Three months have passed since the Gatewatch defeated Emrakul. What have they been up to? Original Story: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-...
With all the excitement, worry, and everything in between going on with the current goings on of Magic the Gathering, as well as being inspired by chatting with @bace-jeleren and checking out her most recent fanfic, I was a bit inspired myself...
So, I was playing with the idea of maybe writing a bit myself. I had a few ideas. One I had to set aside because it was a bit too like another, more ‘original’ idea I’m working on (’quixotic’ should tell most that have been following for a while what i’m talking about). The second idea was a sort of (possibly non-canon) sort of ‘prequel’ focusing on Chandra and Nissa from Bace’s aforementioned fic.
And the other idea was starting ‘fresh’-ish on taking a different direction during Kaladesh. But of course, if you are going to write a fan fic, you should reconnect with the spaces of the work you intend to work within or even change... so here I am.
Homesick.
my #1, all time, favorite MtG story. I just love the moments from this so much.
If/When I write anything based on this, I’ll be sure to link it... but for now, I figured I would bring back this moment of Magic’s lore history.
No matter if the future remains frustrating for you, or if your greatest story dreams come true, or somewhere in between, for now, lets just all take a moment to enjoy the parts we did like.
Also, thanks to @voiceofallmtg and everyone that worked with Gen to put this audio version together. The written form is great, and they did a lot to bring it to life, giving voice and form in my mind beyond simple text on the ‘page’. X3
Can we quit it with the good colorless cards already?
Artifacts and otherwise colorless cards have been part of Magic: the Gathering since Alpha, and since Alpha, artifacts have represented some of the stupidest, most poorly balanced, most overpowered cards in all of Magic: the Gathering. I’m not going to get into explaining why Black Lotus, the Moxen, and Sol Ring are strong. That part’s self evident. What I want to point out, though, is how they compare to the colored spells in Alpha.
Right from the start, Green cemented itself as the color of fast mana. With Llanowar Elves, Wild Growth, and the rare Birds of Paradise, Green was far better than the other four colors at ramping. Despite this, the actual strongest mana acceleration spells in the set are the artifacts. As any deck can run artifacts easily, this means that Green wasn’t actually any better at mana acceleration than White, Blue, Black, or Red. Green did still have Channel, a card with power all its own, but the fact remained that artifacts stole away an important part of Green’s color identity.
Another interesting parallel in the same set was that of Dark Ritual and Black Lotus. The fact that Black Lotus is too strong is not the issue we’re looking at here. The issue is that Black Lotus is almost strictly better than a card that cost a colored mana. From the beginning, artifacts were better at some things than the colors who were supposedly good at it.
The question then is “Why is this bad?” This is bad because in Magic: the Gathering, deck diversity and the balance of deck construction relies heavily on the color pie. Gaining versatility and advantage in deckbuilding is supposed to require reaching out into multiple colors, diluting the reliability of casting those spells. A deck running only Black can reliably cast its Dark Rituals and use them to cast any of its spells, while a deck running Black and White will both have times when it cannot generate the Black mana to cast Dark Ritual and times when the Black mana generated doesn’t allow it to cast the spells it wants. By running Black Lotus instead, it has a card that it can always cast and that is useful for all its spells. This lessens the tradeoff. As the number of useful colorless cards increases, the balance between having the right spells and having the right mana continues to shift until, ultimately, a deck can just run all the best cards instead of needing to work into a specific color’s strategy.
Somehow, Wizards has continually managed to mess this up.
