Theros Block Review - Looking Back At Me, I See That I Never Really Got It Right

[MaximumCDawg]

We have now come to the end of Theros block.  It has been much-maligned on these boards for lack of Vintage possibilities, and so far time has shown that very few cards from these sets are cracking in to the Vintage scene.  Journey into Nyx, happily, seems to break that trend.  But, does this mean that the entire block was poorly designed, or designed with a low power level?  Is this Kamigawa 2.0, forever doomed to be regarded as a low-power set?

No.  Theros was actually a very well-designed block that extended Wizard's policy of power creeping in directions not explored by earlier sets while dialing back the power that has been recently at the forefront.  The block wasn't held back by timidness or by lack of imagination.  It was limited instead by very intelligent design and an apparent parental instinct to protect Modern.  Journey into Nyx is a better set for us precisely because it loosens the connection to the block themes that were so designed.

Ignoring Tribute, of which you can't say anything positive but was luckily a small part of the set, the core mechanics of Theros block were all forms of alternative casting costs.  If you want to get an effect in magic, you have to pay a cost.  In early sets, big splashy creatures cost a ton of mana and have lots of negative drawbacks like upkeep costs or sacrifice requirements.  Later sets explored using other resources, such as life points, cards in your hand, or the contents of your graveyard as resources to get effects. 

In Vintage, we are not just familiar with these kind of costs; the whole format is based around them.  The critical cards of many decks are based around cheating cards out that require these kind of costs (e.g. Tinker, Show and Tell, Natural Order) or rapidly generating enormous amounts of these kind of resources to get the effects (e.g. the Power Nine).  When they print a card that has a big effect that we can cheat, the card fits into the Vintage scheme of things.  Inkwell Levithan, Blightsteel, Emrakul, and Grislebrand all require a cost that we can cheat.  Dredge decks required putting things into the yard and drawing cards, which we can also cheat with Bazaar.

Theros block pushed cost in entirely new directions.  Instead of making the big beaters of the block simply cost a large amount of mana, they made Monstrous.  Some of the cost of the creature was now hidden in an activated ability, typically with a mana requirement similar to the casting cost of the creature.  Oath is no help with that.  But this was not inherently a bad mechanic; it just did not fit with what Vintage can abuse.  You can imagine Monsterous being much, much better if Urza's block had a card like this: "U, Instant: You may activate an activated ability of target creature without paying its mana cost."  We don't have anything close to this (Heartstone and Training Grounds are nowhere near good enough).

Similarly, Devotion buried the cost of having a 5/5 or better with several very useful abilities in a condition: having to have lots of colored permanents.  This, again, is an "alternative cost" that we in Vintage have nothing to really cheat or enable.

Inspired and Heroic are similar, but here Wizards was very, very careful not to make the mechanic broken.  They very easily could have been absurdly powerful.  If Heroic triggered off your opponent's spells, or if it triggered off being the target of a spell or ability, it would have almost certainly produced eternal playable cards.  We could abuse that.  We have oodles of ways of generating infinite targets in Vintage, and we do not play many sweepers so much of our removal is targeted.  Similarly, if Inspired triggered off the creature tapping, and not untapping, it would have been much faster and fit in with enablers like Tangle Wire we already run.

But for these mechanics, Wizards got scared.  Printing eternal-level Inspired and Heroic could easily have started to make Modern more like Legacy.  Could Modern survive a deck where you use en-Kor or Shuko to make infinite Heroic triggers without banning?  So, they watered down the abilities to prevent this, and in the process ended up cutting them out of eternal play just like Monsterous and Devotion were.

This is a common practice nowadays.  Wizards R&D is still printing fascinating new cards, but they are astoundingly good at noticing and stopping broken interactions.  Sundial of the Infinite or that tuning fork thing from M14 are classic examples: weird, powerful ability, but designed with an eye towards avoiding infinite combos or powerful synergies.

