Costs and Basic Abilities

[Ric_Flair]

Awhile ago Steve published two very good articles on the concept of tempo.  While reading those articles I thought about this "cost matrix" that runs through Magic.  We are all familar with how it works generally.  One card is equal to four mana is equal to one life.  That is a rough approximation, but generally speaking things that are better than that exchange rate are good cards and things that are worse are bad. General support for this rate are cards like Jaymadae Tome, a basic card with a basic ability.  Confirmation comes in the form of cards like Night Whispers.  So here is the task:  what are all of the basic cards with basic abilities and their costs.  Ideally we can find cards without other things attached and work backwords to find out how, say, removal of a card in the graveyard fits into this matrix.  

Here is an example of what I mean:

Terminate is the quintessential "basic abilities" card.  Destroy a creature.  No ifs ands or buts.  No mechanic or bonus, just destroy a creature.  So that ability is worth RB, which eventually, we can convert into colorless mana (once more of the matrix is known) and go from there.

Does everyone understand what I am asking for?

Here are some other basic abilities:

Discard a single card
Destroy any permanent
Destroy artifact/land/enchantment/spell....
Remove a card in the graveyard from the game...
Remove a card in the library to the graveyard...
So on and so forth...

Thanks.

[mrieff]

One card is equal to four mana is equal to one life. .

Typo... Necro is not the standard  



Interesting idea. But very hard to execute. For instance, with discarding a card you have the difference between random and non random discard. Demolish destroys both artifacts and land, so you can't put it in 1 category. Rootwater Thief removes cards as part of its ability, so you have to value that effect it seperately from the rest of the card.

But lets give it a try.

Discard a single card                
1.5 mana (stupor)   0.5 card
Destroy any permanent            
3 Mana (Vindicate)
Destroy artifact/land/enchantment/spell....                
Artifact 1 mana (Oxidize)
Land 2 Mana (Sinkhole)
Spell 2 Mana (Counterspell)
Remove a card in the graveyard from the game...
1 Mana, 0.5 card (Coffin Purge)

[Matt]

Discard a single card
Destroy any permanent
Destroy artifact/land/enchantment/spell....
Remove a card in the graveyard from the game...

I don't think it's as simple as you make it out to be. Many abilities are worth a certain price on their own, but need to cost more or less if they're tacked on to something else. You also need to differentiate between one-shot effects and reusable ones (Stone Rain vs. [card]Dwarven Miner[/card]), and also between colors (Shatter vs. Oxidize).

Assuming all discard is sorcery-speed (I have no idea how these would change at instant):

Discard a card of opponent's choice: This isn't worth ANY mana on its own. Even at this is unplayable, but if the effect is attached to something else, is a fair price (like kicker or flashback or something). Funeral Charm is the baseline: for a single discard of opponent's choice is useless unless it comes with something else.

Discard a card of YOUR choice: Coercion would be possibly too strong if it was any cheaper, so is the price. A Coercion would probably be Hymn-strong, so it wouldn't be broken in 1.5 or T1 but it might be too strong for T2. Addle was just a little weak.

Discard a card at random: Even at this is overcosted ([card]Specter's Wail[/card]). I would price this at on its own.

Discard two cards at random: If Hymn is too strong, is not.

Discard two cards of opponent's choice: is unplayable outside of limited, so I'll say .

Discard two cards of your choice: This has to cost more than Coercion so I'll say . By the fourth turn they might not even have two cards left, so any discard stronger than this doesn't have to cost a lot more - the pricing scale for discard changes radically after four mana. You could realistically print "target player discards their hand" at , for instance ([card]Mind Sludge[/card] was used but not overly powerful).

RFG a graveyard card: If this is all a card did, it would be almost totally unplayable in every format. [card]Phyrexian Furnace[/card] and [card]Scrabbling Claws[/card] were useful without being too strong, and they cantripped and were in every color, and even then they was almost as cheap as cards come. The cost of such an effect is some small fraction of one mana; the black baselines (the color which most often does this sort of thing) are [card]Ebony Charm[/card], [card]Rapid Decay[/card], and [card]Withered Wretch[/card] for repeated use. Coffin Purge really wouldn't be worth it except for Cunning Wish (which places a premium on low cost, and adds the ability to flash it back for re-use).

Destroy a land: is the baseline, but if you up that to or or you need to get something extra, like [card]Rancid Earth[/card] or [card]Molten Rain[/card]. Sinkhole is undercosted, and is only kept in check by the ridiculous speed of the formats it's legal in. Something like [card]Lava Blister[/card] is a much more appropriate two-mana landkill spell.

Remove a card in the library to the graveyard...

I don't know what this means. Do you mean Entomb, Extract, or [card]Ray of Erasure[/card]?