THE MESS THAT WAS MIRRODIN
Ten years into Magic: the Gathering, Wizards made an artifact-heavy set called Mirrodin. In order to ensure that artifacts saw play, they made the set reward players for playing artifacts, then gave them far more good artifacts than they needed. The resulting sets were the most destructive in Magic’s history, driving people away from the game in droves and resulting in a huge amount of cards banned. Interestingly, the majority of the cards that were banned were artifact lands, cards that were merely ‘better’ versions of normal lands by virtue of being artifacts. Wizards attempted to encourage people to play Artifacts by making cards that rewarded them for it, but then forgot that an artifact is supposed to be worse than the colored equivalent versions. Perhaps the artifact lands were worse on paper, as they could be destroyed by artifact removal, but the sheer volume of rewards meant these lands were incredibly powerful. When everything in your deck is an artifact, the fact that your lands can be damaged by artifact removal isn’t particularly relevant, as it just draws removal away from something else. Further, affinity cards like Myr Enforcer and Frogmite rapidly became better than colored cards of the same power and toughness due to their ability to frequently cost no mana at all. The artifacts that rewarded one for playing with artifacts were so good, the best deck at the time ran three colors with no dual lands just so it could run more lands that counted as artifacts. Mirrodin and Darksteel, though, as awful as they were, were the result of a number of various features throughout a set working together too well. “Seat of the Synod” alone is not a particularly good card, nor is “Frogmite” or even “Disciple of the Vault.” It took the combination of far too many good rewards to get the massive ban, and most of that was just banning the artifact lands.
Still, it’s important to note that these rewards for playing artifacts at the time were far larger and more straightforward than the rewards for playing in color. Onslaught’s tribal themes included rewards for a number of different one and two color decks, but only Goblins managed to stand against the artifact deck at the time, and that was still not in the Goblins’ favor. The only other strong deck was a mono-green deck that relied on massive amounts of artifact removal, built specifically to fight the dominant artifact deck, and it was particularly weak against anything else. There simply weren’t any strong rewards for being in black or white, and the only rewards in blue worth noting still involved playing lots of artifacts.
After the bannings, artifacts calmed down, and for a time it looked like Magic was safe. Another seven years later, though, Wizards decided to revisit the world of Mirrodin, and once again managed to mess up hard.
ONE FOR THE PRICE OF TWO
Scars of Mirrodin actually learned some very important lessons about artifact balance from Mirrodin. The strong artifact rewards were all on colored cards, and the artifacts themselves weren’t significantly stronger than normal. There were some interesting and potent ones, such as Ratchet Bomb and Mox Opal, and the Swords made a powerful return, but none of them were particularly problematic at first. Though the Swords were part of a deck that resulted in bannings, the problem card was actually Stoneforge Mystic, which allowed players to search for Equipment and cast them more cheaply than their mana cost normally allowed. When used properly, the Swords were fair, if powerful. Then came New Phyrexia.
Though many weren’t artifacts themselves, spells that cost Phyrexian Mana are intensely problematic. Phyrexian Mana, like artifacts, results in a number of cards that can be played in any color, circumventing normal weaknesses. While the idea was that these cards could be paid for with mana or life, the tradeoff of two life for a mana of the color you need is generally such a good one that in practice many Phrexian Mana spells are put into decks that have no way to pay the colored component. The issue, as usual, is that these simply become “best cards” with no real downside to including them in the deck.
Even without looking at the powerfully unique cases of cards like Spellskite and Birthing Pod, a simple look at Dismember tells us that something is off. If the player doesn’t wish to pay any black mana four it, it reads “1, Instant, As an additional cost to cast this, pay 4 life. Target creature gets -5/-5 until end of turn.” Even with Black mana, the best version of this effect is Vendetta, which can’t hit black creatures and often results in about the same life lost. In Green or Blue, this effect is powerful and unheard of. The fact that it’s spot removal means it can’t break the game outright, but it does strongly remove the need for these decks to have access to black mana if they can get a useful black effect in colorless. Looking at other examples, Slash Panther was a somewhat popular card as a 4/2 haste for 4 colorless and 2 life. Yes, a Red deck had a stronger option in Hero of Oxid Ridge, and Green had Vengevine at the time, but Blue, Black, and White had nothing comparable. Slash Panther saw play in Vintage for a time due to it being the most aggressively costed creature that can be cast for colorless mana, and more aggressive than many creatures in other colors.
