Good day! When I first starting writing this column years ago, the general consensus of management was to steer clear of issue articles as much as possible, and instead to write stuff with decks and cards and such. Nine years later, that has changed a bit. I’ve not had an issue article rejected in 5 or 6 years.
Historically, there have been two rants that you would turn to every so often from internet writers. The first is how much Green sucks, and why Wizards hates it. The second is how Wizards ruined White and made it suck. You would find these articles regularly written, and even published, on this here site, as well as others. “Oh no, they screwed White by taking out Armageddon,” or “Grizzly Bears blows compared to other two-drops,” etc.
However, I don’t ever recall this article being written. For years, this has been an issue, and although I’ve mentioned in many of my articles that Red is underdeveloped, I’ve never taken it to the article level. I keep hoping that it will change, and it doesn’t. When finally a set comes along that seems to fix the problems, it’s usually because a mechanic in so heavy in the set that they spend so many cards with it, the problem diminishes.
Unlike most of the “This Sucks” articles in the past, that were about a recent change, this has been an ongoing issue for years. I keep hoping that maybe this is the set that it changes. And it doesn’t. It gets worse.
Before I begin, I want to point out that I don’t care about power level. That is not what this article is about. If you love tournaments, and you are Spikey McSpikerson, then you may scratch your head in puzzlement at recent reprints like Lightning Bolt, and say “look at the power of Red!”
I grant that one of Red mechanics, burn, is as strong as it has ever been. That’s not the point. Any mechanic can be printed to the point of brokenness. If Giant Growth suddenly gave +6/+6 instead of +3/+3, Spikes would play it. If Healing Salve prevented 10 or gave you 10 life, Spikes would play it. This article is not about the power level of the color’s core mechanics. Instead, it is about the existence of those mechanics at all.
When you look at Abe’s Deck of Happiness and Joy from a few weeks ago, what you notice is a lack of Red cards. There haven’t been as many unusual, new, and interesting cards in Red as in other colors.
What Red Does
Before we can parse if Red is being screwed over or not, we need to assess what it does. What does Red have on the color wheel?
Haste — It gets a lot of creatures with haste, and a lot of spells give haste. It has more haste than the others.
Double Strike, Mountainwalk, First Strike, Trample — It gets these abilities too, but in lesser numbers.
Flying — Red gets either bad flyers (Goblin Sky Raider) or good dragon-y flyers.
Burn — Red has a lot of spells and creatures that deal damage to creatures and/or players. This is one of its core mechanics.
Land Destruction — Red has a lot of ways of destroying and hosing lands of various types. This is a central mechanic.
Artifact Destruction — Red likes to blow up the artifacts. This is also a central mechanic.
Pump the Front — Red likes to add to the power of creatures temporarily, such as Enrage and Firebreathing.
Temporary Ownership — Red likes to invoke a temporary act of something or other to steal stuff. Act of Treason is an example of this. It also gives stuff away, like Goblin Cadets, Emberwilde Djinn, or Bazaar Trader, and that counts too.
Temporary Mana Production — Red likes to waste a spell to make an amount of mana. Desperate Ritual is an example.
Trickery — Red likes to redirect and duplicate stuff with things like Shunt or Replicate.
No Blockses — Red likes to attack, so many of its mechanics make it hard, or impossible, to block. Wave of Indifference is a good example.
Random McGee — Red is ChAoTiC and as such, needs cards that represent this with coin flips and such.
Gambler — Like the Random McGee, Red likes to gamble with things like Warp World, the punisher cards, and Final Fortune.
No Prevention – Once in a blue moon, Red can stop regeneration and damage prevention, like Excruciator.
Phoenixes — Red occasionally has a card that can return itself to your hand (or play) from your graveyard.
Wall Destruction — Red used to have the mechanic to blow up walls, but I haven’t seen that much these days. With a wall theme in the next set, maybe we’ll see it again.
