The Color Wheel

[Matt]

I would have a very very hard time swallowing Careful Study as a red card. I don't think you can say "this card discards cards, therefore it is red" because you're not really throwing away resources. "Draw 2, discard 2" feels basically the opposite of RECKLESS or RISKY, which is what red is supposed to be.

Now, "discard 2, draw 2"? That feels more reckless; that is an effect I could buy as being red. You don't quite know what's going to happen. You're taking a risk; a calculated risk, sure, but a risk nonetheless.



Lastly, I don't think red was intentionally powered down in OTJ. They thought that since red had to feel wild and unpredictable that its discard had to be random, and they implemented that without really considering how it would impact tournament playability. The better random discard effect cards would have been tournament-playable, and probably nearly as strong as the blue discard effects, if they had simply been chosen discard instead of random.

Imagine a world where alongside UG madness there was RG madness. Instead of Wonder and Careful Study, you have Anger and Sonic Seizure (which would have been far superior against MBC); instead of counterspells like Logic, you have good madness burn spells. You even get, like, Devastating Dreams to ruin some shit. Could have been a contender. Minotaur Explorer might have worked as a red Meba-replacement.

[Dr. Sylvan]

I agree that discarding first leads to greater uncertainty/recklessness. The only issue is that "discard X, draw X" has to be costed closer to "draw X" because it could be used from an empty or near-empty starting hand. That does give the plus of encouraging come-from-behind victories, though, which I like.

Careful Study (with a different name, obviously) is still Red to me not least because it is negative card advantage. It was positive card advantage in Odyssey block for obvious reasons, but straight-up, it's right into the Red flavor of resource-depletion for immediate advantage. I don't think our views on this are all that different, though; it's just a matter of combing through the mix of ways to implement this family of draw spells in Red.

[Matt]

I agree that discarding first leads to greater uncertainty/recklessness. The only issue is that "discard X, draw X" has to be costed closer to "draw X" because it could be used from an empty or near-empty starting hand.

No it doesn't. Just make the discarding a cost (further increasing the recklessness!). Or see Winds of Change. Or "Discard 2 cards. If you do, draw 2 cards" etc. There's many ways to get past that little obstacle.

Careful Study (with a different name, obviously) is still Red to me not least because it is negative card advantage.

You're looking at the card with tournament-colored glasses, which I think that is the wrong way to look at this. I mean, Healing Salve is card disadvantage, but it still can't be red because red doesn't do "protection", it does "destruction". Careful Study can't be red because during its resolution, you're making an informed choice which is anti-red. Red doesn't do "informed choice"; red does "impulsive".

Furthermore, red has many ways of getting card advantage. Fireball or Pyroclasm to sweep the board, Bolting a creature in response to a pump spell, or even stuff like Pulse of the Forge/Hammer of Bogarden. It just doesn't get its card advantage in the form of drawing extra cards.

[Liam-K]

Furthermore, red has many ways of getting card advantage. Fireball or Pyroclasm to sweep the board, Bolting a creature in response to a pump spell, or even stuff like Pulse of the Forge/Hammer of Bogarden. It just doesn't get its card advantage in the form of drawing extra cards.

...further increasing its vulnerability to stack-centric plans.  The "when your opponent puts [his cards] on the board and lets you shoot [them]" clause applies very very heavily to red.  When 2-for-1'ing small critters is your only way to get ahead, anything that doesn't run lots of weenies pretty much gets around Red's card advantage options entirely.  Hijacking spells is a better direction to expand, but those types of cards have to be narrow or expensive.

[Dr. Sylvan]

The Color Wheel: Why All Colors Need To Draw Cards

One thing I've learned from my pushes for diffusion of the card-drawing ability is that people don't immediately grok it. They don't like the flavors I apply, or the implications for game balance, or some other quite valid issue. I empathize---if it was obvious, intuitive, and perfect, it would probably have been done already. I do think that it is probably the best solution to the color pie's overall imbalances, and I decided now would be a good time to tell you why. For the purposes of this post, I am assuming that everyone is satisfied by my previous evidence that there is a problem, agreeing that Blue is too good. (If you're not, stay tuned; I'm sure I can beat some sense into you given enough chances.)

We should start with Grand Inquisitor's question: Once the problem of Blue dominance is recognized, what are the potential solutions, and why aren't the others good enough?

Status Quo: You could just accept that Blue will always have a strong place. This is a pretty lame "solution". Many, many diverse and interesting metagames (like Time Spiral Block and certain points in Vintage history) can exist with Blue dominance, but it is just boring long-term.

Devise New Abilities For Non-Blue Use: MaRo has already explained that this is a weak solution at best; truly new things aren't that common anymore.

Tone Down Blue Abilities: This has been heavily implemented in the last five years or so. Careful Consideration and Fact or Fiction aren't exactly the same thing, nor are Truth or Tale and Impulse.

I don't think this solution can go much further without getting dumb. Look at Mystical Teachings, a four-mana limited tutor with six-mana flashback. Teachings is really a quite fairly-costed card. Ancestral Vision's suspend period and Careful Consideration's limits are also pretty fair. If you force Blue's current pie share to be even less efficient, suddenly Concentrate is the best available draw spell and Cancel/Discombobulate is the top of the counterspell power curve---now and forever. The 1-3 mana range would be like a dead zone for Blue, and even I don't want that to happen. It would be as boring as White is now.

Boost Other Colors' Abilities: This has also been in vogue for some time, primarily through making creatures near-ridiculous. I am currently looking into different ways to generate solid evidence of "creature power creep" (since abilities are so key to this and are so diverse, it's harder than it sounds; suggestions welcome), but for now it will suffice to assume Tarmogoyf is about ten times the man that Spectral Bears, Albino Troll, Harvest Wurm, or Skyshroud War Beast were.

Most non-creature abilities are not getting more powerful, and that is why I think this is a bad solution---they simply can't make other things much better without, once again, getting dumb. Things like direct damage, discard, and even lifegain have well-explored limits. I doubt they'll even reprint Duress again for a long, long time. Enchantments are usually overcosted, since making them too good would hose Red and Black. So spells are at a reasonable equilibrium of power level, and should stay there for the most part, with the usual pendulum-swinging, of course.

Creatures were, in the beginning, too weak. Then there was a phase where creatures at the bottom of the mana curve were too good (a.k.a., Tempest), putting too much pressure on the environment with hyper-focused mono-colored aggro winning on turn four all the time. Currently, creatures are really hitting their stride, and I don't think they can get much better. Two- and three-mana creatures (Tarmogoyf and The Siege Tower) that can act like they have five power are top-notch and should not be one-upped. There shouldn't ever be very many 1-3 mana creatures with power greater than converted mana cost; their specialness should remain undiluted for Johnny and Spike to analyze. (Is it a Phyrexian Negator, or a Phyrexian Soulgorger? You decide!) Creatures abilities', separate from their size, are linked in efficiency to the spells that they might otherwise be, so similar efficiency maxima apply.

Thus, making other colors' current pie slices better is a limited avenue at this juncture.

Take Things From Blue: This has happened mostly through increased bleed-prevention by R&D, but also by moving temporary stealing and target-changing into Red and "taxing" to White, among other things. Card-draw diffusion would fall into this category, but the difference is that it would change the landscape of the game in a way that nothing else could.

Moving abilities from Blue has always been handicapped by the fact that the biggest offenders, card draw and counterspelling, are treated like sacred cows and rarely touched. They are easily two of the top five abilities in the game. As long as Blue has monopolies on both, we'll always be on the highway to the danger zone.*

( * : As great historical philosopher Kenny Loggins warned us about in soundtrack of the classic gay rights film "Top Gun". )

Moreover, Magic is a card game, and often the greatest heights of strategy revolve around being able to use your deck as a toolbox to get out of bad situations or put your opponent into one. On the other hand, few things are more boring than topdecking and/or watching your opponent repeatedly thumb through his library* while you twiddle your thumbs in a powerless stupor.

( * : Shuffle-delay fatigue is the best reason to print draw spells over tutors.)

Decklists including search are exciting to put together, since you can play fewer four-ofs as well as narrower answer cards. Decks with search also create more variability in play because they are less likely to be caught in topdeck mode, and when they are, each draw is more likely to open up substantial options. Contrast praying for one of the Viridian Zealots in my Stompy deck with hoping for either a bounce spell or some draw/search in my Draw-Go. The latter makes you feel "in the game" much more than the former.