Journey into Nyx looks better to us at the moment because Wizards is using the third part of a block to explore more unusual aspects of the block theme.  They are free from the first two sets, where they just print all the limited staples with block mechanics tacked on.  Though the mechanics all revolve around alternative costs, the block theme is actually enchantments.  So, when the designers are free to just make enchantments matter, they are free to print cards that interact more strongly with what we care about in Vintage.  We get more good hate bears, good card advantage spells, and that kind of thing.

Looking back at the block, I think we have just seen the printing of a large number of cards whose potential has simply not been unlocked.  There is no Show and Tell for activated abilities.  There is no Tinker for Devotion.  No cards we care about are spells that target our own creatures.  There is so much potential here, just locked up carefully and hidden away.  All we need are the keys.

We could eventually see those kind of keys in the future.  The most likely place is the next block, which Wizards will have designed to work with this one.  Ways to cheat activation costs or something resembling affinity for a colored deck would have profound impacts on the playability of Theros block cards.  The 3 casting costs Gods in particular would be totally bonkers if they were always creatures. 

So, in retrospect, I don't hate this block and you shouldn't either.  It's a smartly designed departure from the usual ways of paying for powerful effects, and it has given us many cards whose power might dramatically increase in the future.  Let's enjoy Journey into Nyx for giving us some immediate value, but stay tuned, because Wizards isn't perfect and might let the enabler we deserve slip through the cracks in the future...

[JarofFortune]

    None of the issues that you mentioned were my problem with Theros block. My problem is that it represents the complete shift in the design of the game to a focus on creatures. This is not just an issue for Vintage, this is an issue for the entire game. Wizards is only catering to new players and young kids, in the process alienating many of the game's longtime players. This move represents the atrophy of the game's strategic diversity. It is reasonable for Wizards to no longer print efficient land destruction or fast combo enablers for standard and limited, as this was shown to be very unpopular from market research, but the current handling of design has gone too far. For anyone who wants evidence of the stupidity in R&D, read the Mothership Articles Ah Yes. Very Standard and Gonna Hate. Both of these articles are written by Zac Hill, who has thakfully left Wizards, but the fact that Wizards allowed these inflammatory treatises on idiocy is completely inexcusable. In addition to Vintage, I play Modern and Limited, and I can tell you that a surprisingly large number of players there disagree with Zac Hill's ideas of Archetypes and Strategic Diversity. Incidentally, I have met few players from my LGS that think Theros Limited is a great format. The fact that I still play Theros Limited is a testament to the strength of the game itself.

     The dumbing down of the Game becomes obvious when one considers the fact that in the last 5 sets, non-creature card types have shifted to an over-pronounced focus on creatures. Theros block was hyped as an Enchantment Block. This is not true; Theros block is an Aura Block. There are few global enchantments with interesting effects, and all of those are overcosted. Instants and Sorceries with interesting effects have been given the clause: "Exile [cardname]". Out of all the artifacts in the entire block, only 3 of them are not a creature, not an equipment, and do not contain the word "creature" in their text box. Of these three cards, none have any constructed playability. While Journey into Nyx is not a bad set (Unlike Born of the Gods), the majority of the Vintage playable cards and interesting effects are creatures. I hope that this will change, but I don't want to get my hopes up. I don't disagree that Theros was a well designed set, but it is aimed at a very specific audience, while leaving many other Players feeling abandoned.

[diopter]

Jar: could you clarify what you mean by your statement (paraphrasing) that "shift in design to focus on creatures is decreasing strategic diversity"?

Specifically:

1.) what was the previous focus on design?
2.) how did it encourage strategic diversity in a way that a focus on creatures, creature abilities and combat does not?

[xouman]

Really nice analysis. It's clear Wizard's intention negating cheating, since power relies in abilities. While I agree it's nice in a vacuum, it adds little to eternal. I'm not complaining, but I cannot see "new decks" flourishing. Maybe mana confluence allows safer 5c decks, but at the probablily of a big life loss. Hatebears continue spawning (spirit of the labyrinth probably the best), but they haven't make a huge boost up to date (last biggest addition was drs, or probably notion thief).

