Last week we embarked upon our epic journey across the miraculous landscapes of MTG in search of that most elusive and critical of keywords to the success of the game, Miserable. For those of you who delight in the minutiae of my so-called Rules, there are some screamers coming your way this week too. For those of you who simply like to kick back (not currently a keyword), relax (not currently a keyword) and let great stories from the days of yore flutter by (no, still not) there’s plenty here for you too. So step up to the plate, as we unveil the next half dozen sets and their associated Rules of Miserable, starting with an Autumn day in 1997, when one of the best sets the game has ever or maybe will ever see landed with a thump at my first ever tournament, the London Pre-Release for Tempest. Since I know some of you will hang, draw and quarter me if I don’t, here’s the list of the Rules so far:
Rule #1: When I say something is Miserable, I don’t mean it.
Rule #2: When I say something isn’t Miserable, I don’t mean it.
Rule #3: Bad is not Miserable.
Rule #4: Good is not Miserable.
Rule #5: Miserable will frequently be responsible for the end of the game.
Rule #6: Miserable is Great for Magic.
Rule #7: Miserable should make you Tired All Over.
Rule #8: Eternal Formats are Miserable.
Rule #9: Miserable cannot exist in the Abstract. Miserable must be Felt.
Rule #10: Eternal Formats are not Miserable.
Rule 10.2.5.i: Mostly, Miserable is Constructed.
Rule #11: Breaking the rules is Miserable.
Rule #12: Drawing a ton of cards is Miserable.
Rule #13: Color matters to Miserable.
Rule #14: Cycles can have different kinds of Miserable.
Rule #15: The harder to deal with, the more the Miserable.
Rule #16: If a sizeable part of the community likes it, it isn’t Miserable.
Rule #17: Burn isn’t Miserable.
Rule #18: Excess isn’t Miserable.
Rule #19: A number can be Miserable.
Rule #20: Cheap is Miserable.
Rule #21: A great name has Protection from Miserable.
Rule #22: Alternate Casting Costs are a recipe for Miserable.
Rule #23: Lands are Miserable.
Rule #24: There’s nothing Miserable about Combo.
Rule #25: There’s nothing Miserable about Beatdown.
Rule #26: There’s nothing Miserable about Control.
Rule #27: There’s nothing Miserable about Idiot Opponents.
Rule #28: X spells aren’t Miserable.
Rule #29: Just the threat can be Miserable.
Rule #30: Doing it again is Miserable. Doing it again is Miserable.
Rule #31: Long is Miserable.
Rule #32: Inevitable is Miserable.
Rule #33: See Rule #24.
Rule #34: If you can’t understand it, it’s probably more Miserable than you think.
Rule #35: If you can understand it, it’s probably less Miserable than you think.
Rule #36: Don’t is Miserable.
Rule #37: If there’s time to order a pizza, that’s Miserable.
Rule #38: Seeing them drive off into the sunset is Miserable.
Rule #39: ‘Look how long it took me to kill him’ isn’t Miserable.
Rule #40: 14 is the Number of Lifegain Miserable.
Rule #41: If you can Sit Back and Watch It Go, that’s Miserable.
So, to business. God I loved Tempest.
Rule #42: Even Super-Hosers aren’t Miserable.
Here’s four cards to kick us off. Boil. Chill. Choke. Perish. Respectively that means:
Boil — 3R Instant. Destroy all islands.
Chill — 1U Enchantment. Red spells cost 2 extra to play.
Choke — 2G Enchantment. Islands don’t untap during their controllers’ untap steps.
Perish — 2B Sorcery. Destroy all green creatures. They can’t be regenerated.
