once and for all – does Saviors have more reprints than normal?
Now, before I begin, I want to make a few things clear. Firstly, I like what Wizards has done recently. I love Champions of Kamigawa. The flavor of the block is really enjoyable. I think that cards have been made much better recently. I do have a few complaints. The quality of the pre-constructed decks has diminished over time, and they always recycle ideas (oh look, yet another Red aggro deck, one more Green beef deck, etc). It also really seems like Wizards is uncoordinated. With different people designing different sets and different leads on those sets, the whole thing can sometimes feel disjointed. Maybe it’s just me, but Saviors really feels out of tune with the rest of the block.
Secondly, I really don’t like writing issue articles. During my tenure as a featured writer, I’ve written over a hundred articles. I wrote three issue articles before becoming a featured writer. I’ve written two since then (three if you count Revelations as an issue article). I just don’t think that featured writers should be writing issue articles much. Stick with strategy and decks and the like. Therefore, for me to write on this issue, you know that I have to have an issue here.
If my impressions are correct, then a representative of Wizards just misled us when he said, “Saviors doesn’t really have an exceptional amount of throwbacks.” Either they are misleading us, or my impression is wrong, and they can be vindicated. Either way, let’s clear up the air.
On Reprints
Before we begin, I need to talk about the nature of reprints. There are a variety of reprints, but we will be focusing on three. It’s important to distinguish between reprints and homages or inspirations.
My focus is on reprints. The new Maro cycle are not reprints, they are in acknowledgement of the original Maro and its later cousin, Multani. They are inspired by Maro. Similarly, the sweep cards were probably inspired by Infernal Harvest. That doesn’t mean that they are reprints of Infernal Harvest.
One thing that we have come to expect in Magic are common abilities that every color will have in the expansion sets. We expect to see a Grizzly Bears or two, often with an ability. We don’t bat an eye at a cantrip Stone Rain or a cycling Giant Growth. Nobody notices about flashback Rampant Growth or a madness Mind Rot.
Therefore, some reprints have a greater effect than others on the set. Take, for example, River Kaijin. River Kaijin is a virtual reprint of Horned Turtle. I don’t remember thinking that Champions had a large number of reprints simply because it had a Horned Turtle replacement. However, Ghitu War Cry getting reprinted in Saviors is something new.
Here are the three types of reprints that I care about:
Literal Reprint: This is when a card is literally reprinted in a new set. The only literal reprints in the entire Kamigawa Block are Lure, Befoul, Stone Rain, Phantom Wings, and the Urza’s Destiny “Lobotomy” Cycle (Sowing Salt, Scour, Quash, Splinter, Eradicate).
Virtual Reprint: This category is key to understanding reprints. A virtual reprint is any reprint that reprints a card exactly as it was initially, although there may be a subtype change. Reprinting Fugitive Wizard as Wandering Ones changes the creature type, but it is still a virtual reprint. There are a few virtual reprints in the block where the arcane subtype has been added, but they are still a virtual reprint of a previous card.
One Degree Reprints: These are cards that are changed by one degree. Twincast is an example. It is exactly the same as Fork, except that is has become Blue. A card only counts as a one degree reprint when no actual play difference results. Remember my point above: we expect block tweaks of previous spells. Take, for example, Nightsoil Kami. With the same casting cost, power and toughness as Craw Wurm, is this really a one degree reprint of Craw Wurm? The reason that I do not include it is because acquiring soulshift makes it a different card. The same is true of Shifting Borders and Political Trickery. When I am discussing reprints, I am looking for a card that does essentially or literally the same thing as a previous card.
What I want to do is look at the number of reprints that Saviors has, and then compare them to other sets to find out if there are a larger number than normal. Let’s take a look at the sets.
I do have one note before we head into them. I reviewed each set three times for reprints. However, when you are looking at five sets of cards, you’ll probably miss a few. This experiment depends on my knowledge of all Magic cards. Although I think that I have a very good command of the body of cards, I still don’t know lots, and I probably made a mistake here or there. Hopefully, any reprints that I miss will cancel each other out, and the conclusions will still be the same.