Weird Rare Enchantments — Red has had these really weird janky enchantments for years, and in many sets there’s one or three you’ll find.
Now that’s a lot of mechanics. Over the years, Red has gained a couple of mechanics, like temporary mana production, no prevention, temporary stealing and trickery. It’s never really lost any mechanics to other colors, like some have, except for making small creatures unblockable. It’s even gained Prodigal Sorcerer damage. So, there are more things in Red today than ever before, which should mean we should see a diversity of cards in Red that we have never seen before.
And instead, it’s the opposite.
Allow me to demonstrate what I mean with actual numbers and sets. Let’s look at Alpha, Mirage, Tempest, Urza’s Saga, and Mercadian Masques to see what percentage of Red cards did what, and then see how modern sets stack up. Here we go!
Alpha/Beta/Unlimited:
There are 46 Red cards. Here is how they break down, by mechanic:
Mountainwalk: 2
Damage Dealing: 7
Pumping the Front: 4
Wall Destruction: 2
Messing with Blockers: 1
Land Destruction: 2
Trickery: 1
Dragon Flyers: 2
Something Weird: 2 (Smoke, Raging River)
Artifact Destruction: 1
Trample: 1
Making a Small Creature Unblockable: 1
Pump Behind: Granite Gargoyle – 1
Mana Production: Mana Flare
Good Flyers, not Dragons: 3
Regeneration: 2
Wheel of Fortune
Countermagic: 1
The first set of mechanics show what is normally expected in Red, and then the last section shows what is outside Red’s color wheel, at least traditionally.
Look at how many cards deal damage in this set. It looks like it’s just 7. This includes Manabarbs, Earthbind, Lightning Bolt, Earthquake, Orcish Artillery, Disintegrate, and Fireball. Despite the presence of some of the best burn spells ever printed, there were only 7 ways to directly deal damage to an opponent. That’s just 15% of cards. Note that some cards chart more than once, like Shivan Dragon’s flying for dragons and Firebreathing for pumping the front. Most everything in the color fits the modern day wheel, only 10 don’t, which is better than I thought it would be.
Okay, now let’s look at Mirage:
There are 51 mono-Red cards.
Pumping the Front: 6
Damage Dealing: 14
Haste: 3
Dragon-y Flyers: 2, Bad Flyers: 1
Gamble: 4
Random: 1
Land Destruction: 3
Messes with Blockers: 1
Mountainwalk: 1
Artifact Destruction: 2
Temporary Control: 2
First Strike: 3
Trample: 1
Wall Destruction: 1
Crazy Enchantments: 1(Chaosphere)
Flanking: 4
Protection: 2
Creature Destruction: 2
Back Pump: 1
Unblockable Small Creatures: 1
In this set, flanking was a core mechanic of Red. The number of unusual abilities has dropped, and as you can see, some things are showing up in much different numbers. The ideas of haste are growing, and frankly, so is damage dealing in all sorts of ways. The percentage of cards that deal damage in Mirage is 27%, almost double the mechanic’s appearance in Unlimited. Mirage is a middle set, between the early sets and later sets, and in development for a long time, so it is hopefully a good bridge, and we’ll see how things shake up.
Tempest:
52 mono-Red cards:
Front Pump: 6
Damage Dealing: 15
Random: 3
Block Messing: 3
Land Destruction: 4
Artifact Destruction: 3
Temporary Control: 1
First Strike: 1
Haste: 2
Mountainwalk: 1
Dragon-y Flying: 1 (Including drakes and wyverns) 2 more, Bad Flyers: 1
Weird Enchantments: 1 (Hand to hand)
Creature Destruction: 2
Apocalypse
Okay, a solid set here, but with a smaller number of cards with various abilities. The percentage of damage dealing cards is at 29%. The number of outside the box abilities is low. Remember, I am including cards that you lose control of as temporary control (like Starke of Rath). Next up is a classic set.
Urza’s Saga:
There are 56 Red cards in Saga.