Now if you’ve ever played Blue spells, or Red spells, or Green spells, but didn’t start playing until the turn of the century or so, you’re quite possibly scratching your head round about now and wondering how on Earth you ever won when your opponent cast things like this. And you’re right, mostly you didn’t. You lost. Just like you were meant to. Boil was God’s punishment for you playing nasty counterspells. Chill was meant to teach you a lesson that burn doesn’t pay. Choke was meant to tease you by letting you at least see your Islands still in play, useless, a delicious device known in literature as the Torture of Hope, while Perish was as blunt a weapon as man could devise to show the Elf fraternity the error of their ways. And all four of these bad boys were very naughty indeed. So at first glance, they seem a prime case of Miserable. But just as Billy Ocean might have said if he played Magic, when the going gets hosed the hosed get going. See, the thing with hosers is that they allowed you to craft Victories of the Ages. You cast Mogg Fanatic turn 1, and an Ironclaw Orcs turn 2 before the dreaded Chill came down, and then backup hoser turn 3. Suddenly your Jackal Pup cost five. Five ladies and gentlemen. Hard-cast Fireblast? Ten. Ball Lightning? Seven. Not happening ever, but meanwhile your plucky little 1/1 and the so-bad it’s hard to believe they were ever good 2/2 nibbled away, praying for that ugly Blue mage cowering behind his Chills to draw land and counterspells, land and counterspells, until finally, finally, you got to sacrifice the Mogg Fanatic to do the final point of damage. And then you got to look Blueboy in the eye and say, ‘Unlucky fella, I really thought those Chills were going to get me.’ And they hated it. How can that possibly be Miserable?
Rule #43: Mechanics can have built-in Miserable.
Buyback is a great case of Miserable. It was absolutely great for Magic (Rule #6), bringing a mighty chunk of strategy to games across multiple formats. Could you afford to buyback Brush with Death just one more time, or did you absolutely have to let it go and cast your one remaining guy in case they had a haste monster to kill you next turn? Which cards do I throw away to Forbid? Can I wait to get to eight mana to cast Mind Games twice and still hold onto it, or is this the turn where spending five for two activations gets me the win? This was all good times. But there were some buyback cards that showcased a darker side of Miserable. There’s another one along in a minute, but right now, step forward Capsize. It’s hard to imagine at first glance that an expensive Boomerang could be a win condition, not just in some random Sealed game, but in multiple Constructed formats, yet Capsize was precisely that. You sat down against the Blue mage, and then they’d show you the Capsize, and your life — what was left of it — flashed before you, as it slowly dawned on you that you’d be seeing rather more of the intricate design of your playmat or tablecloth than you would have liked. And what gave buyback built-in Miserable was that this was something you could visibly see in your opponent’s hand, tucked behind the inevitable Counterspell, just waiting to be shown to you once again as you bobbed between four and five mana for the eternity it took them to reach the magic number of twelve, at which point some slippage occurred in your land count. Oh yes, buyback had Miserable built right in.
Rule #44: Artifacts are Miserable.
Rule #45: The Ticking Clock is Miserable.
Generally, the more unique a situation you find yourself in, the less likely it is to be Miserable. At the very least, you have a story to tell. In a diverse field, you might play a similar archetype once or twice in the day, and it’s hard to develop a hatred for a particular card or scheme if you don’t face it too often. Inherently, artifacts don’t have that restriction. Yes, they are frequently over-costed versions of their easier to cast brothers in specific colors, and yes, artifact creatures not only die to all the usual kill spells, but dedicated artifact removal as well. These are reasons to be cheerful, certainly. Thing is, when artifacts got made as powerful cards, well, even Timmy the dog (not to be confused with Timmy the player) knew that there were approximately 4,000 uses for them. Our shining example this time is Cursed Scroll, a card I rather wonderfully purchased four of on a daytrip to France for approximately 25 cents apiece, when they were round about the 15 dollar range. The baguette was pretty tasty too. Cursed Scroll brings us Rule #45, because time waits for no man, and neither did the aggro player with his cheap artifact of doom in play. To start with, you felt like you had a chance against the Scroll. They’d play it, and it would sit there doing nothing, a whole card gone to waste, apparently. They were far too busy playing little men or burning things to a crisp to spend a whole three mana. But for every spell their hand size got smaller, and it started to dawn on you that maybe them having not many cards wasn’t such a good idea. Then you got the middle phase of the agony, where they had three or four cards in hand, and you stupidly thought that you might get lucky and avoid getting thumped. Occasionally, probability came through for you and left you teetering on four life. Then came the coup de grace. Not one card, oh no, that would almost be humane. They’d have two cards in hand, and you had to pick the right one. But of course there was no right one to choose, as they sat there with their two identical-artwork basic lands, grinning stupidly. Actually, when I say ‘they’, I mean ‘me.’ So that’s all right then.
Rule #46: When Judges start looking excited, that’s Miserable.