Destroy an enchantment: or for this is about right but still not good enough without some bonus ([card]Elvish Lyrist[/card] - great card, [card]Emerald Charm[/card] - widely used in its day, [card]Simplify[/card] - never used, [card]Demystify[/card] - never used, [card]Erase[/card] - never used). Disenchant/Naturalize are more like it. Killing two or more enchantments is pretty much useless, and should cost no more than one or two mana more than the baseline (Tranquility was never really a bomb even when it got used; compare [card]Nova Cleric[/card]). Having to target the things ([card]Peace and Quiet[/card]) makes it almost totally useless, since people just don't use that many unless they're using LOTS, in which case Tranquility-effects are better.

Destroy an artifact: Well, Shatter and Oxidize are the base, no? Also [card]Tel-Jilad Justice[/card].

Draw a card: Another tricky one. Drawing one card for one mana is garbage...unless it's a kicker, in which case it's very good. Drawing two cards for a sorcery would be fair, or instant (Inspiration is useless). Concentrate is a good baseline, though it's a little underpowered.  Stroke of Genius and Braingeyser are also fair cards, and illustrate the sliding scale well. If all a card did was draw another, it would not be worth any mana at all (Brainstorm and Serum Visions both represent about one mana's worth of card-draw).

Typo... Necro is not the standard

Not for repeatable effects, but [card]Greed[/card] was never seriously used, while Night's Whisper and Skeletal Scrying are both widely used. There is no good way to cost repeatable draw in terms of life: one is too few, three is obviously too many, and two is probably also too few. You NEED to include some mana for this effect.

This is a prime example of why I don't think a useful total conversion matrix is possible: the rates vary with the colors, repeatability, and total quantity involved* - the pricing curve is like six or seven dimensions for each effect. Not to mention extra factors like "what turn is this being played on?", which is not always the same as converted mana cost - Frogmite for is decent/strong on turn one, but Frogmite for on turn four is not. In many cases it's better to pay MORE but get it SOONER than to pay LESS and get it LATER.

Another example: paying to cast Animate Dead on turn two is a lot better than if you could play it for free on turn four.


*A 1/1 for one mana is crap, a 2/2 for two is better, a 3/3 for 3 is almost playable in standard, a 4/4 for 4 is about the same, but for five and after it goes back downhill - it is never worth eight mana to get a vanilla 8/8, for example.

[Jacob Orlove]

Also, the conversion may not work the same in both directions. You might be willing to pay 2 life to gain 1 mana, but you probably won't pay 1 mana to gain even 3 life. Similarly, you'd expect to get more life from a card than you'd be willing to give up to gain that card.

Mana and cards are more directly interchangeable, though, with one card being "worth" about two mana (Concentrate, Seething Song).

Now that I think about this, it's probably mostly due to the different values of each point of life. At any given life total, a positive change in life total is worth fewer resources than a negative change of the exact same value. The extreme case is gaining versus losing an amount of life that is at least as large as your current life total.

[Matt]

Jacob makes a good point, one that I might have had if I followed up on my "brainstorm is one mana's card draw" idea. I think instead of asking "how much would you pay for effect X?" it is more appropriate to ask "how much effect X will cost Y get me?"

[jpmeyer]

Not for repeatable effects, but Greed was never seriously used, while Night's Whisper and Skeletal Scrying are both widely used. There is no good way to cost repeatable draw in terms of life: one is too few, three is obviously too many, and two is probably also too few. You NEED to include some mana for this effect.

This is probably why Phyrexian Arena was a well-balanced card.  It's one card for one life, but it's set at once per turn.

Here's another question: For one mana (since that's the least you could cost it at,) how much life would a lifegain spell need to give?  How does this change if the card is a cantrip?

[Matt]

Here's another question: For one mana (since that's the least you could cost it at,) how much life would a lifegain spell need to give? How does this change if the card is a cantrip?

I think it changes greatly depending on color, so I'll assume the greatest benefit and say it's white. For , I would need to gain at least five (more probably six) life to play the card - [card]Awe Strike[/card] usually gives at least four life for (if it gave any less it wouldn't be playable) but it can also turn a creature trade into a kill. Also compare the life swing Honorable Passaging a Ball Lightning gave for . I think [card]Life Burst[/card] is the baseline for lifegain.

If the card was

JP's Lifegainer

Instant
Gain N life. Draw a card.

N could be as little as 3 for standard. At 2 life, it would be useful only in some odd white version of Turbo-Xerox.

[Jacob Orlove]

If it cantrips, probably 3 life. That would be on par with Cremate. Bump that up to 4 if it's a sorcery and not an instant.

If it doesn't cantrip, then you need a ton of life to make it balanced, but at that point you risk making aggro unplayable when the control decks draw 2 (sort of a reverse "double shrapnel blast" phenomenon). I'd say probably 7-8 life.