Spike wants to control his fate so his skill will grant him the win. Johnny wants to desperately race to make his deck work before he's killed. Timmy wants to find his most awe-inspiring play. All of them want to find their one "out" from a bad spot. None of them should be forced to play Blue to do these things. As long as we continue to stifle combo*, spreading out card drawing seems, to me, to solve the Blue dominance problem and simultaneously make more decks more fun to both design and play.

( * : Combo is a despicable blight upon Magic which usurps the very idea of interactive gaming, much as a soliloquy in the middle of a sitcom would break a dialogue scene. )

Power level can be controlled through development, and flavor can be controlled through a careful division of how/when the cards are drawn and how hard the player has to work for them. Neither of these barriers is insuperable. Numerous abilities show up in 4-5 colors without the game collapsing or feeling homogenized; it's all in the execution.

Hopefully, this helps you see why I see this issue the way that I do, although I'm sure many still disagree with me.

[Jacob Orlove]

I'm pretty sure that counterspells are not actually in the top 5 magic abilities. To be honest, I'm not sure raw card drawing is either. I'd be curious to see what your top 5 list is, though. I guess if you put "mana" as a single ability, then you might have room for card drawing, but I'd want to at least have extra land drops and extra mana both on there, along with seeing more cards, and tutoring. Drawing more cards might make it in at 5th, but countering spells certainly does not.

[Matt]

I think your anti-combo stance is very silly (I'm being generous here...).

One thing I've learned from my pushes for diffusion of the card-drawing ability is that people don't immediately grok it.

Of course, there's no way that couldn't be because it's not a good idea. It also depends HUGELY on what you mean by "drawing cards." Straight-up card drawing like Concentrate is very, very different from Scroll Rack effects is very different from tutoring is different from Compulsion is different from cycling.

[Dr. Sylvan]

I'm pretty sure that counterspells are not actually in the top 5 magic abilities. To be honest, I'm not sure raw card drawing is either.

Really? It hadn't even occurred to me that this was controversial. For instance, in the MaRo forum article I quoted in full in Reply #53, he says, "To solve the power issues, R&D have had to come to grips with what blue's true power level is. Card drawing, for example, is a very potent power. [...] Not only did blue have the most poweful [sic] abilities [...]" I read that second bit as "card drawing and counterspells". Counterspells address something that little else in the game can touch (the stack), compete only with discard in the ability to stop instants/sorceries, and are the most flexible answers in the game since they can hit most everything except lands.

I'd be curious to see what your top 5 list is, though. I guess if you put "mana" as a single ability, then you might have room for card drawing, but I'd want to at least have extra land drops and extra mana both on there [...]

1. Mana acceleration
2. Tutoring
3. Cost reduction/skipping
4. Drawing
5. Counterspells

A list like this is primarily a matter of definitions, like how finely-grained the ability has to be to deserve its own slot. For instance, "taking extra turns" is pretty awesome, but since "everything is a Time Walk", it makes more sense to break it down. It sounds like you would probably break mana acceleration into immediate spell mana (Dark Ritual) and extra land drops (Fastbond), and divide drawing cards into several smaller slices to treat Impulse, Ancestral Recall, and Careful Study as separate abilities.

There's also an element of history to any such listing, so of course the abilities that have been banned/restricted most often loom large. So while having the best creatures is theoretically pretty good, it doesn't get top status in my mind because it's not often broken.

So perhaps it was foolish of me to say "top five" when what I meant was simply that draw and counters are two of the most inherently powerful---and potentially broken---mechanics.

[...] along with seeing more cards, and tutoring. Drawing more cards might make it in at 5th, but countering spells certainly does not.

Of course, there's no way that couldn't be because [polychromatic card draw is] not a good idea. It also depends HUGELY on what you mean by "drawing cards." Straight-up card drawing like Concentrate is very, very different from Scroll Rack effects is very different from tutoring is different from Compulsion is different from cycling.

Based on both of your replies, I'm using "card drawing" in a different way than you're reading it as. When I talk about the mechanic of card drawing, I don't mean just Concentrate, the effect of which I usually call "direct draw". I'm talking about the overall ability to take some number of cards off the top of the library and put some or all of them into your hand. In my mind there is a break between this usage and searching your entire library, but otherwise the term is quite broad.

When I want to slice it up, Ancestral Recall is direct draw, Careful Study is draw/discard, Impulse is filtering, Windfall is whole-hand cycling, Timetwister is a Draw7, Spoils of the Vault or Abundance is specific digging, and Demonic Tutor is searching or tutoring. It gets more specific than that, like Heartwood Storyteller being "triggered draw" instead of direct draw, but that's sorta the outline. I try to be clear, but I'm sure that my terminology is partly based on my months sorting through everything for the Card Catalog, so I won't catch everything that will confuse other people.

To clarify, I do not think that Concentrate goes in every color. Concentrate is Blue. Reply #56 (about direct draw) details which historical cards I would have allowed to give other colors direct draw, and I think there are pretty decent cues in those mechanics that make them un-Blue. Earlier this week I suggested draw/discard for Red; next week I will suggest that filtering is Green; and so on.

It may still be a bad idea, as Matt says, but it's the best I've got, noting the limits on the possible solutions outlined in my post yesterday. If I figure out (or hear of) some idea I like better, you can bet that it'll show up here.

I think your anti-combo stance is very silly (I'm being generous here...).

Then I'll be sure to talk about it more later.

[Jacob Orlove]

I was actually thinking of extra mana (lotus/channel) versus extra land drops (moxes), but your examples work too. I would rank extra land drops much higher than extra mana.

I would probably count cost reduction/skipping as extra mana, since the effect is the same.

All counterspells do is stop one card. Sure, they do a really good job of it, but Vintage has free counterspells, and plenty of situational 1-mana counters, and Mana Drain at two mana. But none of those are restricted. They are not even potentially "broken". Some are very undercosted, but not broken (except possibly drain). You hit the nail on the head when you said they were answers. Answers do not, and can not, break the game.

That's also why I differentiate between card drawing and seeing extra cards. Card drawing is only really good inasmuch as it provides the latter. Compare Brainstorm or dredge to Land Tax to see what I mean. Seeing more cards is potentially broken, but raw card advantage isn't. Tutors are so good because the "extra cards" you see are your entire deck (or some subset of it).

I understand that you want to make all kinds of mechanical distinctions between draw 7s and Impulse and whatever, but the only two abilities that actually matter are having extra cards versus seeing extra cards. People tend to think of card drawing as "good" because it provides the former, but it's only really helpful if it provides the latter.

[Dr. Sylvan]

The Color Wheel: New Blood

(Cap'n Menendian's post about WotC advertising strategy got me thinking, and as my thoughts ballooned in length and broadened in scope, I figured I'd better not hijack his blog with my take on the topic of attracting new magic players.)

Recently, Bennie Smith mentioned some of his formative gaming experiences, including the example of being blown away the first time he saw a Monopoly opponent use mortgages to break the format, in essence. Now, I have played Monopoly a number of times, and I had never even heard of this mortgaging concept. I can only assume that this is the equivalent of a Magic player who didn't know you could do things during your opponent's turn. This example struck a chord with me---just what level of rules knowledge does someone need to be drawn into the game?

These days, most Magic rules are on the cards (at least in Tenth Edition), so the likelihood of confusion is carefully controlled beyond a certain point. However, I have tried to teach people outside the core audience (35-40 year old women, for instance), and this game is complicated when you don't have a ton of experience with other complicated games. Like, for serious. MaRo has mentioned that the average Magic player is about thirteen years old (the source of which I can't seem to find thanks to Wizards.com's awful search engine), and written articles about simplicity in Magic design that note Magic's status as one of the most complicated games in the history of games.

While there is still room to expand Magic's audience, I think the intimidating breadth of the game is a real barrier to mainstream adoption. Steve M.'s suggestion to portray it as a deep strategy game would be appealing to uber-Spikes who already have an affinity for gaming or puzzles, i.e., people who've already heard of Magic and decided whether or not they're interested. This would be a fine pitch to make in the form of, say, banner ads on Penny Arcade. However, less-targeted forms of marketing, like TV, are meant for a couple of purposes that don't fit his goal:

Staying in your consideration set: With the audience of gamers, Magic is heavily focused on set-by-set advertising, because it has the privileged position of topping lists for innovation, sales, and customer base size (at least, I believe this is still the case, minus that brief Pokemon TCG sales surge in like 1865 or whenever). Gamers already know what Magic is, so the company just needs to make customers aware of the latest sets' virtues. They'll point out specific benefits like the world flavor, themes and new cards, because you come into it with context. Die-hards actively stay on top of these things, but the majority of players need to be reached out to through local stores, gaming magazines, conventions, and maybe TV shows with the right audience demographics, etc. This is especially true of Magic's huge supply of ex-players who can be persuaded to come back given the right enticement.

