There lived a King, as I’ve been told,
In the wonder-working days of old,
When hearts were twice as good as gold,
And twenty times as mellow.
Good-temper triumphed in his face,
And in his heart he found a place
For all the erring human race
And every wretched fellow.
When he had Rhenish wine to drink
It made him very sad to think
That some, at junket or at jink,
Must be content with toddy.
There’s a certain disquiet that settles onto a creative person that comes from realizing that there really is very little under the sun that can be considered new. Even as I put pen to paper (metaphorically; I’m putting fingers to keyboard in a lunch break at work, but let’s face it, that lacks all the previously well-hammered imagery that others have gone out of their way to create, and let’s face it, we’re not about to, in five hundred years’ time, be quipping about the Keyboard being mightier than the Thermonuclear Device), I’m reminded of two older, smarter people than myself.
These gentlemen are Gilbert & Sullivan, of fame in most any country where you can’t buy Diet Cheez Whiz in bulk. While eventually outmoded by Sondheim and then, in the more modern ages, by Tom Lehrer, Noel Coward and, strangely, the gents of TISM, in my mind for purely clever wordplay, the lens of over a hundred years has a dramatic effect on how one perceives the world. In their day, there was simply no need for a song to be over in three minutes; airtime and radio play happened to other people – if at all – and they took their position as court jester and played it to the hilt.
(I’ve taken to writing my articles in notepad, seeing if it means I italicise less, because it’s more bother than it’s worth. I’m not sure how useful an experiment this will prove to be.)
Gilbert and Sullivan are mentioned now and again in popular culture, mainly by people who want to look clever. If your last appearance on TV was The West Wing, you’re probably high culture. The West Wing was right about one thing; most every Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta was about Duty. Yet, to simply lump them in as morality plays about the nature of duty is a gross disservice. G&S took a classic morality tale they could actually stomach, about something that both they and the world around them agreed upon – the importance of duty – and used that core tenet as the horses to pull a carriage laden down with satire, biting wit, and scorching denouncements of the nobility and intelligentsia of the day.
Simply put, they did what I try and do, but they got paid better for it, and worse, they got listened to.
Today, we’re talking about rares, more significantly "bad rares." And that discussion has two sides; the side of the corporate shills who have no higher or grander goal than saving you the undue burden of money, and the whining ninnies of the casual crowd who have no idea how the world works. Breaking it down, it runs something like this…
The shill starts by saying that there’s no way to avoid bad rares, because people inherently rank things and that therefore, there will always be cards better than others. So, by inference, in every set, there will be rares that are bad by the company they keep.
The ninnies crow the maxim of Try Harder, pointing out that, in turn, you could just design more cards that are better, pointing out that not all things are ranked on a spectrum; just because John Q Pipsqueak is leaping for joy as he yanks a Tarmogoyf, there’s Weirdo McWeirdness who’s giggling happily as he gets a foil Steamflogger Boss.
Ah-hah, responds the shill, leaning close and jabbing his finger forwards. They’re not bad rares at all, they’re just not rares you like, so, you see, there aren’t any bad rares to begin with.
Hold on, the ninny responds, raising his voice as he slams down his tankard. I never said that – I voiced the sentiment that "bad rares" should be avoided, so of course I think they exist, and you can’t weasel out of that by just claiming relativism. Or do you really think players love opening humdrum stuff like Nihilith or Sindbad?
The shill boggles in disbelief as he stands up in his chair, cutting off the ninny right there. Hang on, he points out, Nihilith is seeing play in the Block environment and has awesome synergy with Smallpox. And Sindbad was being shoehorned into pre-Bridge Dredge, because of his synergy with that mechanic.
The ninny, not to be outdone, lets his passions rise and grips the arm of his chair as he pulls himself to his feet, reminding the shill that, ninny or not, the ninny is the reason the shill is able to afford drinks in a bar like this in the first place. The ninny bellows out that the examples might be flawed, every single time they come up, but there is a definite flaw in the reasoning that "There’s always a better rare" meaning that Wizards has to print awful cards in the rare slot, cards which push themselves out of playability and contention by being overcosted by one mana or two, or whose effect is just that little bit too indiscriminate, and the reason why the ninny can’t come up with any good examples right now is because bad rares tend to be very forgettable.
The shill, clearing his throat, suggests that maybe, if you don’t remember them much, there’s no big deal if you get some bad rares. It’s a standard move, but an attempt to quieten a volatile situation.
That’s when the ninny swings his chair. Werebear has taught us that platitudes and puns are the unforgivable sins of the shill.
He wished all men as rich as he
(And he was rich as rich could be),
So to the top of every tree
Promoted everybody.
So where’s the truth lie? Oh, come now, it’s not like I can answer that with a simple rejoinder and a passage from an ancient libretto. Both have good points, and both are wrong in how they apply them, more often than not.
The first issue – qualifying exactly what a "bad rare" is – is one of the most untouched arguments because people seem to forget that it needs defining. Nobody lays out the postulates, they all just assume everyone follows what they’re saying. People tend to be a little arrogant about the words they’re using, especially if they use them often.
I work in an Australian workplace, where I have to type out long reports and enter a lot of data. Sometimes this data has to comply to specific structures, like forms and the like, to be read by computers. These computers are in Australia, so, somewhat sensibly, they’re typed in Australian English. "’Organisation" instead of "organization," and "gaol" instead of "jail," and "yellow caked snot" instead of "cheese."*
For StarCityGames.com, however, I have to write for American audiences and an American editor [Excuse me? – Craig, Englishman], and, most importantly, since the printing of Naturalize, for an Americanly-spelled game. Some card before that point probably referenced "Honour," but chances are it was bad so nobody noticed.