Land Destruction: 7
Damage Dealing: 18
Mountainwalk: 2
Plays with Blockers: 6
Random: 2
Haste: 4
First Strike: 3
Dragon-y Flyers: 2
Front Pump: 3
Artifact Kill: 2
Temporary Stealing: 1
Gamble: 1
Guma with Protection from Blue
Brand
Goblin Lackey
What you are seeing is a solidification of the core Red abilities, and the number of cards in each rising. More land destruction, more damage dealing, more messing with blocking, etc. The number of cards that are outside the wheel is dropped to one, and then two others that do random things and could be anywhere on the wheel.
Percentage of cards that deal damage? 32% It keeps going up. Let’s do Masques too, just to see what happens post-Saga.
Mercadian Masques:
57 mono-Red cards
Damage Dealing: 18
Haste: 4
Bad Flyer: 4
Dragon-y Flyer: 1
Wall Destruction: 2
Land Destruction: 4
Mountainwalk: 3
Front Pump: 4
Gamble: 2
Temporary Stealing: 1
Artifact Destruction: 3
First Strike: 3
Trample: 1
Plays with Blockers: 3
Phoenixes: 1
There is a reason that people thought of Masques as calm. Note the number of cards in the color outside the modern day color wheel (zero). Masques was arguably the last normal block, with future blocks having artifact heavy sets, land heavy sets, creature type heavy sets, graveyard heavy sets, a Black heavy set, gold heavy sets (three times!), hybrid heavy set, and a Past-Present-Future heavy set. None have just been a normal “here are some cards” set.
Here you see that 31.5% of the cards deal damage, with a lot of other mechanics in Red showing themselves. Where previous sets sort of concentrated on the core Red abilities, this one seems to hit most of them at least once.
Okay, now let’s slide into modern day sets. We were sitting at a bit less than one third of the cards in Red dealing damage prior to modern day. Less than a third seems high, but let’s see what the modern day has brought us.
Because so many of the base sets recently don’t have a large mono-Red pool to choose from (due to color stuff), I am going to use Zendikar, Lorwyn, M10, and Magic 10th Edition, as my sample from modern times.
10th Edition:
62 cards
Haste: 7
Messes with Blockers: 3
Gamble: 1
Random: 2
Front Pump: 6
Damage Dealing: 26
Land Destruction: 2
Temporary Stealing: 1
Trample: 1
Trickery: 1
Dragon-y flyers: 4, Bad Flyers: 1
Artifact Destruction: 3
Phoenixes: 1
First Strike: 1
Mountainwalk: 2
Percentage of cards that dole out the hurt: 42%. Haste is up, and Front Pump is up, but everything else is holding steady, or down, and that’s in 62 cards, so you would think there would be a lot of room for other Red mechanics to increase.
Okay, M10:
41 Mono-Red cards
Land Destruction: 1
Gamble: 1
Random: 2
First Strike: 2
Front Pump: 7
Damage Dealing: 16
Dragon-y Flyers: 3
Artifact Destruction: 1
Haste: 5
Block Messing: 1
Phoenixes: 1
Trample: 1
Temporary Stealing: 1
Good, non Dragon Flyer: 1
Okay, so here’s the new Red. There are still 39% burn spells and effects of various sorts here. Note the severe jump in Firebreathing and cards that pump the front part of a creature, which feels like a dominant theme in Red in the set since there’s just 41 cards now. Note that M10, in Red, really feels like it just does lip service to a lot of Red mechanics, and then focuses on haste, burn, and front pumping. Look at the single card for land destruction (and it sucks), artifact destruction, messing with blocks — these are effects we regularly see multiples of in sets. Note the missing temporary mana maker.