No need for me to do the talking here. Let’s take you over to Oracle, the definitive guide to the game. The card? Humility. Here’s just one mind-bending segment for you to fry over:
The interaction between Humility and Opalescence has changed due to the new layering rules. The type-changing effect still applies at layer 4, like it previously did, but the rest happens in the applicable layers. The rest of it will apply even if the permanent loses its ability before it’s finished applying. So if Opalescence, Humility, and Worship are in play and Opalescence came into play before Humility, the following is true: Layer 4: Humility and Worship each become creatures that are still enchantments. (Opalescence). Layer 5: Humility and Worship each lose their abilities. (Humility) Layer 6: Humility becomes 4/4 and Worship becomes 4/4. (Opalescence). Humility becomes 1/1 and Worship becomes 1/1 (Humility). But if Humility came into play before Opalescence, the following is true: Layer 4: Humility and Worship each become creatures that are still enchantments (Opalescence). Layer 5: Humility and Worship each lose their abilities (Humility). Layer 6: Humility becomes 1/1 and Worship becomes 1/1 (Humility). Humility becomes 4/4 and Worship becomes 4/4 (Opalescence).
Some people have posters of David Hasselhoff on their bedroom walls. Some people have posters of Claudia Schiffer, George Clooney, or Madonna. Judges have Humility.
Rule #47: Your deck in Their hands is Miserable.
Since Wizards did away with Ante cards, it’s pretty much inviolate that your cards are your cards. Just as you don’t get to touch other players inappropriately during a match, unless you and your significant other are indulging in very non-Sanctioned play, you don’t get to mess with their deck either. A shuffle and a cut and then it’s hands off thanks. Until they cast Lobotomy. At that point, it’s like being in the middle of a burglary in broad daylight where you can’t even scream for help from the cops, because it’s all legal like, sir, move along, nothing to see. Thing is, it was the violation that was so awful, not what the card actually did. I once cast Lobotomy twice in the same game against a Tradewind-Awakening mage. I had no real clue what their deck did, but decided, (since in those days decknames seemed to bear some relationship to the cards in the deck, rather than Fruity Pebbles, Quick n Toast and Too Much Time On My Hands et al) that I’d take their Tradewind Riders. And then their Awakenings. I can still see in my mind quite clearly the row of eight expensive rares sitting removed from game. And I can still see quite clearly that he absolutely destroyed me. As I say, it’s the violation you don’t recover from. Leave my deck alone.
Rule #48: The Tap sign is Miserable.
Since we’re talking of Tradewind Riders, they’re a good example of Rule #48. Can such a small sign have been the precursor to so much misery before or since? And with a four-toughness ass to hide behind, the Riders were the weapon of choice for many a control mage. And my Lord they cost a fortune.
Rule #49: The End Step is Miserable.
There’s a reason in game shows that they use drum rolls before unveiling the answer. It creates tension in the audience, gives Mr. and Mrs. Idiot, the couple at No.43, the opportunity to argue some more about which of them got it right (and generally they’re both wrong, which pleases them both enormously, to their eternal shame) and allows for the possibility that the contestant will actually die of heart failure before they tell him he’s right and have to give him a million bucks. In Magic, the End Step is the drumroll. You untap, draw, attack, make a monster. Then you say, ‘Your turn’ and the timps come crashing down. You can hear every heartbeat. Will your opponent simply untap? Or will you hear the words, ‘Whispers Of The Muse with buyback?’ You want to know how Miserable Whispers was? My coverage colleague Dave Sutcliffe knows a thing or two about the phrase ‘wry sense of humor,’ and it’s no coincidence that on every copy of Whispers that Dave used in tournament play, he wrote the words, ‘Blue player! Do you have a Counterspell?’ End step. Miserable.
Rule #50: Uncommons beating Rares isn’t Miserable.
It’s natural justice. Magic history is littered with rare lands, and uncommon or even common ways to blow them up and turn them into rubble. In Tempest, the utterly fabulous Wasteland did the job, and whilst plenty of dual land owners cursed the card for years, Magic takes no regard for rarity, and both prince and pauper get a shot at taking the limelight. Incidentally, according to Ask Wizards, the rarity on a card is something that will never be factored into gameplay.
Rule #51: Uncounterable is Miserable.
It might seem as if I think Blue players get all they deserve when it comes to giving them a kicking, and that’s true. But I’m also a Blue mage at heart, so cards like Scragnoth make me cringe inside. Suddenly, the totally elegant Counterspell reads, ‘Counter target spell unless it’s a spell that you can’t Counterspell.’ As for Boseiju, Who Shelters All Too Scared To Play A Man’s Deck (good luck finding that one on Gatherer), don’t get me started.