@JarofFortune: imho creatures are the main type of spells in magic, specially in limited. I agree that is good to allow other decks for the sake of diversity, but there can't be a mental mistep, abrupt decay or swan song every set (although it would be nice to have at least few every block, unless there is some kind of flavour bias). Now we would have conspiracy in little more than a month and we are probably having some eternal playables. There you can expect some "broken" cards, but it's hard to create vintage playable cards after 20 years, specially if you don't want to break other formats.

[wiley]

@JarofFortune: imho creatures are the main type of spells in magic, specially in limited. I agree that is good to allow other decks for the sake of diversity, but there can't be a mental mistep, abrupt decay or swan song every set (although it would be nice to have at least few every block, unless there is some kind of flavour bias). Now we would have conspiracy in little more than a month and we are probably having some eternal playables. There you can expect some "broken" cards, but it's hard to create vintage playable cards after 20 years, specially if you don't want to break other formats.

Its been a while since I read the disturbing articles he presented, but I think the gist of his issue isn't that creature types are the main type of spell in magic, it is that the design ideal in those articles would make it so that creatures and creature based interactions would be the only type of spells created going forward.

This means you will never get to see innovations like storm, flashback, threshold or pitch costs again, where something is made relevant outside the red zone.  And even if there is, it is forcibly tied to it like only printing moment's peace/artful dodge and no coffin purge/deep analysis or only mystic enforcer/nimble mongoose and no cabal ritual/cephalid coliseum.  Instead we get things like level up and monstrous.  Instead of combo decks like Tog, Trix or Dragonstorm you get combo decks like equipping runecatcher's pike to an invisible stalker.

Also, if I remember right he said something to the effect that cards like force spike and mana leak were way too powerful for standard.  It is kind of sad to me since the last time I thought standard was fun was when 7th edition was legal, due to the effect force spike had on the format.  It made everyone play smarter, and build better decks.  Was it powerful? Yes.  Was it format warping?  Yes.  Was that a bad thing? No.

I don't think that pushing the envelope for creatures is a bad thing, but intentionally reversing the power level between spells and creatures instead of trying to even them out is bad design.

[JarofFortune]

Jar: could you clarify what you mean by your statement (paraphrasing) that "shift in design to focus on creatures is decreasing strategic diversity"?

Specifically:

1.) what was the previous focus on design?
2.) how did it encourage strategic diversity in a way that a focus on creatures, creature abilities and combat does not?

1). You can look at the game as having 2 major phases of design(With some anomalies, such as Combo Winter). The first phase, which I consider to have begun during Alpha and ended at around Morningtide, had noticeably more powerful spells, many of which did not focus on creatures, and weaker creatures. This led to an ideal arrangement of Archetypes in all Constructed formats, even Standard, that had a mix of Aggro, Aggro-Control, Tapout Control, Draw-Go Control, Combo, Combo-Control, Midrange, and others. This suite of Archetypes is the ideal form of the Strategic Diversity that I support. One of the good things about Vintage is that it is by far the most strategically diverse format, and is the last place where Prison is truly competitive. Creatures were still a fundamental part of the game during this period, and I consider it the better of the two phases, with the Absolute Golden Age of Design being Tempest Block. I consider Time Spiral Block to be the last truly "pure" block.  

   The second phase, which continues today, is defined by severe creature Power Creep, and a larger focus on creatures in Constructed formats. As this era goes on, Wotc's pet constructed formats (Standard and Extended, the latter of which has been replaced by Modern) have been more and more defined by Zac Hill's ideas of archetypes (for reference, read the articles I mentioned in the above post). This leads to far less Strategically Diverse metagames than in the past, for the simple reason that Zac Hill's archetypes commonly existed in the first phase of Magic's History, but alongside even more archetypes. In Standard today, there is no combo (And the few combo decks in recent Standard seasons have all been creature-reliant), and not enough Control. The least they could do is reprint Counterspell for Modern. Meanwhile, Standard and Modern are dominated by Aggro and Midrange. There have been some exceptions, yes, but overall the game has become less diverse in the way of Archetypes.

