Note: This article was written based upon the assumptions of Mark Rosewater column of Making Magic on Sept. 12th. The details of the set may change and make these assumptions go *poof*.
Magic has always been the giant vessel sailing the seas of cardboard, in the wake of which all other trading card game skiffs follow. Now, licensed games often take a very different approach to revealing the world in which the license is set. You get Luke and Obi-Wan in one set, Han Solo and Chewbacca in the next. You can have Jean-Luc Picard and the Enterprise crew in a single set, but no Borg. They come later. Pokemon didn’t have Ghost Pokemon or Metal Pokemon until later (or so I hear). But Wizards has had some issues with previous license games and asymmetrical releases, and we’ll be taking a look at those issues today.
One of the key marketing reasons for this was that there would be staggered sales over a long period. Presumably, you’d put some of the big hits in the large first set, a few enhancements for them later on while putting in fresh new faces, the rest of the big draws, and so forth until all the major factions are revealed, each presumably balanced and playable. Rage and Deadlands fit this model. Until the full unveiling of the game, there were often serious holes in the metagame. And other times, the new sets didn’t really impact the game all that much.
Wizards has done less than a perfect job before with scheduling how a game will unfold on their track record. Let’s take a look at another Wizards of the Coast game, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (ne’ Jyhad). Set in White Wolf’s wildly popular RPG setting the World of Darkness, the original set featured the seven clans of the Camarilla, the “civilized, friendly” vampires who spent their nights moaning in agony about how they were living tortured unlives, leaving the friendship and camaraderie and innocence of their mortal days behind. Known for their effeteness and tendencies to rebel, the set featured the struggle for political and supernatural dominance in the New World.
The next set, Dark Sovereigns, featured the torpid, hidebound elders of Europe. Now instead of being prince of Washington, Seattle, or Atlanta, your minions could sit in the thrones of power in Zurich, London, or Rome. You could also recruit the Inner Circle of the Camarilla, who are essentially the biggest, baddest vampiric Leviathans that ever saw print. This set also featured two new, non-Camarilla clans, the incestuous necromancers of the Giovanni and the capricious, nomadic Ravnos.
The Giovanni and Ravnos at the time were fairly underpowered, with a host of overly pricy if unpredictable special abilities. The enhancements to the Camarilla clans were far greater than the ostensible benefits of the newbie clans. Worse yet, the new guys on the block couldn’t even participate in many of the political games. This attention to the flavor of the game setting made many of the core game fans happy. After all, it kept the flavor of White Wolf’s World of Darkness intact. And the flavor of the regional set came through well.
The next set, Ancient Hearts, featured the vampires of the Mediterranean and Arab world. The chthonic Followers of Set and the reviled cannibal Assamites came into the fray. As the Camarilla had a less powerful stranglehold upon the region, there were less political areas that could be claimed as domain. More emphasis on the Setites’ strange sorcery and the Assamites’ obscene combat prowess made these two clans a bit more balanced and fair than the previous two non-Camarilla clans. The non-clan specific cards were formidable, and the game had a solid equilibrium, though the Giovanni and Ravnos were still horrible in tournament play.
This followed some of Magic’s early development themes. Like Arabian Nights and Ice Age, the sets had a regional theme. European vampires were more socially strict and puritanical than the frolicking North American variety. Ancient Hearts’ better playability showed that the V:TES development team was learning from their mistakes. (Then the game changed hands as White Wolf licensed the mechanics from Wizards and started to develop new sets for the game themselves. We won’t go into details here, though the game is still healthy, gets new expansions, and is played actively to this day.)