After a bucketload from Tempest, only one Rule gets added from the middle set of the block, Stronghold.
Rule #52: The Last Line of Defence is Miserable.
Imagine me naked. Some of you I know don’t have to imagine, but the rest of you, imagine me naked. Sorry about that. Now imagine me wearing a towel that could drop at any moment. See? It’s almost worse, right? At least the full awfulness of the situation is right there for your brain to try and process in my first example, whereas now you’re sitting there, praying to whatever deity makes you feel comfortable that the towel won’t slip and sear your eyeballs forever. Ensnaring Bridge is the towel. You sit there, woefully cowering behind your no cards in hand, clutching feebly at the scrap of protection the Bridge provides, knowing that any moment could see your flimsy defences scattered to the four winds as you are, both metaphorically and er, metaphorically undressed, leaving the opposing forces to have you for breakfast.
Funny how the mind works. See, that was a card from Stronghold. And right now you’re hoping I had a strong hold on the towel. What a miraculous world we do live in.
Let’s leave that one behind. Let’s plow a new furrow. Let’s make a few new lifestyle choices. Oh boy, feel the segue into Exodus.
Rule #53: Casual isn’t Miserable.
Coat of Arms can do the most astonishing things to you, provided you give your opponent three weeks’ notice that you’re looking forward to seeing it happen. There are, at a rough guess, 100,000 or more fun, quirky, powerful synergies that could be devised to give an opponent an ‘entertaining’ ending. If they require 17 different cards to be played in a precise order in one turn off every land in the deck providing exactly the right mana, that’s just fantastic, it isn’t Miserable. Coat of Arms has occasionally done some damage on the tournament scene, and seeing Alan Comer draw 17 cards against Jan Doise in Pro Tour: Hollywood is a memory that won’t soon fade. Fact is, essentially Casual cards and strategies can never be Miserable, because they just aren’t consistent enough, and that’s part of their unique charm.
Rule #54: Speed is Miserable.
Ignoring for a moment the 100% Spikes amongst us, who would happily kill turn zero every game through all eternity in a tournament setting, most Magic players like to actually play some Magic. This was especially true in the pre-Magic Online days, where the five or six rounds you got to play at your local tournament might be your sum total of competitive Magic for about six to eight weeks. In those days, you probably had a good day if you’d had a bunch of really tight games against some great folk, and if you went 2-4 you were much happier than going 4-2 and watching people die to manascrew. Yes Spikes, I know you don’t understand what I’m talking about, but it isn’t all about you, k? That desire for actual games of Magic that took some time meant that Rule #54 was a given. Speed, real true blink and you’ll miss it speed, doesn’t allow for good games of Magic. Here’s what I mean. Hatred was a five-mana Rare featuring a guy with some major skincare issues. Pay X life, and it was a Howl From Beyond. So, if you’d accidentally made a Carnophage Turn 1, you could pay one life to keep it untapped during your Turn 2 upkeep, cast two Dark Rituals (you better believe there’s a Rule of Miserable that applies to them) and Hatred, paying, oh, about 18 life, leaving you at 1 life and them at the more significant nil. Their game summary? Lay a Plains. Shudder.
Rule #55: Changing the Nature of Magic is Miserable.
Lay a land, make Jackal Pup. Attack with it, lay a land, make Mogg Fanatic. Attack with them, burn a potential blocker etc. Sounds like a normal Red deck in action. Let’s start again, on the draw. Lay a land, make Jackal Pup. Ah. Lay a land. Make Mogg Fanatic. Sacrifice Mogg Fanatic to kill my Jackal Pup, I take one. Ignore the three remaining monsters in my hand for the rest of the game. Die anyway. Welcome to Magic according to Oath Of Druids.
Rule #56: Protection is Miserable.
In so many many ways. If you’ve got a Paladin en-Vec, you shut down so many things it’s not even funny. Against it, the Paladin’s like an impenetrable brick wall, every bit as impressive as a phalanx of 0/8s. Then again, when you really need the Paladin to be your best friend, it goes and gets itself Pacified, or Mutilated, or Wrathed, and suddenly it’s an overcosted 2/2 that you can’t believe you relied upon. Then there’s the rules bit. Flying means a guy flies. It’s not hard. Protection means, oh, it makes me tired just to think about it, go read 502.7.