Alright, to the expansion sets:
Lorwyn:
49 cards in Mono-Red
Damage Dealing: 15
Haste: 7
Front Pump: 7
Block Messing: 2
Land Destruction: 2
Temporary Stealing: 2
Artifact Destruction: 1
First Strike: 1
Trample: 4
Trickery: 1
Mana Production: 1
Just 31% for damage dealing (one of the reasons Lorwyn is one of my favorite recent sets). Lots of haste, lots of front pump, and tons of special tribal things taking up space (like Harbingers and cards and effects that help or hinder certain creature types, and clash), so there is less space for basic mechanics, and it feels nice with the lower amount of burn again. Will this last? Is this the beginning of something new, or just a one of because of all of the other stuff in the set?
Zendikar:
38 cards in Mono-Red
Damage Dealing: 16
Artifact Destruction: 1
Land Destruction: 4
Trample: 2
Haste: 9
Front Pump: 4
Messes with Blockers: 1
First Strike: 3
Dragon-y Flyers: 1
Temporary Stealing: 1
Phoenixes: 1
Double Strike: 1
Trickery: 1
Intimidate: 1
16 damage dealers means we have a 42% damage dealing ratio in Zendikar. We also have a metric ton of haste creatures, and a nice smattering of land destruction and front pump.
Conclusions:
I have had the impression for quite some time that Red had become very redundant, but I always wondered if that was true or not, so what I did was look at some older sets, and some newer sets. I find some very disturbing trends.
The people who make cards have taken the burn core mechanic for Red and expanded on it significantly. The first set had just SEVEN cards that dealt damage, and that was it. Since then, the number of burn spells has increased, and now we are regularly seeing 39-42% from modern sets, unless they have a mechanic that drives down that number (like Lorwyn).
No core mechanic in any other color even comes close to approaching that number. You don’t see more than a handful of spells in sets that discard, or prevent damage, or instantly give +x/+x, or counter spells, or search out lands. No mechanic is played as much as this one, and its getting really, really old. New sets look like Burn-o-matics, with some haste, and some front pump, and then one each in a number of other categories, and that’s it.
There appear to be several reasons for this:
1) Burn wins games. There is no doubt that burn is a key factor in winning games, especially tournament games. No less a powerhouse than Lightning Bolt itself is running around, and it’s not broken, just really strong. People love burn, especially in tournaments. Who hasn’t won a tournament piloting a deck with a quantity of burn in it? Because it is a mechanic which is very powerful, and which wins games, and which is quite popular, WoTC has used it to dominate the selection of Red cards in their sets. Spike loves burn, especially, since it is often pushed to the limit in a format, and it is the only way to make Red powerful.
2) Lazy Card Creation. Here’s a little trick that it appears that WoTC has learned. Take the original Lightning Bolt. It was very good, and very diverse. Now, split it in half. Create a card with R, Instant (or sorcery), Deal 3 damage to Target Player. Create the same one that deals damage to Target Creature. Now you have two spells instead of one. Include them both, and you fixed up two cards. This happens all of the time with damage dealing.
3) The Loss of Land Destruction — There is no question that WoTC has diminished the role that Land Destruction plays, because they view it as an unfun mechanic. They still have to include the occasional land destruction spell, but they aren’t happy about it. Your LD options are now have basic Stone Rain effects costing a lot (five mana in the case of Faultgrinder), or hosers that don’t work on most lands (Cryoclasm, Goblin Ruinblaster) or ones that are really bad (like Yawning Fissure, the only LD spell for Red in an entire base set). Because of the moving the status of LD to hoser-only, or very clunky, the number of LD cards in the color has dropped significantly. 10th Edition had 62 Red cards, and just 2 LD effects. That’s sad.
4) A Lack of Other Mechanics — Where is Temporary Mana Making? Cards like Desperate Ritual are not to be seen. Why? You have given Red a whole other mechanic, and then use it only rarely. Red’s first strike is very uneven. There are times when Red get’s a solid amount of first strike, and then times where it is virtually non-existent. The same is true of Mountainwalking. Let’s be honest, Artifact Destruction is often way too light as well. Just one each in Lorwyn, Zendikar, and M10? That’s silly. Another major loss is random, or gambling cards.