Expansion of brand awareness: If people don't know you exist, they can't consider your products. In Magic's case, there is brand awareness of both the game as a whole and of individual sets (the Wizards of the Coast brand is much less important, as it matters mostly to sophisticated customers who are interested in multiple games). To make an analogy to automobile ads: Magic is like Lexus, and Lorwyn is like a particular model of sedan---and not that many people care that Lexus is a brand controlled by Toyota.*

( * : As an aside, the car analogy breaks down insofar as car brands rarely advertise separately from a particular product---dealerships do, brands don't---because in the developed world, everyone is a potential customer who has spent their entire life surrounded by cars. An interesting exception is GM's summer 2005 "employee discounts for everyone with a pulse" sales event. The focus was on GM's brands rather than the products of the brands; indeed, the brand logos of Hummer, Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, GMC, Saturn, Saab, and Cadillac were all shown on the screen. In retrospect, this was a sign that they were recognizing how many people wouldn't even consider their individual products, so they had to do ads at the brand level to get people into showrooms. They have continued to lurch toward bankruptcy ever since. )

For non-gamers, Magic ads must focus on the game as a whole (using the current set as a source of imagery to provide maximum recognition when someone sees the physical product), because they have to start from scratch and convince someone to look closer. The goal is to get someone to acquire some starting cards and then go on from there to adopt it as a hobby.

Smmenen's post suggested that expansion of brand awareness should target adults to become new customers based on the merits of the game at its highest levels. The problem with this is that adults acquire hobbies rarely and slowly. There is so much baggage in the assertion that "Busy adults can play a few games of Standard to unwind after the kids are in bed" that it's hard to even list it all. To get to the point where you're playing Standard on Magic Online, you have to not only be persuaded of Magic's worthiness as a game, you need to invest both dollars in a collection (of digital-only "cards" no less---a hard sell) and time into rules and metagame awareness. Ads can't get people to want such complicated things; people will stop paying attention at the slightest sign of complication. The best an ad can hope for is to make you see the appeal of a particular product so that you'll consider it if you're thinking of that category later.

I don't think it's an accident that adolescents are the best recruits for Magic, despite the difficulty of people under ~14-15 even understanding all the rules. Consider my own example. I "played" (the term is used loosely) for years with what was, in retrospect, barely an approximation of the actual rules. Then I turned 14, went to IMSA, found other players, and learned from older kids who knew much more. ("First step into a larger world", etc.)

The implications of this sequence are huge. A preteen kid gets a few spare cards from some other kid, thinks they look cool, and proceeds to want more (because of his inner collector, desire to build a better deck, whatever applies). He doesn't know how deep the rabbit hole goes. In 1996, I didn't know there was a Pro Tour; I didn't know that Wrath of God existed; I didn't know anything. But Magic had a cool vibe to it. So gradually, the kid gets more cards, learns more lessons about gameplay from other players, and eventually the game is part of his lifestyle.

An adult almost can't experience this sequence, at least not in the Internet era, and particularly if the Pro Tour is part of the opening sales pitch. Adults, unlike kids, are not accustomed to being n00bs. When they are learning the game, they don't want to do a lot of hand-waving, play a dumbed-down version, or just accept the judgment of the player teaching them. They want to understand what each action leads to before they do it. Kids are accustomed to coming up with house rules among themselves for various games, arguing over interpretations, etc. (I recall frequent disputes over whether someone was "hit" in an imaginary gunfight, or whether a glancing blow from a Nerf dart counted or not.) Since young people deal with this kind of thing all the time, they are more willing to face a system from a position of uncertainty. An adult will think, "I don't have to deal with this; I've got better things to do," especially since the game is asking you for money (and at a competitive level, a relatively large amount of it).

As a result of this thought process, I think that WotC is wise to continue targeting adolescents. "Get 'em while they're young" is valid for hobbies in addition to religions and addictions (the Venn diagram of the three is a semantic argument I dare not enter into). Some adults will make the type of leap Steve hopes for to attract a more adult following to the game, however, I think that the adult following of Magic will for the most part naturally flow from its long-term incumbent players---such as those who read TMD---getting older. Patience will bring what advertising cannot: a truly mature game with an equally mature community around it.

[Dr. Sylvan]

The Color Wheel: Flexibility (Filtering)

There is a sorta blurry line between some of these cards and some of the cards on my list as "cantrips". When I say filtering, I mean looking through more than one card off the top of the library, picking (usually) one, and putting the rest somewhere else (bottom or top of library, sometimes graveyard). The reason scry effects aren't here is that they rearrange the library without themselves putting a card in your hand (much like Mirri's Guile).

This ability, while majority-Blue in the past, has appeared non-trivally in Green and Black, including the big new precedent of Commune With Nature, which was "canonized" in Tenth Edition. In Blue, the filtering mechanic tends to get overshadowed by other types of draw spells, except if it's made ridiculous like Impulse and Fact or Fiction (I've heard that Foresee is okay these days, too).

213 Reserve Deck--Put Into Hand--Filter

Code:

Land

Land Filter Block-By-Block: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

Code:

Gold
IA	Diabolic Vision
allnc	Lim-Dul's Vault
inv	Reviving Vapors
plsft	Sawtooth Loon (1000)
apoc	Prophetic Bolt
dissn	AEthermage's Touch

Gold Filter Block-By-Block: 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0

Magic's one and only Loon!

Code:

Artifact
arabn	Aladdin's Lamp
allnc	Phyrexian Portal
wthlt	Thran Tome
nemes	Eye of Yawgmoth
apoc	Brass Herald (1001)

Artifact Filter Block-By-Block: 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

Code:

Blue
allnc	Browse
mirg	Ancestral Memories
mirg	Dream Cache
visn	Impulse
ulg	Raven Familiar (1000)
inv	Fact or Fiction
inv	Worldly Counsel
apoc	Tidal Courier (1000)
jdgmt	Flash of Insight
dkstl	Machinate
dkstl	Chromescale Drake (1000)
chkgw	Peer Through Depths
btkgw	Tomorrow, Azami's Familiar (1000)
svkgw	Murmurs From Beyond
rav	Telling Time
dissn	Court Hussar (1000)
cold	Survivor of the Unseen (1000)
tsp	Truth or Tale
fts	Foresee

Blue Filter Block-By-Block: 0, 0, 1, 3, 0, 0, 1, 0, 3, 1, 0, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2

Code:

White
apoc	Enlistment Officer (1000)

White Filter Block-By-Block: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

Code:

Green
legnd	Sylvan Library
strg	Mulch
apoc	Kavu Howler (1000)
apoc	Sylvan Messenger (1000)
chkgw	Commune With Nature
btkgw	Enshrined Memories
svkgw	Elder Pine of Jukai (1000)

Green Filter Block-By-Block: 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0, 0

Code:

Red
apoc	Goblin Ringleader (1000)

Red Filter Block-By-Block: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

Red got pretty lucky on this cycle.

Code:

Black
apoc	Grave Defiler (1000)
odys	Tainted Pact
fdwn	Plunge Into Darkness
rav	Moonlight Bargain

Black Filter Block-By-Block: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0

It turns out that I don't have a whole lot of elaborate positions to take on this ability (hence the delay from my intended posting time last week---I was trying to think of something). I think that the filtering mechanic should be shifted into majority-Green. Since filtering shows up maybe a handful of times each block, it will give an avenue of clever options to Green without radically boosting its power level.

My goal with reapportioning the card-draw mechanics is to provide other colors with ways to be almost as flexible as Blue is by taking advantage of a greater share of their deck. I want to erode the ever-present danger that a couple of overlooked cards could make Blue unbeatable for a year or two of competitive play. That danger is much less likely to recur if Blue simply has a decreased diversity of ways to see more cards, and other colors become better at finding their answers.

Green has been able to appear quite strongly even with the current color pie, so I don't think it needs all that much help. Triggered draw isn't really enough, however, because it is pretty much always an investment---you have the sunk cost of the first enchantress/Heartwood Storyteller/Hystrodon before you get anything from it. Filtering complements this with the natural selection flavor of Green. It also provides another option when designing Green non-creature spells; currently those are too often +X/+X pump spells or Rampant Growth tweaks.

In Blue, the flavor of filtering cards is usually some kind of advice (Ancestral Memories, Worldly Counsel, Murmurs From Beyond) or way to see unusually deeply into a subject (Flash of Insight, Peer Through Depths, Foresee). The trouble is, this is the exact same flavor as other Blue card draw (e.g., Counsel of the Soratami and Concentrate). To me this signals another Blue flavor creep, where because Blue is about knowledge and scholarship, it is the natural place for anything that provides cards or deals with spells.