And while you read all about Protection and think about the time I was playing tennis and had to defend myself from a guy trying to extort money from me, so I hit him with my Protection Racquet, I’ll move swiftly on to Urza’s Saga.
Rule #57: Many Abilities make for Miserable.
Saga block was packed full of top-quality spells, and some heavy-hitting monsters. Few monsters did more to wreck opponents at this time than Morphling, and few cards ensured longer games than Morphling, because it took that long for opponents to read everything the mighty Blue could do. Test yourself before clicking on it. Do you actually remember all five? The thing with cards like this is, it’s the bit you don’t remember that kills you, a bit like forgetting that Nameless Inversion doesn’t just kill things, it also removes creature types. The devil’s in the detail, and with Morphling there was more detail than at a World Trade Organisation summit. So what was its power and toughness again, I lost track after your sixth mana? Doesn’t matter son, I gave it flying four months ago, and then responded to both your Dark Banishings by giving it Shroud. Next game?
Rule #58: Super-Discard is Miserable.
If you like Blue, you don’t like Discard, but them’s the breaks. As we’ll find out later, inherent card disadvantage in the form of a boardsweeper like Wrath Of God definitely isn’t Miserable, because putting your guys into play to live or die by the sword is what they’re there for. But when you get three-for-one’d or worse before you even get to cast your spells, it’s like mulliganing to four, and we all know that’s utterly Miserable. The culprit in Saga was Persecute, the kind of card that took you from five cards in hand to none for just four mana. It wasn’t even a good story to tell your mates. What happened? Persecute. Oh, right, want to go get lunch?
Rule #59: Untapped Islands are Miserable.
This one needs a bit of qualification. In and of themselves, untapped Islands are a threat, assuming you’ve got cards in hand, and maybe a deterrent, ditto, but just sitting there is at least hovering on the margins of quite acceptable. The bit where untapped Islands become Miserable is when they’re supposed to be tapped. That’s what casting spells does, it costs you mana, and your land becomes tapped and unusable. Not with Rewind it doesn’t. With Rewind their spell goes to the bin and it’s as if it never happened. Right there, the whole cunning strategy of baiting out a counterspell comes crashing to earth. You countered my Grizzly Bear? Ha ha ha, feel the power of my Verdant Force. Oh wait, you countered that too. Grimlingtons.
Rule #60: Perverting the Course of Justice is Miserable, and a criminal offence in the UK.
One of the more frustrating facets of the Magic community is that you can’t expect Gamers not to Game the System. That sometimes means that perfectly serviceable ideas in other settings become totally unworkable, because somebody somewhere will find the loophole and exploit it. And why shouldn’t they? Because, amongst other things, it means that Wizards devotes vast resources to making cards work the way they intend, not the way that you avaricious pervertors (I make this distinction because I don’t want you to think I’m accusing you all of being perverts, at least not in that most disreputable of senses) want to make them work. Let’s look at Stroke Of Genius. 2UX, target players draws X cards. Now why wouldn’t they want it to say just ‘draw X cards?’ Because they like to give you choices, and it’s just conceivable that you might want your opponent to grow their hand slightly because you’re playing Sudden Impact, or want to escape their Ensnaring Bridge. But basically, this was a card that allowed you to pay six mana at the end of turn and net yourself two cards. That’s pretty good. I absolutely guarantee that nobody who built Stroke from the ground up enjoyed seeing it used to read ‘target opponent draws one more than their library and loses the game.’ A beautiful thing, balanced, interesting, useful, fun, ruined and perverted. Miserable.
Rule #61: You Cannot Win is Miserable.
Bear in mind that this is not the same thing at all as You Are Going to Lose, which is a fact of life we all have to deal with on many occasions. You Cannot Win is Miserable because the game may apparently have many miles to travel, and yet to continue is utterly without merit. That’s what Worship does to you, whilst also sharing Rule #52 with Ensnaring Bridge (The Last Line of Defence is Miserable). Part of what makes Worship so deliciously Miserable is that the deck that has the hardest time dealing with it conventionally, Red Deck Wins, has at least a theoretical shot at rendering it moot by burning everything else to a crisp. That’s where the white mage casts Paladin En-Vec (Rule #56) and cackles uncontrollably.