Saviors of Kamigawa
Reprints:
Blood Clock – Umbilicus
Captive Flame – Ghitu War Cry
Curtain of Light – Dazzling Beauty
Gaze of Adamaro – Sudden Impact
Molting Skin – Broken Fall
Path of Anger’s Flame – Trumpet Blast
Presence of the Wise – Gerrard’s Wisdom
Sakura-Tribe Scout – Skyshroud Ranger
Stampeding Serow – Stampeding Wildebeests
Kiku’s Shadow – Repentance
Twincast – Fork
Literal Reprints: There are no literal reprints in Saviors, which is an interesting little tidbit.
Virtual Reprints: There are nine virtual reprints. Some are literally the same card, like Molting Skin. Others have gained different subtypes. Path of Anger’s Flame became arcane, Sakura-Tribe Scout became a snake, and so forth. One card that I included as a virtual reprint is Curtain of Light as Dazzling Beauty. Technically, the player of Dazzling Beauty does not draw their card until the beginning of the next player’s turn, but that was the way cantrips worked back then. If you are uncomfortable with it being classified as a virtual reprint, then we can move it down to one degree, it won’t change our bottom line any.
One Degree Reprints: Just the last three cards qualify as one degree reprints. Kiku’s Shadow does exactly what Repentance does, but in moving it to Black the casting cost was also changed. This is quite common when re-classifying cards to new colors (like Shunt did for Deflection, for example). It’s still a reprint. Hail of Arrows can target flyers, but it almost made the list. It doesn’t matter so much where I fall with cards like this that are on the line, so long as I apply the same standard to all cards that fall on the line in all sets.
Betrayers of Kamigawa
Reprints:
Eradicate/Sowing Salt/Scour/Quash/Splinter
Phantom Wings
Gnarled Mass – Trained Armodon
Goblin Cohort – Mogg Conscripts
Heart of Light – Sandskin
Three Tragedies – Fugue
Kami of False Hope – Spore Frog
Literal: Betrayers has six literal reprints, with the reprinting of a whole cycle of cards. That’s a lot of reprints, and it skews numbers against Saviors right from the bat.
Virtual: There are only four virtual reprints, and all are fairly obvious.
One Degree: Without Kaijin of the Vanishing Touch and Frostling, there’s just a single one degree reprint. Both the Kaijin and Frostling are different enough in their comparison when they are in play that I did not consider them. This is the same rule I use for Saviors with Hail of Arrows.
Champions of Kamigawa
Reprints:
Befoul
Lure
Stone Rain
Jukai Messenger – Shanodin Dryads
Lantern Kami – Suntail Hawk
Orochi Sustainer – Wirewood Elf
Quiet Purity – Demystify
River Kaijin – Horned Turtle
Squelch – Interdict
Waking Nightmare – Mind’s Rot
Wandering Ones – Merfolk of the Pearl Trident
Sokenzen Bruiser – Rock Badger
Unearthly Blizzard – Panic Attack
Five Lands (Lantern -Lit Graveyard, etc) – Tempest Lands (Cinder Mash, etc)
Cleanfall – Tranquility
Ghostly Prison – Propaganda
Heartbeat of Spring – Mana Flare
Literal Reprints: Champions has three literal reprints in Befoul, Lure, and Stone Rain.
Virtual Reprints: Champions has an amazing fifteen virtual reprints, including the uncommon land cycle, several creatures, and a few spells.
One Degree Reprints: Champions has three. Ghostly Prison and Heartbeat of Spring changed colors while Cleanfall wither changed color (from Tranquility) or cardtype (from Tempest of Light).
Fifth Dawn
Reprints:
CoP: Artifacts
Magma Giant (from Portal)
Relic Barrier
Sylvok Explorer – Quirion Explorer
Thought Courier – Merfolk Looter
Literal Reprints: Fifth Dawn is relatively light with three virtual reprints. I encountered my first Portal reprint, and I had to decide if it counted or not. Alter all, although it technically does reprint a card, it also makes the card playable in Magic. I decided that a Portal reprint is still a reprint, and included it here.
Virtual Reprints: There are just two reprints here. I suspect that Thought Courier will be added to Ninth Edition.