When I was asking myself if this flavor made sense, the prominent card that came to mind was Survival of the Fittest, an extremely Green card, ridiculously potent. It's not exactly the filtering ability, but it does make the library a tool accessible to Green. There, the selection flavor is explicit. Isn't growth (triggered draw) and evolution (filtering) the way nature learns? I'd be open to tweaking the mechanics of the cards to capture this flavor---perhaps with limits on the converted mana cost of the selected card---but the flavor of selection is stronger than continuing the monopoly on knowledge for Blue.

[Dr. Sylvan]

The Color Wheel: Lorwyn First Impressions

As I have mentioned before, Lorwyn is probably just not a set designed for me. I am inherently more of a deckbuilder than anything else, and the tribal theme is a linear one which limits my options too much (linear = boring, as far as I'm concerned). Nevertheless, I have a lot of faith in Wizards in general to deliver sets with something for me. Indeed, there are a number of cards I like, such as:

(most of the Command cycle)
Brion Stoutarm //I enjoy efficient lifelink
Deathrender //"build around me"
Doran, the Siege Tower //truly innovative effect
Eyes of the Wisent //I enjoy anything that wrecks Blue
Gaddock Teeg - favorite //should be mono-White
Mulldrifter //flexible
Purity //cool!
Smokebraider //"build around me"
Thorn of Amethyst //goes with Sphere of Resistance

However, after that, the full spoiler basically lived up to my expectations of the theme. I'm not gonna lie, this is gonna be a pretty negative review considering my usual level of awe and glee upon a new set's release. Ordinarily, I wouldn't even want to write a set review for fear of coming off as a fanboy corporate shill, but this time I actually found some things to comment on.

Visuals

I like some of the Lorwyn art, like Ashling's Prerogative, Deathrender, Eyes of the Wisent, Jace Beleren, Nath's Elite, and Purity, but a lot of it is totally unappealing and goofy-looking. The aesthetic of this set is a serious drag on my ability to like it. It doesn't help that the Kithkin make me think of Ernie from Sesame Street. Most of the races look dainty and childlike (e.g., Merfolk, Faeries, even Giants).

Here I will diverge from the traditional, vague "general dislike"/no-hurt-feelings art complaint, with the disclaimer that just because I don't like it doesn't mean I don't think its type has a place in Magic, nor do I imply that there aren't others who like it just fine. My sole claim is that I don't like it.

Examples of goofiness: Amoeboid Changeling; Boggart Harbinger; Boggart Sprite-Chaser; Brigid, Hero of Kinsbaile; Burrenton Forge-Tender; Captivating Glance; Changeling Berserker; Dreamspoiler Witches; Facevaulter; Faerie Harbinger; Fire-Belly Changeling; Giant Harbinger; Goldmeadow Harrier; Guardian of Cloverdell; Hamletback Goliath; Hunter of Eyeblights; Immaculate Magistrate; Kithkin Harbinger; Knight of Meadowgrain; Lowland Oaf; Mudbutton Torchrunner; plus the whole second half of the alphabet.

Most sets come close to reversing that ratio of liked-art to disliked-art for me, so you can see how Lorwyn would be a letdown after years of extremely high satisfaction.

Benchmarking

Also, I bet I'm among the few who cared that Ponder is strictly better than Omen, and for whom that came as a negative feeling, like indignation but with more resigned sighing mixed in. Blue and I are eternal foes, and I'm accustomed to losing. This set is neither as bad for Blue as Onslaught, nor as good for it as Time Spiral.

Thoughtseize is about three microns away from being strictly better than Duress, which within the last month I had guessed was unlikely to be reprinted any time soon (as in "it's too good"). I don't see why they'd look at the best discard spell ever and think it needed to be better. The most puzzling thing was the shift from common to rare. There aren't many effects that fit into all rarities like that, and it seems kind of arbitrary to switch from one extreme to the other for so similar a card, unless there is a secret "money rare" quota that they throw in cards like Extirpate and Thoughtseize to fill. It would have made a fine $3-5 uncommon.

I don't think this set will change White's fortunes much. Gaddock Teeg is amazing, but I predict that control decks will work around it. Time Spiral was full of good cards, and weenie creatures are still just fair in a world of unfairness. I looked at some of the little Kithkin and thought, "Gosh, another batch of intra-block-synergized White weenie creatures that attack for two? Again?" I look forward to their imminent demise, not least at the hands of Sulfur Elemental.

Innovations

All of the keywords except evoke make their cards less appealing to me. Clash especially makes me stop reading the card and move on; I just hate it, not least because it affects my ability to know what my spell will do (similar to coin-flipping, though less truly random). There aren't many sets that introduce keywords I actively hate and never want to play (sweep might have been the most recent, and Saviors was a far worse set than Lorwyn). Champion and changeling are more neutral; they neither add nor subtract from my interest. Evoke adds options, which I like, and smoothes out early/late-game usefulness.

I'm not sure what to think of the planeswalkers, which, I suppose, is the point. Most of them will be bomby in Limited, but I don't know if I have a good enough sense of how slow Standard is to say whether they'll matter there. My guess is that Garruk will be popular since he's at least as good as Call of the Herd, although less elegant. I don't like Overrun effects, but I'm sure there are drooling Timmies the world over waiting for their first chance to play it. All in all, I guess they're simply a new avenue to pay up front for effects later, like a big, self-recursive modal spell. I'm glad they broadened the game, but I haven't been given reason to care yet. It's not enough to excite me about the whole set, especially since they didn't do anything to interact with them in the rest of the set, so it's just five rares I may not even see for months or longer.

I like the broad design space of noncreature subtypes (I thought Arcane and Locus were cool, too), but I'm not thrilled with its uses as of yet. It's extra-underwhelming in light of Bound In Silence, which has a cooler interaction (Rebel tutoring-into-play) than my first impressions of all the Lorwyn tribal spells. The "curse of Future Sight" may last a while---anything they do with one of those ideas needs to be at least as exciting as its glimpse in the whirlwind landscape of FS, or it's a let-down.

Effect of Previews

Curiously, I was eagerly anticipating buying two Lorwyn booster boxes from SCG until the previews started. For Ravnica and Time Spiral, I was thrilled to buy boxes because I saw lots of commons and uncommons I wanted, and drafting packs is usually more balanced than re-drafting cast-offs. For Lorwyn, I am still deciding whether to buy one box or just get some singles (compared to one box of each Ravnica set bought in July 2007, plus three of Time Spiral and one each of PC/FS... and one Coldsnap box, but shhh don't tell anyone).

I deliberately avoided the unofficial spoilers until I knew I wasn't going to the prerelease, but made sure to catch the preview card every night before sleeping... and was so underwhelmed that I went from a two-box plan to doubting whether I want even a single one. I'm leaning toward opting out at this point; it's not like I don't already have many thousands of cards and dozens of decks intact simultaneously. Unlike the last two blocks, nearly all of the cards I want are niche rares that are peripheral to, or outside of, the set theme. (Plus, how addicted would I have to be to buy something even when I actively dislike it? There's no better way to demonstrate my sincere dislike of a product than to withhold my money.)

Besides the cards themselves, I was stunned at how much less excitement MaRo's articles had for this set than its predecessors. After reading probably a million-plus of his words on Magic, I can tell when he's bursting with creative energy, and the difference between FS and Lorwyn is noticeable to my eye. (Either that or my own plummeting anticipation ruined my usual MaRo-article-related joy.) The giveaway was probably that his first two preview weeks were just lords for Treefolk and Goblins, plus a B/G Elf. At the end of that I was speechless.

For Future Sight, Fleshwrither and Gathan Raiders made my jaw drop ("Can they do that?" "What else does that imply about the set?"). For Planar Chaos, I stared at Damnation for like five minutes, stunned. (Chronozoa not so much, but the average of the two is still an order of magnitude more awe than the Lorwyn previews.) For Time Spiral, the previews at least showed us major keywords, and then it turned out that they saved one of the biggest surprises ever, the timeshifts, for the prerelease. Compared to those, giving creatures +1/+1 was, well, boring. It signalled to me that there was nothing interesting in the set besides one-offs like Gaddock Teeg and The Siege Tower. That is not a good signal, and it's worse that it turned out to be mostly true.

Result

Overall, Lorwyn is undoubtedly the least appealing set since Rosewater's promotion to Head Designer, although Coldsnap almost beats it. Since I started my serious pursuit of Magic (around Invasion), only Saviors and Legions have given me less to be excited about than this. It's not so much that Lorwyn lacks anything an acceptable Magic set should have, but that it is following Ravnica and Time Spiral, two of the best blocks of all time by virtually every criterion. Lorwyn is merely average.