Rule #62: If you shouldn’t play around it, it’s Miserable.
This is a math entry into our pantheon of Miserable, so number-averse brethren should look away now. It’s also one of our rare forays into the world of Limited Misery. The card that causes offence is Might Of Oaks, and that means we’re into Urza’s Legacy. To refresh your memory, Might Of Oaks is a pump spell, or arguably The pump spell, since when you cast it, the monster stays well and truly Pumped, at least until the end of the game, which follows approximately three seconds after you cast it. To be honest +7+7 seems pretty arbitrary, unless it’s a pseudo-mirror for Righteousness, which given the diseased minds in R & D is almost certainly exactly where +7+7 came from. Boys and girls, it might as well be +10,000 +10,000. Unless something very strange is going on, when they cast Might Of Oaks, you die, it’s that simple. Now comes the Miserable. Of course it’s good that Might Of Oaks is Rare. Who wants that sort of nonsense floating all over every draft? Urza’s Legacy had 44 Rares in it. That means that Might Of Oaks appeared one in every 5.5 drafts, on average (whatever the hell that means.) So the chances of Might Of Oaks being in any given draft you did of Saga/Legacy/Destiny or Saga/Saga/Legacy was the same. That’s roughly 18%. Assuming that every player in the universe rated the card the same across all archetypes — a reasonable assumption I’m sure you’ll agree — someone else would have Might Of Oaks in their card pool 7 times out of 8. So 87.5% of 18% gives us roughly 16% (why muck around with decimals when we’re having so much fun.) It’s quite possible that one of those seven times the player will have hate-drafted it, one of those times the player will have such an insane deck that he doesn’t want to or can’t fit it in, and one of those times the player will have misread the card utterly, think it’s a worthless enchantment and not even consider playing it, although this is perhaps more likely here in Britain than some other places around the world. That means (keeping up?) that four times out of the seven that Might Of Oaks is at the table and not in your pool it will get played. (4/7 x .16 = 9%). Might Of Oaks is now sitting in one of the seven decks you might face. There is a 75% chance that you will not reach the final (probably more if you’re still reading this) meaning that three-quarters of the time you will face at most two opponents. In fact, on average, across eight booster drafts you will lose four times in the first round, twice in the semis, once in the final, and will win the whole thing once. That makes a total of 14 opponents across eight drafts, or 1.75 opponents on average. That means your chances of meeting the player at your table at any stage in the draft who has the Might Of Oaks is 5.25/7 x .09 = 6.75%. Let’s assume that each game lasts an average of eight turns (or at least eight draw steps.) That means a probability of seeing the Might Of Oaks somewhere in the first 15 cards is 15/40 or 37.5%. (.375 x .0675 = 2.5%). But wait, your opponent is certain to get another crack at the 15/40 jackpot. So in fact the chances of him not seeing it in two games are .625 x .625, which is 40%. And half of the matches will go to three, where the chances of him not seeing it at all are .625 x .625 x .625, which is 24%. Halfway between 24 and 40% we find 32, so that’s the probability that the player won’t see Might Of Oaks across an average match. So .0675 x .068 = 0.0459. In other words, you will face an opponent who has drafted Might Of Oaks and played Might Of Oaks and drawn Might Of Oaks roughly 4.6% of your drafts. But what if they’re manascrewed, or colorscrewed? Let’s suppose there’s a 1 in 5 chance they can’t cast it. 0.8 x 0.0459 = 0.03672. That’s 3.6%. Of course, at least another one time in five they’ll either play something else, or make the incorrect strategic play, thus making another sum of .8 x .036 =0.029. So, in conclusion, a player that is not you will have drafted Might Of Oaks and Played Might Of Oaks and Drawn Might Of Oaks and correctly Cast Might Of Oaks against you approximately 3% of the time, or in other words approximately 1 time in every 33 drafts you do. With this simple formula behind you (!) you will surely never again be tempted to consider the possibility of losing to some kind of stupid like Might Of Oaks. And guess what?
They have it EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Miserable.
Rule #63: Instant creatures are Miserable.