Now, you could play the non-aligned clans, but they were fundamentally less flexible than the main seven. And that was fine, because people wanted to play something new and different. But the competitive players stuck with what worked from the old reliables. And that was a failure at the competitive level as well as the casual player. Sure, I could play the Giovanni, but I would lose to the monster Brujah combat deck every time. And if Wizards had done their job right and known that
Of course, back at the time (1994), White Wolf hadn’t fully developed the Giovanni or Ravnos or the other independent clans, so they were tacked on to the setting later, and so we can’t really blame Garfield or Wizards for that problem. This lack of foresight often happens to be problematic with unfolding license properties where the source material isn’t completed.
Magic, on the other hand, doesn’t have to follow the path of the licensed property. The style of the game usually follows the mechanical aspects. (Form of the Dragon is a statistical aberration. A fluke, folks. A wonderful fluke, but a fluke regardless. Cards like that don’t come along too often.) So we have a Limited set which has lots of flexibility if you’re willing to run a three or four color mana base, but with mechanics that don’t have a lot of interactions that involve the actual color of the spell (Convoke and Radiance). As for Constructed… well, I make no bones about the fact that I am a horrible crystal ball when it comes to these sorts of things, so I won’t talk about that so much.
Not until the days of Torment did Wizards print a set where the card count was skewed in terms of color. (I know, I know, Alpha was missing COP: Black. Don’t go there.) Torment had tons of Black cards, less in Blue and Red, and a mere trickle in White and Green. The formula got reversed in Judgment. This was clearly intentional and a real joy to draft.
The next really big asymmetrical set came with Legions. Newer players may not have played Legions. But it was certainly wacky. Every single card was a creature. How skewed can you get? But that isn’t color skewing.
(Some of you out there are probably expecting me to say that there was another bizarre block recently, Mirrodin. And while the colors were fairly balanced in the format, color was an almost-ran. This is true, but I don’t see how it has much to do with the article’s premise.)
And now we’re at the first block where everything comes doled out slowly. We’re only getting 40 percent of the ten guilds in the first set. This seems somewhat biased for Ravnica/Guildpact sealed, since we’re going to have 45 cards coming from guilds A-D and 30 cards from E-G with Guildpact. The bias is going to be even stronger when H through J get released with Dissension. 45 for A-D, 15 for E-G, and 15 for H-J. We know A-D is comprised of U/B, B/G, G/W, and W/R. (Hopefully in a week or two I’ll be familiar with the guild names to fling them around comfortably. And hopefully in two or three weeks you will too. If you are an aspiring or active internet writer, though, I strongly suggest you get up to speed on your new terminology.)
(Actually, while we’re getting all technical, a quick spelling aside: What the hell is up with the third set having dubious spelling? Prophecy? (Or is it Prophesy?) Judgement? (Or is it Judgment?) At least Dissention isn’t a word. I wish I could have a nickel for every time Ted or the Ferrett get an article submitted with this one misspelled. And while I’m at it, why is it when I talk to American players face to face that none of them can appear to pronounce Kamigawa names properly? I’m looking at you, o’ people in the booth. They had pronunciation guides in the Fat Packs for a reason.) (Boy, Ted must hate all these parenthetical phrases. Parentheses within parentheses. I am not trying to drive him crazy. Honest.)
In draft, however, Ravnica/Ravnica/Guildpact should have a modest bias towards guilds A-D, with 30 cards divided over four accompanied by 15 over three. In Ravnica/Guildpact/Dissension, though, our friends A-D get the shaft. 15 cards to go through four guilds as opposed to three is not particularly fun. That’s when the drafts should get really hairy.
All in all, it looks like Ravnica is going to be a wild, crazy time where the players who adapt to the metagame the fastest will prosper. Of course, anyone who’s been playing Magic for the last few years could have told you that. But we can anticipate the changes and the amount of studying and homework we’re going to have to do now, and that’s a good thing. Wizards is doing a better job of handling the game than they have ever done. But it’s still a bit strange to see them doing this deliberately slow unveiling of the setting. Not that I’m complaining.
Eli Kaplan
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Special props to Nathan Xaxson, who is cranking out some hellishly good articles. If you’re not subscribed to Premium, I pity you.