5) Failure to Use Space — There have been a few mechanics that have debuted in Red, and then never really been seen again. The one I like the most is the All Things Edict, found in Misguided Rage. I think we should be pushing stuff like that more, similar to Black’s edicts. You could have an ETB creature with a Misguided Rage, an instant Misguided Rage, a double Misguided Rage, a Misguided Rage for everything but lands, etc. But no, we’ve gotten Crack the Earth, and that’s it. Since Scourge, one more appearance of the general idea and that’s all we’ve seen. WoTC is not reusing mechanics that work for Red. Another example of a block mechanic that made total sense for Red in general is the punisher mechanic seen on cards like Browbeat and Breaking Point.
These are the five things that I point to as failures to enhance and strengthen Red.
Solutions:
Here are some ideas on how to fix them:
A) Put a cap on the percentage of burn cards in a set. Since there is this obvious love for this one mechanic going on, why not create an internal, artificial cap to help force you to play with other mechanics? After all, nothing breeds creativity more than restrictions. Maybe one third, at most, would be a good place to start, and then reduce it to 30% after a few sets. After all, 30% of the mono-Red cards dealing damage would still vastly outstrip the number of other appearances in various core mechanics around the color wheel.
B) Add the missing mechanics. The obvious way to increase the number of non-burn cards in sets is to add more artifact destruction, more land destruction, more mountainwalking, more first strike, more temporary mana making, and so forth to the sets. There’s way too many Red mechanics getting shafted in order to give burn way too much of a place in the set. You should not have numerous sets with just one LD or artifact destruction card — that’s silly. These are core abilities of Red, they define Red, and you’ve got to print them. LD has to be more than a hoser and a bad mechanic. Find ways to do both.
C) Chaos does not equal coin flipping. The mechanic of coin flipping has virtually disappeared from Red in the past few years, but random still needs to be a major player in Red. Increase the random without increasing the coin flipping. Capricious Efreet is a great start. You’ve got to increase your chaos. I would recommend giving the player who played them some control over the chaos, like Mercadian Scales. You could make that a Red enchantment and it would be perfect (except for the coin flipping thing). It shows that Red can control the chaos a bit. I think that would be the best way to handle it. In previous articles I’ve shown cards that could actually do this, and I think it’s missing in a major way from Red’s character.
D) Increase the minor mechanics. I love Punishing Fire because it’s a Phoenix type card, and previous Phoenixes have been Hammer of Bogardan, actual Phoenixes, or Squee. I love Punishing Fire, and I would love to see a few more cards use the Phoenix mechanic that Red has. You could do the same for double strike, no prevention abilities, and such to the fold.
E) Add the old stuff. Cards like Gamble, Brand, and Misguided Rage showed off other sides of Red, and in particular, I think Misguided Rage could be useful in modern Red. You could easily have the occasional card out there that does one of these things, or other things.
F) Give Red another ability. Maybe it’s time for more sharing. There was a mechanic shuffle and ability shuffle that realigned the color wheel. May I suggest something new? How about a flavor shuffle? Give Red something new. My recommendation? Give it back regeneration and push trolls again as a Red creature. If you don’t like that, you can look elsewhere, but maybe it’s time to give Red more. After all, if you are not going to use the mechanics Red does have, maybe it needs to get new ones in order to reduce the overreliance on this one mechanic.
…
Those are some ideas I came up with while writing this article, doing research, and seeing the cards. 39-42% of cards in one color sharing the same mechanic? I find that unbelievable. Change can come though, and we can see a lot more of the flavor and abilities of Red. We are not tied down to the trend, and perhaps the future will see change in the color. I hope so. I don’t want to see a set where half of the cards in one color have just one mechanic, and that may be where the trend is taking us.
I hope you enjoyed today’s article, and I’ll see you next week!
Until later…