Look, let’s be short about this. All you monster mashers get not one, but two Main Phases to make your guys. Us control players will generally leave you in peace, unless you make a genuine threat, in which case we will be reluctantly forced into Countering your monster, because God designed the red zone to be empty until at least turn nine. So it is written, so shall it be. When someone cast their first Simian Grunts against me I was outraged. These days Flash monsters are ten-a-penny, but I think my Magic history is correct in saying this was the very first instance of insta-monsters. Corrections welcome. It felt like a truly fundamental Rubicon had been crossed. Monster men, the end step is for me to draw cards, bounce your lands and generally get on with winning the game in peace with all my mana tapped. Get out of my end step.
Onto Urza’s Destiny.
Rule #64: Anything involving Beebles can’t be Miserable.
There aren’t many powerful cards that are basically comedic in outlook. Powerful cards tend to feel, well, powerful, and if they make you smile when you’re playing them it’s a ‘guess who’s coming to dinner?’ smile, not a ‘pleased to meet you’ smile. So I was well on my way to giving Donate a hefty dose of the Miserable when I looked at the artwork, and the flavour text: ‘Campus pranksters initiate new students with the old “beeble bomb” routine.’ All credibility for Miserable immortality drains away right there. As a corollary to Rule #64, I was drawn to ‘Phil Foglio cannot be Miserable’ but (a) I don’t want him to feel I’m imposing my will on his, after all I hardly know the guy and (b) he’s the artist for Humility. (Rule #46.)
Rule #65: If You Don’t is Miserable.
Sometimes in Magic the fall from grace can be spectacular. Rarely has this been better showcased than in the rock-hard Masticore. See, the basic deal is that most of the time the words following ‘if you don’t’ are ‘say oops.’ In a pretty downbeat Byronic kind of way, as you shuffle up for the next game. Masticore was an incredibly exciting and sexy card, and for those of us who don’t play Vintage, this four-casting cost artifact was about as powerful as monsters got ever ever ever. Not if you got past the words ‘if you don’t’ it wasn’t. Then it was time to put your utterly dominant, near-unkillable, near-unbeatable machine in the bin, and that was what made it so crucifyingly awful. With the compulsory discard every turn, you were absolutely riding the horned one to victory, a phrase that has multiple applications incidentally. At least one Pro Tour berth has been given up immediately following those three fateful words. And that’s about as Miserable as it gets.
Rule #66: Funky isn’t Miserable.
I know plenty of people who didn’t/don’t like Opposition. I’m one of them. It messes with my head, renders multiple strategies involving multiple classes of permanent useless, and can be really hard to deal with. Not enough for our gold standard though. Deckbuilding is a core part of Magic, and when a card like this comes out and screams to be made the centrepiece of a brand new strategy, that’s great for the game. So as long as it’s doing something cool, and Opposition allowed you to create masterclasses of interaction, it ain’t Miserable.
Next week, because you can’t be Miserable all the time, it’s back to the Pro ranks as we look at the goings-on in Spain with Grand Prix: Madrid, latest in the Summer Series. As usual, if you happen to be coming along to chance your arm, please do come and say hi. It’s always a treat to talk to readers.
Meanwhile, here’s the twenty-five new Rules we have today, as our Quest for the most Miserable card in Magic continues.
Rule #42: Even Super-Hosers aren’t Miserable.
Rule #43: Mechanics can have built-in Miserable.
Rule #44: Artifacts are Miserable.
Rule #45: The Ticking Clock is Miserable.
Rule #46: When Judges start looking excited, that’s Miserable.
Rule #47: Your deck in Their hands is Miserable.
Rule #48: The Tap sign is Miserable.
Rule #49: The End Step is Miserable.
Rule #50: Uncommons beating Rares isn’t Miserable.
Rule #51: Uncounterable is Miserable.
Rule #52: The Last Line of Defence is Miserable.
Rule #53: Casual isn’t Miserable.
Rule #54: Speed is Miserable.
Rule #55: Changing the Nature of Magic is Miserable.
Rule #56: Protection is Miserable.
Rule #57: Many Abilities make for Miserable.
Rule #58: Super-Discard is Miserable.
Rule #59: Untapped islands are Miserable.
Rule #60: Perverting the Course of Justice is Miserable, and a criminal offence in the UK.
Rule #61: You Cannot Win is Miserable.
Rule #62: If you shouldn’t play around it, it’s Miserable.
Rule #63: Instant creatures are Miserable.
Rule #64: Anything involving Beebles can’t be Miserable.
Rule #65: If You Don’t is Miserable.
Rule #66: Funky isn’t Miserable.
As ever, thanks for reading.
R.