2). Putting too much focus on creatures takes away from Control and non-creature based Combo. Making large, undercosted creatures has recently made Goodstuff Midrange Decks the best archetype in Standard and Modern by default. Aggro is given enough support to be competitive, while Tapout Control barely gets enough support to make it seem like Wotc cares. Draw-go Control is almost nonexistent.

Theros Block is the culmination of the Second Phase of Magic. While previously during this phase, Instants and sorceries became tacked onto creatures as ETB abilities, the abilities of global enchantments, many of which were designed previously, have been attached to creatures.

There can still be good sets for all formats in the Second Phase, WorldWake coming to mind. However, this involves taking a step back from where Theros has led us.

@JarofFortune: imho creatures are the main type of spells in magic, specially in limited. I agree that is good to allow other decks for the sake of diversity, but there can't be a mental mistep, abrupt decay or swan song every set (although it would be nice to have at least few every block, unless there is some kind of flavour bias). Now we would have conspiracy in little more than a month and we are probably having some eternal playables. There you can expect some "broken" cards, but it's hard to create vintage playable cards after 20 years, specially if you don't want to break other formats.

   I agree with your first statement. Whenever someone starts playing magic, it is always with creatures. Limited formats have always relied on creatures. However, If we look at sets from the first phase of Magic, there can be a good non creature spell or utility land in every set. This is a reason for the supremacy of the Rath cycle over all other blocks. Each set was packed with cards playable in every format, and lots of great design. I can give countless examples: Volrath's Shapeshifter, Licids, Aluren, Dream halls, Humility, Volrath's Stonghold, City of traitors, Wasteland, Lotus Petal, Flame Wave, Intuition, Ghost Town, Slivers, Limited resources, Curiosity, Living Death, Recuring Nightmare, Grave Pact, anything with Buyback, and more.  Vintage cards can be printed very easily without breaking other formats. This would be even more true if Wizards would print some good policing cards for Modern. If they did this, the ban list could be much smaller than it already is, and more powerful cards could be printed in Standard.

@JarofFortune: imho creatures are the main type of spells in magic, specially in limited. I agree that is good to allow other decks for the sake of diversity, but there can't be a mental mistep, abrupt decay or swan song every set (although it would be nice to have at least few every block, unless there is some kind of flavour bias). Now we would have conspiracy in little more than a month and we are probably having some eternal playables. There you can expect some "broken" cards, but it's hard to create vintage playable cards after 20 years, specially if you don't want to break other formats.

Its been a while since I read the disturbing articles he presented, but I think the gist of his issue isn't that creature types are the main type of spell in magic, it is that the design ideal in those articles would make it so that creatures and creature based interactions would be the only type of spells created going forward.

This means you will never get to see innovations like storm, flashback, threshold or pitch costs again, where something is made relevant outside the red zone.  And even if there is, it is forcibly tied to it like only printing moment's peace/artful dodge and no coffin purge/deep analysis or only mystic enforcer/nimble mongoose and no cabal ritual/cephalid coliseum.  Instead we get things like level up and monstrous.  Instead of combo decks like Tog, Trix or Dragonstorm you get combo decks like equipping runecatcher's pike to an invisible stalker.

Also, if I remember right he said something to the effect that cards like force spike and mana leak were way too powerful for standard.  It is kind of sad to me since the last time I thought standard was fun was when 7th edition was legal, due to the effect force spike had on the format.  It made everyone play smarter, and build better decks.  Was it powerful? Yes.  Was it format warping?  Yes.  Was that a bad thing? No.

I don't think that pushing the envelope for creatures is a bad thing, but intentionally reversing the power level between spells and creatures instead of trying to even them out is bad design.

Spot on. This sums up my opinion very nicely.

[bactgudz]

There are plenty of viable vintage cards in theros block.  Mistcutter and Stormbreath Dragon have already top8'd a NYSE qualifier

[Protoaddict]

Stormbreath is M14, not Theros.