Here's hoping that the Jelly/Doughnut "block" has nothing to do with tribal whatsoever!

[Dr. Sylvan]

The Color Wheel: Time Spiral Block Constructed PTQ Breakdown

Data for this article harvested from SCG's season summary. My alterations to the data were based on the appearance of the same card in both the Maindeck and Sideboard section, which I combined. See further this inquiry in the Community Forum concerning the structure of SCG's summary.

Prevalence, TSpBC PTQ T8s
(% of all cards played)
31.9% Land
21.4% Blue
12.1% Green
9.5% White
7.7% Red
7.3% Black
5.1% Artifact
4.9% Gold

Prevalence (Non-Land Cards), TSpBC PTQ T8s
(% of all non-land cards played)
31.4% Blue
17.8% Green
14.0% White
11.4% Red
10.7% Black
7.5% Artifact
7.3% Gold

Winner: Blue, Loser: Black

This result returns us to the Black prevalence problem I started uncovering many moons ago with my initial prevalence analysis of Pro Tour data in Reply #22 of this thread. The mystery is this: How can Black continuously hold such high esteem in terms of mechanics share on the color wheel---often mentioned as first runner-up to Blue---but still draw the short straw on card counts? It's common knowledge that Black was a major support for Blue in the U/B Teachings deck that headlined the Pro Tour for this format, and did pretty well in the PTQs as well.

My best explanation (for now---I'm working on adding depth to it) is that Black often gets status as a support color. Blue is its most chronic abuser: a Blue-heavy control deck will seek to shore up some weaknesses in, often, creature removal, thus finding room for a couple of playsets for Black, but not having to feature it. Black is intentionally weak against artifacts and enchantments, but strong against creatures. Since Blue is good at nearly everything, there's no point in playing just a little Blue with a lot of Black, but the reverse, where Black fills in the gaps Blue needs, is much better. Other colors, which for the most part either have their own answers readily available or (for Red, in the case where it's working solo) are aiming to win ASAP, don't need as much up-shoring in the removal department.

Sideboard Shares (Non-Land Cards), TSpBC PTQ T8s
(% of cards sideboarded, by color)
63.9% Red
42.3% White
33.7% Artifact
28.7% Black
25.2% Blue
24.3% Green
14.3% Gold
0.6% Land

( Synopsis of meaning: After looking at simple prevalence, the proportion of cards between maindeck and sideboard shows the relative importance of a color to the "Plan A"s of the decks played. More cards in the maindeck = more essential and powerful. High sideboard share = weak color. See further Reply #48. )

Over the season's course, Red went from a prevalent, aggressive mono-deck to a sideboard color. This is a side effect of the easy color-fixing by artifact mana discussed previously. Over half of all artifacts played were Coalition Relic, Chromatic Sphere, and Prismatic Lens (and a lot of the remainder was sideboarded Serrated Arrows). This made it easy to play a single Mountain (fetchable with Terramorphic Expanse) and reliably have off-color mana from either that or an artifact.

Red put in a dazzling showing at Yokohama, placing, for example, 104 Sulfur Elemental (72 MD, 32 SB) in the top 50 decks. Noah Weil said in his coverage of the leading decks, "Red offered a lot of power and flexibility to the pros, and it shows both in quantity of red decks and the number of variations." As the season set into motion, with the White Weenie decks demolished by the Red trump cards, Red aggro gave way to Tarmogoyf-based decks of all types, with Mike Flores referring to the chase rare as "ubiquitous" in June, right at the start of the season. Thus, no reason to maindeck lots of Red. Block Constructed easily pivots on the strength of a couple of cards.

White fares almost as poorly, well above the expected sideboard-share average (29.0% based on the analysis in Reply #48). It would take some deeper analysis to determine that share exactly by archetype, but you can see from the statistically average U/B Teachings deck that 1 Temporal Isolation maindeck compares with 2 Pull From Eternity, 2 Disenchant, and 2 Temporal Isolation in the sideboard of the "average" build. The White-incorporated 'Goyf aggro decks are the key to why the PTQ season has proportionally more White cards maindeck than PT Yokohama 2007, though still subpar.

Gold-Factored Results

Prevalence (Non-Land Cards), TSpBC PTQ T8s
(% of all nonland cards played, gold split by color)
34.6% Blue (Gold = 9.1% of total)
23.3% Green (Gold = 22.4% of total)
17.5% White (Gold = 20.0% of total)
13.2% Red (Gold = 14.3% of total)
12.1% Black (Gold = 11.8% of total)
7.5% Artifact

The order of the colors is unchanged by the division of Gold cards. However, when Gold was listed separately, Blue was just shy of beating the next two colors combined, and outshines any two nongreen colors. With Gold cards factored in as their colors, Blue gains the least, while Green and White gain by far the most, as shown parenthetically in the table. It's hard to infer from this that Green and White are "piggy-backing" onto other colors' better abilities, though, because a number of the major Gold card counts were G/W creatures meant for attacking (#1 most-played Mystic Enforcer and #3 Saffi Eriksdotter).

Sideboard Shares (Non-Land Cards), TSpBC PTQ T8s
(% of cards sideboarded, by color, gold split by color)
56.6% Red
36.9% White
33.7% Artifact
26.7% Black
24.2% Blue
22.1% Green

Note that Gold cards, as before, have a much lower sideboard share than everything else (except land, obviously). As a result their incorporation once again brings down the sideboarded share of each color. The ranking is unchanged by this inclusion.

Who Cares?

Time Spiral isn't just one block. It's like a meta-block reflecting and updating many things from the past with modern design technology. Time Spiral's pro-Blue leanings despite the conscientious power-dampening which R&D has applied to the color are yet another sign that the problem remains unresolved. I really quite enjoyed the entire Time Spiral block, and the environment was very diverse and interesting. But how poorly would non-Blue colors have faired in the singular absence of Tarmogoyf? PT Yokohama 2007 indicates that it would not have been very well except for Red, and even the Tarmogoyf decks frequently included Blue.

TSpBC is important because it gives us new benchmarks. If four-mana tutors, five-mana 3/4s, and a 50% increase in counterspell mana costs still put Blue at the top of a block including some of the best weenie creatures of all time, how slight an error would R&D have to make for Blue to become unstoppable once again? I'd estimate that it wouldn't take much.

[Matt]

TSpBC is important because it gives us new benchmarks. If four-mana tutors, five-mana 3/4s, and a 50% increase in counterspell mana costs still put Blue at the top of a block including some of the best weenie creatures of all time,

Other than Goyf, on what are you basing this? The weenies in this block were thoroughly underwhelming.

After consulting Gatherer, the full list of creatures that could possibly be considered good from TSP block are:

Serra Avenger
Magus of the Scroll
Scryb Ranger
Sulfur Elemental
Blood Knight
Stonecloaker
Aven Mindcensor
Augur of Skulls
Magus of the Moon
Tarmogoyf
Thornweald Archer
Saffi Eriksdotter

And some of those are "maybes" at best. The only ones that look like something blue decks would ever actually fear are Serra Avenger, Sulfur Elemental, and Goyf. Maybe Augur and Magus of the Scroll, but maybe not. "Grey Ogre with a mildly disruptive ability," "Grizzly Bear that wins in combat," and "2 mana 1/1" are not exactly the lineage of cards blue has grown to fear.

When creatures are this slow, card advantage is king, and the decklists bear that out. Looking at the UB decks, they barely even make note of the fact that blue has countermagic: 4 Cancel, 1 Pact of Negation, and 1 Spell Burst among 12 decks. Blue is there almost entirely for drawing extra cards. They're not even using Teferi.

[Dr. Sylvan]

Other than Goyf, on what are you basing this? The weenies in this block were thoroughly underwhelming.

Really? Examples: Blade of the Sixth Pride, Blood Knight, Kavu Predator, Keldon Marauders, Knight of the Holy Nimbus, Magus of the Scroll, Mire Boa, Saffi Eriksdotter, Serra Avenger, Thornweald Archer, Whitemane Lion, Yixlid Jailer. Not all bombs, but certainly notable and definitely pushing the weenie curve pretty hard, including a tweaked River Boa, an animated Cursed Scroll, two 3-power-2-cost guys, two removal-trumps attached to 2/2s for two, etc.