One Degree Reprints: There are none. At first, I thought that Vanquish was a one degree reprint of Smite, but then I looked up Smite and found that they affected the exact opposite creature.
Scourge
Reprints:
Goblin War Strike (from Portal)
Enrage – Howl from Beyond
Rain of Blades – Sandstorm
Literal Reprints: We have just one in Goblin War Strike.
Virtual Reprints: There are no virtual reprints.
One Degree Reprints: Two more join us here, and they were both reprinted in Eighth Edition.
Analysis
Wizards has two major contentions when they discuss the number of reprints in Saviors. The first claim is that the number of reprints is normal. The second claim is that cool cards can end up in the third set because they got kicked out in previous sets. Since this claim is in response to a question about reprints, it logically follows that it is referring to third sets getting cool reprints.
Therefore, I did two things. Not only did I want to compare the number of reprints in Saviors to the other two Kamigawa Block sets, but I also went back to the two previous third sets and looked there.
Saviors: With eleven cards out of 165 that are reprints, Saviors has a 7% reprint percentage. What strikes me about Saviors is how many exact copies of previous cards were made. Eight out of the eleven cards are the exact card, casting cost, and whatnot. Of the one degree reprints, Twincast is exactly the same, with only the card color changing.
Betrayers: An interesting thing is to discover that Betrayers also has eleven reprints. This means that Saviors and Betrayers are not out of alignment with each other. I suspect that it seems more because we consider the five Urza’s Destiny reprints as a cycle, and often include it as one entry.
Champions: Champions has 21 reprints. There are 286 cards in Champions besides the basic lands. That’s slightly over 7%, essentially the same rate as the other two Kamigawa sets. It is important to note that we expect the first set to have the most virtual and one degree reprints of the block. This is the set that needs enchantment removal in White, a bounce spell for Blue, and so forth. As a result, it’s the one most likely to have these reprints, but with different creature types, the arcane subtype, and more.
Fifth Dawn: Fifth Dawn had very few reprints. There are just five here, giving us just a 3% reprint policy. There have been a lot of artifact friendly cards printed in Magic that could have made it into this set, and in fact three out of the five cards that were reprints were literal reprints. The other two virtual reprints may both be promotable to the basic set.
Scourge: Scourge has even fewer reprints with just three, giving us an anemic 2% reprint policy for this set. Two of these three cards were tossed into the set specifically so that they could be included in Eighth Edition.
Conclusion
Saviors does not seem to have a large amount of reprints when compared to the other Kamigawa sets. Wizards is correct to point people who ask about the unusually high amount of reprints in Saviors to Betrayers. However, looking back at previous third sets do show that Saviors has a much higher percentage of reprints than the previous two third sets. I wonder if these third sets were aberrations, so I decided to quickly go through the other four sets, to see what I could find. I did not break these sets down, I just wanted a quick number. Here they are:
Mirrodin: 18 (6%)
Darksteel: 4 (2.5%)
Onslaught: 17 (5%)
Legions: 4 (2.75%)**
What these quick numbers illustrate are the principles mentioned earlier. We expect the first set to have a few more reprints because they need some of the basic cards and effects. Reprinting Pacifism and Shock is no big deal for the first set, and the reprints for the previous two basic set show a larger amount of reprints than the other two sets in that block. However, you’ll note that the last two larger sets still had less reprints than any Kamigawa set.
When you look at the expansions for the larger sets, you see highly diminished numbers. Of the previous four smaller expansions, not one has more than five reprints, and all are at 3% or less.
Therefore, it seems that Saviors does not have a large number of reprints compares to the previous two sets, but that the entire Kamigawa Block has more reprints than the previous two blocks.
This is the question that should have been asked, “Why does the Kamigawa Block have a lot more reprints than previous blocks?”
Now that’s a question worth answering.
Until Later,
Abe Sargent
* The quote can be found at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/askwizards/0705
** Onslaught/Legions/Scourge was the last block with the old numbers of cards per set. Starting with Mirrodin block, the first set received fewer cards and the second two sets had more. That’s why percentages are important as a diagnostic tool here.