The issue with these is that ont he one hand you have philosophy of fire type aggro decks, like tempest era sligh, that try to "win small"--they can do 20 damage pretty efficiently, but 30 is really tough. Against these decks, lifegain is serious card advantage, bordering on a win condition.

On the other hand, you have  aggro decks based on getting efficient permanent sources of damage on the board (whether it's a blastoderm, cranial plating, or siege-gang commander). Against these decks, lifegain is a fog, or if you're lucky, a moment's peace.

That's why big lifegain is so hard to cost, and why some lifegain cards (Gerrard's Wisdom) are only good in specific metagames.

[Dr. Sylvan]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=sideboard/askpros/0903

September 22, 2003         

Question: Suppose there was an instant for one white mana that gave its controller life. How much life would it need to give to make it a worthwhile card?

Answers:

Brian Kibler: Such a card can only be evaluated within the context of its environment. In a control-heavy format, life gain is terrible, so the number would have to be huge - despite what some people would have you believe, Life Burst decks were never good against Psychatog. In a beatdown-heavy environment featuring a lot of burn, the requirement would be much lower. Limited is similar - in a Limited format that involves a lot of racing rather than board control and removal effects, the number is lower, and vice versa.

Dave Humpherys: It would have to be a lot to ever make the main deck. Maybe 5 or so to be worth boarding, but much more to main deck unless in combination with some cards that take advantage of life loss.

Kai Budde: 6 life would be Constructed-worthy, I think, maybe even 5. It still wouldn't be main deck material though. I played Heroes’ Reunion which nets you 7 life for 2 mana in Block Constructed once... In Limited, it has to be a LOT life to be better than just an off-color morph, probably something like 10 or even more.

Jeroen Remie: There has been a card that gave 7 life for 2 mana, and that was never really played. So, it would probably have to be something around 10 to make it good enough for Constructed. I think about the same for Limited, maybe 12 though. Life gain is terrible in Limited.

Patrick Mello: A general rule of thumb is that pure life gain just doesn't cut it. Beyond a certain point, it's tough to ignore though and life gain becomes playable, see Gerrard's Wisdom or Ancestral Tribute. For Constructed, 5 life could be good enough, in certain decks/sideboards that have a way to fetch the instant. In Limited, 7 life would make the card interesting to win a damage race or survive the early game. I'd rather run another creature though to be honest.

Jeff Cunningham: 9 for both.

Nate Heiss: 8 life. This is a more interesting question now that everyone seems to be playing with Renewed Faith and casting it instead of cycling it. Still, without the option to cycle, I think 8 life would be enough to buy you at least one more turn. It is card disadvantage, but it gives quite an edge on tempo at only White Mana!

Oyvind Odegaard: In Constructed, at least 5, in Limited even more. This could at least make it sideboard material.

Gab Tsang: It would probably have to be like 5-6. Gaining life really isn’t all that important most of the time but it would seriously have to vary from environment to environment depending on how aggressive or passive it is.

Ken Krouner: I don't think that type of life gain could ever see main deck play in Constructed except in a heavily skewed metagame. To see sideboard play, I would say you would need to gain at least 7 life. As for Limited, I would also say 7. Heroes' Reunion rarely saw play and it was Green ManaWhite Mana.

Gary Wise: Well, Healing Salve is more versatile than that and yet has never been viable in Constructed. Maybe six or seven life could make for a viable sideboard card in a deck that just needs to establish itself to beat red. In Limited, it would have to be even more, as you're talking about playing against non-specific deck types.

Victor van den Broek: I think 10 life for both formats.

[Machinus]

Right, I thought I had recognized that question from somewhere. Hero's Reunion gives seven life for a 2cc instant, which isn't stupendous, but if you happen to be playing a UWg control deck in a really aggressive metagame, this could be a wish target...

Anyway, creating these sort of cost matrices is not really possible. The values that we all understand to be inherent in the cards change in time, with respect to the progress of R&D. Not only do they move the abilities from one color to the other - Disenchant, Naturalize - and can can also their cost - Deflection, Shunt - but many cards are either unique, overpowered, or most definitely effects that are not really representative of an effective "standard" - Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Mana Drain, Hymn to Tourach.

You have to redefine exactly what "standard" you are looking for. R&D is very rarely going to make cards that are 'better' than the ones that they have made before, and there are many areas of development that will forever remain underneath that speeding bus. Judging the cards that will be made in the future is both easier and more difficult than evaluating cards that have been printed before.

Also, it is more difficult to judge complicated effects like countering, than it is to judge simpler ones like power/toughness. I think there have to be more conditions and wider ranges for those kind of effects.