Plus the recurrence of Dauthi Slayer, Soltari Priest, and Voidmage Prodigy. Also, the weenies that led into big finishers: Radha, Heir to Keld (Akroma, Angel of Fury) and Mogg War Marshal (Greater Gargadon) as well as cards with one-block-only tricks such as Riftsweeper. There was also substantial experimentation with power greater than casting cost, like Soultether Golem, Sangrophage, and Drifter il-Dal. Just because they weren't all amazing doesn't mean they aren't of any merit.

The weenies of this block are outdone by, off the top of my head---not a rigorous academic claim---just Onslaught (ridiculous Goblins), Tempest (ridiculous everything), and Mirrodin's Ravager-Affinity aggro/combo deck (worthy of multiple bans). They certainly couldn't have pushed much harder without hitting the speed limit of reasonable aggro.

[Vegeta2711]

how slight an error would R&D have to make for Blue to become unstoppable once again

Damnation / Wrath of God being blue. Or the stupid move of printing Tendrils of Corruption, Slaughter Pact, Damnation and Urborg in the same block.

Block almost always favors control unless aggro is ridiculously good or the format is amazingly bland (i.e. Masques).

It's true if Goyf hadn't been printed, aggro would've been awful, but that's more of an indictment of all the amazing removal they printed versus loads of mediocre creatures. People would've killed for a good three power two drop or even a Jackal Pup one drop. At least then you wouldn't be constantly relying on sacking the other guy out with Delay.

[Matt]

Blood Knight: combat ability, not relevant to control matchup
Knight of the Holy Nimbus: combat ability, not relevant to control matchup
Thornweald Archer: combat ability, not relevant to control matchup
Yixlid Jailer: ability not relevant to control matchup

Blade of the Sixth Pride: though it's fine against control, the glass jaw makes it unusable in the wider format
Keldon Marauders: lava axe is not really playable

Saffi Eriksdotter: barely better than a grizzly bear unless it's a combo card
Whitemane Lion: either a combat ability, or a Saffi for which you have to keep mana open.

Mire Boa: still doesn't beat any harder than Grizzly Bear. Not really threatening on its own, maybe if it had some equipment to carry
Serra Avenger: good threat, I think - that's 1
Magus of the Scroll: maybe
Kavu Predator: given that Tendrils was the removal of choice, this was probably good. It seems like it would have been weak in any other block.

The weenies might have been good, but not in ways that made them strong against control. I don't think in late 2006 that anyone expected Magus of the Scroll to really go nowhere, but putting a strong noncreature card on a creature really weakens it, I guess.

[Liam-K]

I think I may disagree with the conclusion that a high sideboard ratio implies a weak colour.  The way I see it, a high sideboard ratio implies strong narrow cards, especially since there is so much blue in the format which is good at finding the correct strong, narrow card.

A colour of strong narrow cards is a reasonable design idea in a vacuum.  The virtual card advantage of better cards is offset by the virtual card disadvantage of irrelevant cards and plays pretty fair over time... but somewhat unpredictably game to game, a good facet of a Red concept.  Its unfortunate that decks with lots of search can dodge the virtual card disadvantage and replace the irrelevant draws with universally useful ones, but "blue breaks red" doesn't equate to "red is weak," there is more than one standard of comparison.

More and more it seems toning down card selection would be rather effective at bringing Blue down a notch without nearly as many troubles as attacking direct draw, especially since Blue card selection can be limited to interact with Blue cards pretty easily.  Taking away Blue's ability to have the best sideboard and the best silver bullets without the trade-offs those things should require would force Blue to acknowledge its own vulnerabilities.


(edit: the poster boy for the red/blue interaction is the vintage staple fire/ice.  Fire, when drawn at the correct time, is cheap 2 for 1 removal and a swingy play, but drawn at the incorrect time is an expensive shock and is awful... powerful but narrow.  The addition of blue to the mix, in Ice, allows an inappropriately drawn Fire to be exchanged for something else, mitigating much of the risk at the cost of no reward.  The addition of a blue engine to the deck containing it (merchant scroll) makes a single copy sufficient, reducing the chance of drawing it inappropriately by a factor of 4 without sacrificing access to it at the correct time.  In a red deck in a fair meta, fire is a well designed card and should average out its good and bad showings with the rest of what you draw.  When coupled with blue on the card, it is either very strong or gets traded in.  When splashed into a blue deck it pretty much only appears when it is amazing sending its average value through the roof.)

[Dr. Sylvan]

Matt (and Josh, I suppose): At what time have weenie creatures been better that it didn't lead to an overly-powerful deck? Block may be biased toward control, but weenies were competitive for both the PT itself and PTQ season.

When MaRo did a history of 1-cmc power > mana cost, the list was pretty short for a reason (well, two reasons if you count that I think he forgot some). They aren't going to print large numbers of minimal-drawback power-above-cost weenies. They are quite cautious with the efficient weenies that they do print, and justifiably so. Their presence in too high a concentration basically asphyxiates decks slower than them, limiting the environment a lot. (Tempest-era had multiple viable mono-colored aggro decks.) For Time Spiral, Development thought they had made Serra Avenger the best card in the set. I'd rather weenies not get any better for fear of worsening creature-power-inflation.

(And, as an aside, Saffi has been called the "real villain" just today on SCG. And Keldon Marauders is more than a little better than Lava Axe! )

My statements are meant to sum up to, "Time Spiral block had weenies that were pretty good, and Blue's cards were dampened from their olden-times dominance. Yet Blue was #1 again by a big margin. Perhaps something different, like my suggestions, would work better in the future."

I think I may disagree with the conclusion that a high sideboard ratio implies a weak colour.  The way I see it, a high sideboard ratio implies strong narrow cards, especially since there is so much blue in the format which is good at finding the correct strong, narrow card.[...] The virtual card advantage of better cards is offset by the virtual card disadvantage of irrelevant cards and plays pretty fair over time... but somewhat unpredictably game to game, a good facet of a Red concept.

Except that it doesn't perform over time. Silver bullets that show up at the wrong time are referred to as dead cards. Decks that draw them don't just play inconsistently, they lose lots of the time waiting for the right card to show up. (Trust me, I try to make these decks all the time without Blue, and it's like hitting my head on a brick wall.)

Your first two sentences here actually make my point for me. A color of silver bullets is worthless by itself---only Blue and sometimes Black (currently) can take those narrow cards and deliver them when they're needed. Existing in the sideboard automatically implies less games with that card in the library, as I explained when I introduced the sideboard-ratio analysis.

Its unfortunate that decks with lots of search can dodge the virtual card disadvantage and replace the irrelevant draws with universally useful ones, but "blue breaks red" doesn't equate to "red is weak," there is more than one standard of comparison.

More and more it seems toning down card selection would be rather effective at bringing Blue down a notch without nearly as many troubles as attacking direct draw, especially since Blue card selection can be limited to interact with Blue cards pretty easily.  Taking away Blue's ability to have the best sideboard and the best silver bullets without the trade-offs those things should require would force Blue to acknowledge its own vulnerabilities.

This was what I sought to address by discussing Mystical Teachings as a fair tutor. Search shouldn't be required to be much worse than that. Tutoring has a place in Magic, though arguably it should stay Black and not bleed to Blue. It also shouldn't be necessary to make search cards only interact with a specific color. Magic is more fun when you're putting things together that aren't obvious, so imposing that as a consistent limit would take something away from the game. If that's the only way to solve a problem, that's fine, but i would rather see the other colors have more options than simply dragging the whole game closer to constant topdecking.

[Dr. Sylvan]

The Color Wheel: MaRo's "Before and After"

C'mon, Mark, I'm one of your biggest fans, and you're my hero. There's no need to suggest that my thoughts are underinformed or insufficiently sophisticated just because I look at the same set and don't like it.

I won't be so arrogant as to assume MaRo read my set review from this past Wednesday, but his article this morning has prompted more introspection on why I don't like Lorwyn, and whether I'm being unfair to it, as well as whether I should give it a chance to impress me by buying the cards to try them in play.

In discussing the tribal theme, Rosewater explains how they broadened it substantially from Onslaught. In my personal case, this doesn't address the source of my dislike. Merely by making the cards care about creature type, the deck is forced to focus on a narrow subset of cards and a very creature-intensive strategy. I have hundreds of favorite cards, and most of them do not fit into a tribe, nor do they favor playing a creature-heavy deck. I am probably an exception in this; I know that many others enjoy it more than I do. Nevertheless, I didn't care about these innovations---Lorwyn gives me more options within tribal, but the theme itself is antithetical to my preferences.