This has given me an acute ear for the differences between languages. American English and Australian English share a few relatives, but implications and slangs and dialects all blur together and mean that there’s as much chance for miscommunication between the two as any other nation. The Australian English structure seems to be much more born of the old-school idea that rules are worth keeping to (even after they’ve outlived their usefulness, appropriateness, or even the vaguest pretension towards common sense), while the American English structure tries to embrace its status as a living thing, steadily shifting the goalposts and guidelines.
If you can’t tell, I’m trying to be unbiased here.
The reason we have this kind of thing – and indeed, why we shackle ourselves to a language that makes up for in obscurity what it lacks in style – is to communicate clearly. Yet we continually communicate poorly, simply by assuming that when we use a word, people understand both what we mean and how we mean it.
This is tricky ground to work with. I mean… how many of you guys would know what toddy is, if it weren’t compared to wine? We derive so much of our meaning in language from context, and we have so many corner cases, it’s not even vaguely funny.
Consider the following sentence fragment:
“Wizards of the Coast should stop printing crap like…”
Now, think about what kind of player would finish this sentence with any of the following:
“… Catalyst Stone.”
“…Force of Nature.”
"… Thunder Totem.”
And so on, and so forth. It’s quite remarkable, really, but without knowing how that sentence ends, you don’t know what that person considers a bad card, and yet, you could probably end it so many ways yourself.
“… Umezawa’s Jitte.”
The practical upshot is that we so often say what we’re thinking and far more rarely say what we mean.
That King, although no one denies
His heart was of abnormal size,
Yet he’d have acted otherwise
If he had been acuter.
The end is easily foretold,
When every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver, or of gold,
You long for simple pewter.
When you have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold you cease to care-
Up goes the price of shoddy.
Almost all meaning is derived from context. More often than not, the problem with the word "bad" is that the meaning is both rarely provided, and so often assumed. Flores called Heartbeat Of Spring a bad card. Well, no surprise there, the guy hates combo decks. I didn’t like Edge of Autumn, though I cannot in the slightest bit deny how awesome that G/W Tarmogoyf deck is. Hell, I didn’t find the ‘Goyf all that impressive either, considering him a cute card that would be, once more, hijacked by Blue to do his best work.
I’m still sore about Oath of Druids and Aluren. Big mistake on that part. Man, the G/W Goyf deck is a hoot.
Anyway, the thing is, there are a lot of cards that you don’t like. Seriously. I will lay you odds that there are heaps and heaps of cards that don’t interest you. Most casual gamers, however, are a pleasant showcase of "what the" moments as for cards they like. Orochi Hatchery? Wine of Blood and Iron? Ashes of the Fallen?
Played against all of them. And their owners like them.
(Actually, that Ashes deck pillaged me. I think it was something like the combination of Haakon, Ashes, and a constantly recurring Lightning Serpent.)
There aren’t as many "bad cards" – as I mean them – as people think. Whenever you look at a card, you have to remember, cards are designed for… well, Spikes, Timmies, Johnnies, Vorthoses, Melvins, Limited players, Constructed players, casual players, multiplayers, Collectors, "best of"ers, and even humorists. I know someone who owns foils of all the cards where he liked the puns in their flavor text.
Yeah, Werebear’s in there.
Once you strip away flavor, though – because flavor can be bolted to almost any and all card – cards are designed for three big groups: Casual players, Constructed players, and Limited players. This is a simplification, but my point stands.
If there’s a common you don’t like, it’s for Limited players. Trust me on this one: balancing for Limited has to be a pretty high priority. So yes, Cackling Imp seems bad, as does Mana Skimmer or whatever 2/2 flier for 3B they’ve printed this time. But chances are, it was not made with you in mind.
In short, whoever you may be,
To this conclusion you’ll agree,
When every one is somebody,
Then no one’s anybody!
As we wind down, though, the cooks quietly laughing at the Grand High Archchancellor, as he unveils the grand truth…
Wizards prints bad rares to make us appreciate the good rares more.
Do you really think that cracking a Steamflogger Boss doesn’t have an opposite? When you get a booster, you are gambling. I mean, it’s not gambling gambling, the kind that leads to destroyed lives and crap, but the fundamentals are the same: you are paying for the right to play their game. You open your booster, you look in the back, and you might get twenty dollars! You might also get fifty cents. You have to pay six dollars to play. That’s the parameters.
It’s no surprise that it works.
However, to make that payoff worth it, they have to make it so that there can be a booby prize. I don’t appreciate it – I know I sure as hell don’t like it – but the lows are there to benefit the highs. Much as you, cracking Squire, compare it to Akroma, you are ever-so-elated by the cracking of Akroma because, even unconsciously, you know you dodged Squire.
To summarize, there’s another game here: everyone cracks a booster, and anyone who opened Squire went 0-3 drop.
There’s a certain manipulative quality to the whole affair; Wizards are explicitly playing with your expectations, and they know as long as the payout is enough, you’ll keep feeding them coinage. This is one of the reasons why, casual gamers, you need to start drafting your packs, purely to add value to them.
As for that… well, more on that later.
Hugs and Kisses,
Talen Lee
Talen at dodo dot com dot au
* The one trip I had to America left me with one echoing question: How can a country with food that tastes so bad have an obesity problem**?
** Oh, go on. Try and start with me on this one in the forums after I just wrote X pages about how tastes are relative.