Magic: The Gathering – Page 8

Evidence for Actual Dual Lands in Return to Ravnica

I hate speculation. It’s a waste of time.

So of course, I’m kinda doing it here. Why? Because we all wanted the Ravnica Dual Lands to be reprinted in M13. They weren’t. I argued last year why that was ok, and I’m still sticking to those points. With, sigh, a “Return to Ravnica” around the corner, we know it’s going to be a multi-colored set (Zac Hill even said as much today). It wasn’t a surprise, that’s the plane; it’s like going back to Mirrodin and having us care about the Graveyard. Flavor just doesn’t work that way.

Back to speculation. Sometimes you have no facts to back it up, but just a “gut feeling.” Everywhere people were talking about how Noble Hierarch was “Absolutely” going to be in M13 since they brought back Exalted. “Why not? It fit the name/number crunch and Exalted was in the set.” That was all the evidence that people needed. The evidence against was A) Exalted was only seen in White and Black (The other returning mechanics had splashes), and B) no three colors were ever seen on a card, unless they dealt with Nicol Bolas (Blue/Black/Red). Obviously pushing a Bant card in a set with no “Bant” wasn’t going to happen.

We have evidence though for Dual Lands with Basic Land types for Return to Ravnica. Evidence in this Core Set, M13. We know this because Wizards puts cards in the Core Set that work with the Block printed before, and after (though mostly after). That’s another post in itself, but you get things like Index (helps Miracles) and Disciple of Bolas (Undying and Morbid) that help out the previous block. What “evidence” do we have this time? What could possibly happen that would make me believe that Dual Lands are going to happen in Return to Ravnica.

Because of the increase use of the Basic Land type in M13.

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Ten Lords a Leapin’

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This is more of an info dump, but when I saw the card on the right, I had to do some digging.

Frank Lepore on TCGPlayer.com previewed this little gem today. If you notice, it’s very similar to Lord of Atlantis with the only difference being that it benefits your creatures instead of everyone’s. This is nothing new and something that WotC has been doing for years. But it is a little disheartening to see this guy printed.

Why?

I’m not against “Strictly better” cards; the game will need them as time goes on. I’m sure that none of you care that Elite Vanguard is “strictly better” than Savannah Lions (except the few Cat lovers out there. Wait, what am I saying, this is the internet, of course you’re Cat lovers).

Some of this boils down to Blue getting “good” creatures and, well, Merfolk don’t really need the help.

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Should Mechanics Get Mythicfied?

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Non-Magic related news: Wife and I had the baby last month (if you haven’t been paying attention on Twitter). Everyone’s doing well and learning their new role in our family. Obviously this is why I haven’t updated recently. I thought, “Sure, the baby will be up at 2 am, I can write then.” Ha! Anyway, this isn’t the place to talk about such matters, but yes, this will be covered in a future post. You’ll recognize it when you see it.

Onto Magic Design.

Last month, former WotC employee Gregory Marques wondered aloud in his Avacyn Restored Soulbond review a very interesting design issue:

The [Soulbond] rarity distribution is reasonable, though I’m not sure why no mythic. Someone should do an analysis of new mechanics appearing at mythic. I might guess they usually get one, but without researching it I’m not going to make any claims about that. Even if they always do, not making one is not necessarily a bad thing.

Sitting at home between feeding, burping, changing and playing with the baby, this seemed like a fun little project to do. The Mythic rarity is heading into its fifth year of print with Return to Ravnica (Worst. Set name. Ever), and an analysis of how the rarity has evolved should be an interesting topic, but that’s not something we’ll cover today. Instead, we’re going to look at the mechanics of a set and find out how many of those appeared at Mythic, to fulfill Greg’s passing fancy.

This is where it gets a little murky: what counts as a mechanic? Much like the debate between which Zombies you choose in a apocalyptic nightmare, there has to be some cut off to what you consider a mechanic or everything is a mechanic. What we’re looking for is two main ideas: keyword mechanics (What most people think of as mechanics), and mechanics named by Wizards that aren’t named on the cards themselves.

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Cavern of Souls and the Counterspell Problem

Editor’s Note: I accidentally titled this post way too close to Kirblar024’s post on the same subject that I read earlier. I had titled this something a bit longer and reworded it at the last moment, and this one seemed to fit. Now I know why. I highly recommend you check out his post because he argues that Hexproof is the issue where I only briefly mention it here. Cavern of Souls and the “Counterspell Problem” in Standard. Yeah, way too close, so a link here is my apology. It was a good read, highly suggest you check it out.
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In the beginning Counterspell was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

Cavern of Souls is a very controversial card to say the least.

Originally created to combat the Mana Leak problem (mixed with Snapcaster Mage and Delver of Secrets), there are some who cry out and say that it is exactly those cards that keep the scarier cards in the format in check. Matt Sperling on Channel Fireball explains that the issue is not Mana Leak, but these large creatures that create quite extensive card advantage. It’s these cards that their caster gets such a huge benefit from getting these creatures on the battlefield that Blue has to have good counterspells to help with the metagame from becoming too much of a one deck hierarchy.

Which of course that it’s funny that Delver decks are everywhere, which WotC was trying to deal with in the first place. Now Cavern of Souls will go into those decks to make Snapcaster Mage and Delver of Secrets much more powerful because they can’t be countered.

This all begs the question: Why should we rely on Blue to help keep the metagame in check?

Throughout history Blue decks have been a staple in almost every format. Being able to out draw, counter spells, and deal with permanents at their own leisure has allowed one color to rise above the rest. However when we get a land that stops a portion of a card type, not the card type or all colors of the card type mind you, suddenly WotC is throwing the future metagame into a tizzy because the traditional “control” color can’t deal with threats.

Well, it can still bounce them.

And copy them.

And put them on top of their library.

And take control of them.

What can Black, Red, Green, or White do? Destory, deal damage, Fight, or temporary exile them. Almost one in each color. Yet Blue can do so much more combined. And it constantly gets these types of spells in each set.

At all rarities, at all card types.

This is the identity of Blue; out think, and outplay your opponent. The color is driven on card advantage. So when another color gets a hint of card advantage, everyone turns to Blue to “Fix” the metagame. If no one can, then clearly the format is broken.

Bloodbraid Elf.

Tempered Steel.

Kessig Wolf Run.

Only Blue keeps getting counterspells to “keep” the format in check. And I feel this should change. How?

Give every color counterspells.

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It’s a Miracle, We’re Soulbonded Together – Looking at Avacyn Restored Mechanics

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The full set hasn’t been spoiled yet (for up to date info, here’s the official WotC Card Image Gallery), but now that we know what the new keywords are we can take a look at them. Here’s the mechanics page that WotC has usually thrown up for the past few sets (and I like them, they’re very helpful) so that we’re all on the same level here. We’re not going to talk about the “Loners” or “Flickering” mechanics because those require the whole set to be examined and we don’t have that yet. Undying is returning, and unless we’re talking about adding new enters the battlefield abilities, I think we can let that go.

It’s ok, we’ve got two new keyword mechanics that we can turn our attention towards.

Miracle

Miracle [Cost] (You may cast this card for its miracle cost when you draw it if it’s the first card you drew this turn.)

Obviously headlined by the above card, this the new mechanic everyone is talking about. Ok, more like everyone is fearing that this card is going to take over every format ever since there’s numerous ways to manipulate the top card of your library.

And Temporal Mastery’s Blue. That automatically makes it good.

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