Clash was a biggie for me. I still hate it, as I said last week "not least because it affects my ability to know what my spell will do". Rosewater contends that it actually helps consistency with its Scry 1 effect, and the inter-block friendliness between Scry and clash is not lost on me. However, that does nothing to fix that I don't know what my clash spell will do when I cast it. Judge Unworthy arguably has the same issue, but it gives me more control, and was less emphasized in its set. Just because some clash cards are wonderful in Limited doesn't mean I like it (not to mention my primary interest in Constructed).

The rest of the mechanics didn't actively upset me; the set just had very little with them to thrill me. Possibly more important is how much I didn't like the set aesthetic/art. Both my feelings on the other mechanics and the art are detailed at some length in my above-linked original review.

WotC will certainly not abandon tribal solely on my account (woe to me, the contrarian), but I don't think I'm being unfair to skip buying their cards for these reasons in this case. I don't feel compelled to try playing these cards before dismissing them, because I have played many thousands of Magic games spanning more than half of my lifetime (12 of my 21 years), and I know what I like. I'm sure this is exactly the frustrating attitude MaRo spoke of, and I appreciate how much effort went into making the set exquisite to the last detail. However, I also appreciate the thousands of dollars that have coated my living space with cards (including three boxes of RGD block and five of TPF block, plus singles). Isn't it just possible that I know what I'm saying, and that I already gave the set a lot of benefit of the doubt before carefully deciding on my viewpoint?

In the end, I'll include some Purity and Thorn of Amethyst in my next SCG order, wait 3-6 years for Teeg prices to drop (patience is a virtue I'm pretty good at), and watch Morningtide's tribal cards pass me by, hoping fervently/futilely for Shadowmoor to have zero to do with Tribal.

(cross-posted between the after-article thread and my "The Color Wheel" thread on TheManaDrain.com)

[Matt]

Matt (and Josh, I suppose): At what time have weenie creatures been better that it didn't lead to an overly-powerful deck? Block may be biased toward control, but weenies were competitive for both the PT itself and PTQ season.

It seems that in your view, whenever weenie creatures are good enough to be the best deck, they're "overly powerful," yet when weenies aren't the best deck, it's because control (or combo) is too good. It sounds to me that you just label whatever is the best at any given time 'too good', which kind of defines the thing we're looking for out of existence.

[Klep]

The biggest problem I have with clash (outside of the randomness) is the effect it has on deck construction, and that is why I'm glad none of the clash cards thus far seem to be constructed worthy.  The need to reliably have the top card of your library have a high cmc drives your deck construction towards a higher curve and a lower land count.  Neither of those factors makes for good play.  Either you have several turns at the beginning of the game featuring nothing happening at all, or you have one player stuck with cards in his hand he can't cast because he can't find land, or both.  Fortunately for limited, there are other concerns driving deck construction there which prevent the 'clash factor' from having significant impact.

[Ephraim]

The biggest problem I have with clash (outside of the randomness) is the effect it has on deck construction, and that is why I'm glad none of the clash cards thus far seem to be constructed worthy.

I think that this trait of cards with clash is quite intentional.  For the most part, I think that they are limited-worthy cards.  That means that their draw-smoothing properties show up in the formats that most benefit from draw smoothing.  Furthermore, unlike a lot of cards in the past that had a competitive element, cards with clash do not follow the pattern of "you win or your opponent wins."  They follow the pattern of "you win or you win even more."  They're fractionally overpriced for "win" and fractionally underpriced for "win more."  To me, that seems perfectly fine.  Verdict:  I like clash a lot.

[Godder]

Matt (and Josh, I suppose): At what time have weenie creatures been better that it didn't lead to an overly-powerful deck? Block may be biased toward control, but weenies were competitive for both the PT itself and PTQ season.

It seems that in your view, whenever weenie creatures are good enough to be the best deck, they're "overly powerful," yet when weenies aren't the best deck, it's because control (or combo) is too good. It sounds to me that you just label whatever is the best at any given time 'too good', which kind of defines the thing we're looking for out of existence.

Control tends to be the popular archetype for Pro players, so if it's not viable because weenies are too good, they moan and complain that the format is broken, basically.

[Matt]

Some sort of Clash spell might wind up working in, say, an Affinity deck. There's a deck in legacy that plays the affinity guys AND Force of Will - that's a lot of high CMC cards, yet without actually needing a lot of mana.

Control tends to be the popular archetype for Pro players, so if it's not viable because weenies are too good, they moan and complain that the format is broken, basically.

But that doesn't explain Phillip moaning and complaining.

[Dr. Sylvan]

I can definitely see how I'm creating that impression of defining the problem as unsolveable. Let me try to split hairs and present a little more of how I see metagames so you can see why I cast my disapproval on certain things, and what would constitute a solution. (By the way, I love that you're keeping me on the ball, Matt, so please do keep telling me I'm wrong.)

In a metagame, I believe that there are some big factors in environment health, and, long-term, game health as a whole:

(1) Viable decks across a spectrum of beatdown/control,

(2) Viable decks across almost all colors, excluding different colors on a rotating basis, alternating best/worst status,

(3) A diversity of viable decks (not just an R/G beatdown vs. U/B/W control bipolar meta), and

(4) Enforcement of a speed limit, which varies somewhat commensurate with depth of card pool.

These principles will lead me to characterize something negatively if the meta violates any one component, and moreso the fewer criteria are met. So I will frown on environments where beatdown is dominant (Ravager Affinity in Standard), where control is dominant (Mono-Black at OdBC PT Osaka), where too many colors are un- or under-represented (OdBC, OnBC esp. post-Scourge, MirBC), where colors aren't taking fair turns at the top and bottom of the food chain for too long (TSpBC and Blue strength in general), where nearly all decks are invalid next to a couple of dominant decks (OdBC, OnBC post-Scourge, MirBC), and where decks are too fast (Affinity again, Tempest-era mono-aggro, and most of the history of combo).

For Time Spiral Block Constructed, my issue is not that control is too good, but that Blue is too good, again (noting that the two are easily conflated in the current color wheel because of the cleverness problem). So I complain that it breaks #2 because Blue doesn't take enough (hardly any) turns as worst color, and White is near the bottom again. I say the weenies couldn't be much better because of a different value, #4, the breakage of which I believe usually leads to problems with #3 by suppressing decks that aren't fast enough. (This is why I don't think they can repeat the power of Onslaught Goblins: it reduces deck options.)

In this case, I sought to point out that Blue was dominant despite the availability of strong weenie cards which were presumably intended to compete with it (the quality of which you also dispute, and I understand that). In the future, I will cast my disapproving eye on many things, from dominant decks to dominant colors to un-diverse metas to speedy decks. I may even expand and get upset with decks that are just un-interesting.

It's a long list of things I have some objection to, but I have high standards. Complying with all of those principles together is hard, but I've greatly enjoyed observing even formats which miss on a couple of those counts (Vintage has failed at least #2 and often #4 for years, yet I loved it for a long time), so Magic is fun for me even if it's not ideal. I enjoy finding the roots of disequilibrium in a system and contemplating solutions, so I apply that to Magic through my long-winded "moaning and complaining". Other people are much better at playing than I am, so I stick to my self-perceived analytical strengths, and I post it here on the off chance someone will find it as interesting as I do.

Hopefully this clears up that it's not meant to define an unsolveable puzzle, just one that hasn't been solved often or for very long in Magic history.

[Dr. Sylvan]

The Color Wheel: Allied and Enemy Color Ability-Sharing

This PM prompted my curiosity:

After reading more of the color wheel I had a question.  To what extent do you think the distribution of abilities should be based purely on flavor, and to what extent, if any, should it be based on an organized system of the allies/enemies.  Its better that I explain with an example. 

White is the color with probably the strongest affinity for enchantments both positive and negative.  This affinity bleeds to its allies,  green gets enchantment destruction, and blue gets manipulation (see arcanum wings for an example).   Whites enemies black and red have by far the least interaction with enchantments.

Blue is the color of direct draw, and this is bled to black in the form of cards for life, card for sacrifices, etc. However its not bled to white, instead for flavor reasons its more recently being bled to green (greater good reprint, harmonize). 

Do you think flavor should dominate which colors get which abilities or whether they should be more organized such that whichever color has an ability primarily bleeds that to its allies?  Everything I read on this topic usually only covers the flavor angle.

I think the more important overriding criteria should be mechanical balance around the whole color wheel, within the confines of flavor. A strict ally-sharing division for abilities would diminish the colors' individual identities, and it would still beg the question of who gets primacy over each mechanic. The ally/enemy structure is a flavor device centered on the motivations behind colors' goals, rather than the tools used to pursue them. Attempting to share strictly on that basis would make less sense.