[Matt]

or most definitely effects that are not really representative of an effective "standard" - Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Mana Drain, Hymn to Tourach.

These are not hard to cost. "Draw three cards" is clearly Concentrate. "Discard two at random" I already went over - 2B or possibly 1BB would be fair.

Mana Drain is a little trickier. You have to think laterally a bit to realize this, but the closest relatives to Drain are [card]Spelljack[/card] and [card]Desertion[/card]. So a five or six mana Drain would be about what that effect is "worth".

Black Lotus clearly should cost at least 3. Five gets you Gilded Lotus, so that's an upper bound. If it cost 2 it would basically be a superior Grim Monolith, so that's not enough. Acceleration - even +3 accel - is fine; what's wrong are cards that accelerate you this turn. 'Invested' accel (pay now for a bonus next turn) is no problem.

The cards that are hard to cost are stranger effects that are brutal at almost any price - think Balance. I'm actually having trouble thinking of anything else that would be hard to cost appropriately. Maybe Mindslaver - one gets the impression that rather than trying to figure out how much that effect was 'worth', they simply started by overcosting it and lowered the cost until it started seeing play in the FFL.

Also, it is more difficult to judge complicated effects like countering, than it is to judge simpler ones like power/toughness.

I don't think countering is any harder to do than discard. Counterspell/Force Spike/Mana Leak are the base for 'wide' counters, Annul and Envelop for the 'narrow'.

Counterspells ARE a perfect example of the Frogmite distinction I gave earlier - the important question is not so much "how much does this counter cost?", it's "what turn does the counterwall go up?" And while Wizards has no problem with people countering a spell for two mana, they don't like to see counterwalls start on turn two.

What gets tricky is figuring out GOLD cards, especially since some combinations just seem to suck more than others (white and black just never want to work together, whereas a card that cost 2RG really can't get you much more than 2GG or 2RR's worth of power because those colors always go together. For some reason, U/G and G/B have a habit of playing well together).

[Ric_Flair]

The life gain in Slide was 1W for 2 life and a card and it was only okay because of the triggers off Slide and Rift.  So I think that this would be okay:

JP's Lifegain
W
Gain 3 life OR prevent 3 damage to target creature.
Draw a card.

That might be playable.

Lifegain is really hard to price because life itself is pretty useless, except for that last point of life.

What is the appropriate cost for this effect:

Search your library for a land and put it into play.

What about two lands?  How much better is [card]Kodama's Reach[/card] than Harrow and [card]Explosive Vegetation[/card]?  I mean you always play the Reach before a land drop so it is clearly better than Vegetation.

Another costing problem:  [card]Rude Awakening[/card] is really a hard card to fix.  It is obviously awful in Vintage, but in Standard this card will have a HUGE impact on States.  It is so powerful.  The problem is that it cannot be realistically costed.  If it is less than it is by one it would be an enormous problem, not because you could cast it sooner, but because you could do other stuff AND cast Awakening.  If it is one or two more it is not worse in any appreciable way.  The decks that use it have tons of mana fixers like Sylvan Scrying or Sakura Tribe Elder and so the additional cost will just make it a bigger attack.  As it is now, the attack is usually for 16.  The only way to cost the card is to make it awful or busted.  Where it is now is still dangerous.  This is not a well costed card in Standard.  And it is an awful card in other formats.  As such I think this is one of the worst cards made in terms of design.

Also, the removal of a card from a person's library from the game is a Ray of Erasure effect.

[Matt]

So it's a Millstone that can't be repeated, which was Millstone's only redeeming value. The effect is garbage, and as such, isn't worth any amount of mana or life or cards or anything else you care to cost it with. You could take virtually ANY fair card and add on "RFG opponent's top card" and never increase the cost by any amount and still have a fair card. Possibly the only exception is Brain Freeze.

You have to really struggle to think of an effect that is more worthless. Nothing is readily coming to my mind.

Search your library for a land and put it into play.

Well, Crop Rotation was only broken by the ridiculous Saga lands, and theoretically Crucible/Strip Mine. It's really a very innocuous card. Clearly 1G (Sylvan Scrying) is considered too little. 2G is probably too much, though, unless we start getting some stronger nonbasics. The CHK stuff is a start, but they're very drawback-heavy. I'm thinking stuff like Dust Bowl which is more widely useful than a Boseiju (sp).

2G for this card LOOKS a lot like Tinker but you're not cheating mana costs since the land wasn't going to cost anything anyway. I would price that card at 2G, which is low enough to concievably have decks built around it, but not so low as to be another Tinker - a powerful card that escapes the screening process because there's no suitable targets (i.e. Tinker sat quietly for years in extended because there wasn't anything worth Tinkering for).

[jpmeyer]

Are you assuming that the land comes into play tapped?