Theros also promotes monocolor strategies with devotion, which is kinda dumb in my eyes right off a multicolor block. If you follow standard at all, it's possibly the most boring I have ever seen it right now as there are like 3 different mono color decks and that's it. The most powerful decks in the format consist of removal and creatures and that is basically it.

Any deck building question in standard right now is like: "Do I add a second color for this or do I just get more from staying mono color?" and the answer is almost always that you will not be rewarded nearly enough for splashing as you would from staying mono.

Like if I want a creature that is just marginally better than an option I have open to me, suddenly I have to play 4 CITP lands, 4 Shocklands, and hurt my devotion count for Gray Merchant and the Shrine. The format punishes creative deck design and thinking outside the box.

This is my least favorite block maybe of all time. Everything it is doing I hate. I don't like forming voltron every time I play limited. I don't like the rehashed generic fantasy setting. I don't like monocolor decks being the only decks. But most of all I really think I just plain hate top down design. I didn't like innastrad either for what its worth, but i feel like in these top down sets what we get are goofy mechanics to support a theme instead of balanced sets to enhance the game.

[Hrishi]

For anyone who wants evidence of the stupidity in R&D, read the Mothership Articles Ah Yes. Very Standard and Gonna Hate. Both of these articles are written by Zac Hill, who has thakfully left Wizards, but the fact that Wizards allowed these inflammatory treatises on idiocy is completely inexcusable.

Wow, I have not read these before. These articles are extremely illuminating and explain a lot.

[msg67183]

Stormbreath is M14, not Theros.

Stormbreath Dragon has Monstrous.... Pretty sure that didn't exist in M14

[evouga]

@OP So if the next block contains a card reading "U, Instant: You may activate an activated ability of target creature without paying its mana cost," some of the montrosity cards become Vintage playable?! The only remotely playable Montrosity creature is Fleecemane Lion, and there you've got yourself a two-card combo that leaves you with a creature that's quite possibly worse than Tarmogoyf.

I agree with your overall point: Theros was not a poorly designed block, per se. But like many of the posters in this thread, I grew tired of creature-only Magic a long time ago, and really care only about the kind of deep and exacting tactical and strategic gameplay found in Vintage. When Wizards prints four sets in a row that are completely devoid of Vintage-playable cards, I get exasperated.

Jar's analysis of the phases of design is fairly accurate -- after Time Spiral block sold so poorly, WotC freaked out and shifted priorities away from retention to new player acquisition. That is not going to change any time soon, given that Magic is currently more popular than ever. But Zendikar and Innistrad blocks proved that it is possible to design sets with a little something for every format, and I feel it is fair to call WotC out for failing to do so with Theros block.

[diopter]

Theros Block gave Standard a Vintage-relevant effect in Thoughtseize. Commander 13 has playable Vintage cards. M14 gave us Young Pyromancer which has amazing interactions in Vintage. Ral Zarek sees play.

I'm not sure what my opinion is on creature-focused magic. But I definitiely think set design should 100% focus on making good Standard formats, for two reasons:
1.) The maligned "new" player crowd (which plays a lot of  Standard) is  actually more important than the average Vintage player to the health of the game due to both their larger numbers and higher spending.
2.) Standard churns like crazy and so they really need to put a lot of effort to balancing and direction-setting it.

Don't worry, though, there will inevitably be some good Vintage-relevant cards that trickle down (e.g. Thoughtseize, were it not a reprint).

Put another way: last time they designed specifically for Vintage (Lodestone Golem) they  kinda overshot the mark. Better for the process of growing the Vintage playable pool to happen holistically, in my opinion.

[Protoaddict]

I am not holding my breath for vintage playables out of the regular sets anymore. Maybe one or 2 cards slide in once and a while like Pyromancer, but if your lookign for real archetype creating, staple cards like True Name Nemesis, I think conspiracy and the commander releases are your best hope.

Theros in my eyes was just bad for Magic, because its standard scene is embarassingly narrow and shows new players "Play the good cards or you wont win"