As an example, look to the graveyard. Black is undoubtedly primary in graveyard manipulation and recursion, with Green second and some relationship to White as the second-best yard-to-play color. Blue and Red would, based on ally-sharing, get some piece of this, but they historically have very little, and it does make sense that way. Blue, as always, could be flavored as "seeking knowledge", but that quickly leads to flavor-omnipotence.

Most abilities do take some consideration of the ally/enemy alignments, but do not respect them at anything like equal strength, nor in a consistent way across all abilities. Probably the most common is for an ability to split between two allied colors with a third color included as an also-ran, especially a shared enemy (or the reverse arrangement seen in my graveyard example: one strong color sharing the weaker side of a mechanic with an opposing allied pair).

Here are some other examples (far, far from a systematic/complete list).

Allied pair, shared enemy:

Life gain - 1st White, 2nd Green, 3rd Black
Card drawing - 1st Blue, 2nd Black, 3rd Green
Creature spot removal - 1st Black, 2nd Red, 3rd White
Creature mass removal - 1st White, 2nd Black, 3rd Red

Allied pair only:

Enchantments - 1st White, 2nd Green*
Protection - 1st White, 2nd Blue
Tutoring - 1st Black, 2nd Blue
Taxing - 1st White, 2nd Blue

( * : I disagree with neppy's example here. When you spend a ton of time on futile Enchantress decks (that linked thread is a blast from the past, by the way), you learn that in fact Green is just as closely tied to enchantments as White is, and no other color really has any affinity for them at all. Arcanum Wings is just a random Future Sight oddity; Blue just happens to manipulate everything. )

Allied trio:

Token creation - 1st Green, 2nd White, 3rd Red

Enemy pair only:

Shroud - 1st Green, 2nd Blue

Abilities which are basically never shared (except in Planar Chaos):

Damage prevention - White
Counterspell - Blue
Permanent stealing - Blue
Bounce - Blue
Discard - Black
Uncounterable - Green
Shroud - Green
Reach - Green

Artifacts don't fit any of these, because destroying them is split Green, Red, then White, but the affinity for them is nearly all Blue with some occasional Red. Direct damage, as well---separate from its ability to kill creatures---is split to all non-Blue colors (usually) through Black draining, White rangestrike, and Green flyer hate. Evasion and combat manipulation are of course split among all colors. And so on.

The important take-home message is that there are many different ally/enemy mixes on abilities currently. Compressing those to one uniform standard would, besides being a huge precedent-shattering catastrophe, take a lot of things from their most flavorful colors or give them to very unflavorful colors.

[Matt]

In a metagame, I believe that there are some big factors in environment health, and, long-term, game health as a whole:
(1) Viable decks across a spectrum of beatdown/control,
(2) Viable decks across almost all colors, excluding different colors on a rotating basis, alternating best/worst status,
(3) A diversity of viable decks (not just an R/G beatdown vs. U/B/W control bipolar meta), and
(4) Enforcement of a speed limit, which varies somewhat commensurate with depth of card pool.
...
It's a long list of things I have some objection to, but I have high standards.

I think your standards are not so much high as impossible, akin to asking for a positive integer which is prime and even and bigger than 5.

Mostly it's your forth point: your "speed limit" criterion probably directly conflicts with your requirement for there to be successful beatdown strategies: any time a control deck loses to a beatdown deck, or every time a combo decks beats a beatdown deck, it's because it simply got overrun. The beats came too fast, too hard. Enforcing a speed limit inherently favors control.

Also, and this is something of a side note, I think you're wrong to look for weenies to beat control. Weenies have a history of beating [/i]counterspells[/i], mostly because they cost less than the typical counter. But look at the TSP control decks: it was all blue card drawing and black board-controlling removal, with almost no counterspells to speak of. Wrath of God and "kill your guy + Fog" are naturally dominant over weenies. One thing that might have fixed TSP BC would have been threats that weren't answerable by the black removal; threats like Smokestack, or Haunting Echoes, or Survival or, I don't know, Gigapede.

As I see it, TSP block wasn't the story of making blue too good. It was the story of a lack of diversity of threats. As anyone who watched 300 or has ever played Diablo knows, even the strongest army cannot win if it's channeled too narrowly. That is what happened: all the decent threats were of the same narrow kind, enabling control decks to attack that class of card.

[Dr. Sylvan]

This is, once again, a matter of definitions. The Venn diagram between "beatdown" and "weenies" is far from 100% overlap. A speed limit crushes weenies, but I think I've established, or at least made a case, that a pure weenie strategy is doomed from the outset under most circumstances (hence the serial failure of WW decks). However, this does not rule out beatdown decks. I do not expect weenies to beat control often if ever; Wizards does.

My statements are meant to sum up to, "Time Spiral block had weenies that were pretty good, and Blue's cards were dampened from their olden-times dominance. Yet Blue was #1 again by a big margin. Perhaps something different, like my suggestions, would work better in the future."

This quote alludes to my many previous statements about how to make other colors more flexible, the most notable of which is to move White away from weenies towards control.

Weenies may be the "purest" beatdown deck in the same way that Draw-Go with dozens of counterspells is arguably the purest control deck. Neither is all that healthy when it's near the top of the metagame. The combination of the "across a spectrum" criterion with a speed limit wants decks that are less monothematic, and which must plan for both the early and late games. Decks where card choices are not made on the basis of speeding up a goldfish kill, but instead acting in opposition to an opponent who is expected to resist.

There can be beatdown decks that don't win on turn four all the time, just as there can be control decks that have more than a lone Frenetic Efreet as a finisher. U/G Madness, for instance, had trouble winning before turn five. And even this Terry Soh article on Gruul discusses a Standard beatdown list prepared for PT Honolulu 2006 with seven four-drops---a far cry from the Sligh curve in the days when "fear of Fireblast" was coined as a phrase.

The key to making beatdown viable without overwhelmingly strong weenie creatures is, as you point out, to provide an alternate route to victory which undermines the effectiveness of a Wrath effect. Burn is one such route, which is why RDW is almost always at least a candidate deck for any testing gauntlet (this time Tendrils of Corruption may have been too prevalent to fight). Drawing cards to recover from a board sweep is another (UG Madness did this with cards like Careful Study and Deep Analysis). In the old days, Armageddon provided another choice, simply cutting out the ability to Wrath for the opponent.

Not all of these are equally preferable, nor does their availability necessarily mean beatdown strategies will supersede control in any given format. Indeed, Block is likely biased toward control decks with powerful removal (Odyssey block Mono-Black, Onslaught block Lightning Rift/Astral Slide, Mirrodin block Big Red, etc.), and this may be incurable. However, my goals are not totally self-contradictory.

[Matt]

How is moving white's focus away from creatures supposed to solve those problems? White is the color that, thematically, should have the greatest number of options for "weenie support" (i.e. undermining anti-weenie strategies). It already has had several:

1. Mana denial, in the forms of Geddon and something like Hokori.

2. Non-creature creature enhancers: white is both the "equipment" color and the "crusade" color. It also recently got Griffin Guide. The point of these cards is that they let you present a sizable threat to the opponent without actually having to commit a lot of cards to the board, so that you can force the opponent to Wrath without actually opening yourself up to the card-disadvantage a Wrath has historically meant.

3. Occasional light counterspelling: Mana Tithe, and wizards have said that Memory Lapse could be done as a white card. I personally think both Delay and Remand could have been white too (see my old CCF card Recant), with the flavor being bureaucracy holding up the spell.

4. Because white is the best "teamwork" color, it can get cards like the brand-new Militia's Pride, which looks to be the best Mobilization yet, and the brand-old Rebels, the point of which is (like #2) to be able to limit the card advantage offered by a Wrath effect by forcing the opponent to spend his sweeper (usually his best card) eliminating only 1-2 of your cards.

5. White has a non-negligible slice of the "resurrection" pie. It can bring dead guys back to life, which is a form of card advantage. It can thus "restock and resupply". Bone Harvest was originally a white card, Reinforcements (although it wasn't card advantage), and there's also stuff like Auriok Salvagers and the trinket-regrowing white grizzly bear whose name escapes me.

6. Related to this are cards which punish the opponent for Wrathing. Griffin Guide doesn't really count because you'd always just rather have the Guided creature, but something in the vein of Promise of Bunrei would work fine.

7. There is no obvious reason white can't have card advantage. Raw card-drawing may not be its style, but Tithe effects work fine. Also see point #5.

There. That's seven ways white can solve the "weenie vs. wrath" problem that are already definitely in white's part of the color pie and do not need to be stolen away from any other color's slice. Wizards needs only to push these mechanics, and you will learn to fear the Plains.