Basically every card with a Phyrexian Mana cost is undercosted. Porcelain Legionnaire is a 3/1 First Strike for 2. Vault Skirge is a 1/1 Flying Lifelink for 1. Mental Misstep and Gitaxian Probe are both banned in Modern for being effects that are simply too good when they don’t require colored mana. Mutagenic Growth, Gut Shot, and Dismember also see Modern play. There are few, if any, other mechanics where such a significant volume of cards that have that mechanic see serious, competitive play. The question with spells like these is, if we compare them to the colors that don’t normally get these abilities, “are they better than using an additional color?” We also need to ask “Are these abilities actually better than the similar spells that cost colored mana?” In many circumstances, paying 2 life to do 1 damage to target creature or player is better than spending R to do 2 damage to target creature or player. Phyrexian Mana resulted in colorless cards that were as good as (or sometimes better than) what their color could normally do.
TOTALLY NOT A SIXTH COLOR
Fast forward a few more years and we see a set with colorless, non-artifact creatures. Oath of the Gatewatch introduced a number of creatures that only cost colorless mana, and these were immediately a problem. Despite the attempt to restrict use by requiring colorless mana, many of these creatures were aggressive, powerful, and immediately broken in older formats. Eldrazi ravaged modern and, while there painlands enabled it, they made their mark on standard as well. Overall, the Eldrazi, while powerful, did not damage standard too much, but a handful of creatures showed off the standard problem of strong colorless cards: Matter Reshaper, Thought-Knight Seer, and Reality Smasher were all more powerful than the creatures that could be played for colored mana. Even top decks already using three colors of creature were using Matter Reshaper, showing both that attaining the colorless mana was too easy and that it was a superior creature to even multicolored creatures, let alone single colored ones.
To see the issue, we need to look only at these creatures and compare them to those of other colors. Let’s look closely at Reality Smasher.
5/5, 5 mana, haste, trample. It has a second ability that’s beneficial, but a bit harder to quantify. In the history of Magic: the Gathering, there have been 33 creatures with Haste at 5 or more power and 5 or less mana. This sounds reasonable, but let’s first cut out the fourteen of these that leave play at the end of their turn and the five that have some sort of additional cost, leaving us with fourteen. Of these fourteen, only Demigod of Revenge, Horde of Notions, Hunted Dragon, Skizzik, Thunderblust, and Thundermaw Hellkite have any form of evasion, and Hunted Dragon comes with a pretty serious drawback of its own. Of these, Demigod of Revenge and Horde of Notions both have intense color requirements, the former forcing you to only use red and black, and the latter requiring all five. A direct comparison to Thunderblust and Skizzik are more difficult, in part due to Skizzik’s ability to be underpaid for, but the fact remains that Reality Smasher is significantly ahead of normal for creatures who cost colored mana.
The issue is not just that these colorless creatures compete with the best creatures of the color good at an ability, but that they overwhelm the colored creatures of the colors bad at it. Thought-Knot Seer is a 4/4 for 4, with upside. Blue has had three 4 power creatures for 4 mana that don’t have a drawback. Ever. I understand and accept that Blue is bad at creature combat, but it’s now worse at it than not using a color at all.
Once again, I will state that the small number of the Eldrazi and the overall power level of Standard at the time meant that they weren’t oppressive, and the powerful two-color and three-color creatures were able to be more threatening. That’s right; it took creatures of multiple colors to stand up to the sheer power of the creatures that cost none. Now, obviously we don’t want a standard where only three-color rhinoceri are playable, but at the same time, it’s troubling to see colorless cards that are stronger than most of the colored options.
IN WHICH ETERNAL SCOURGE IS PERFECTLY FINE
Eldritch Moon had a good relationship with colorless spells. The majority of the colorless spells could be cast for colorless mana but were made cheaper if you spent colored mana and sacrificed a creature to cast them. This allowed for cards that were colorless but tended to function more like colored spells and rewarded you for playing colored creatures. Only two true colorless Eldrazi were printed. Eternal Scourge is an odd creature, strong but not problematic. There may still be a way to break it, but it hasn’t been found yet. The other was Emrakul.
Emrakul, the Promised End immediately proved very powerful, too easy to cast, and showed up in decks of all five colors. There were almost no ways to handle her if she resolved, she was often cast for a rather small amount of mana (or, later, for four mana and six energy), and she was prone to winning games on her own, destroying the opponent’s board and hand. Emrakul, the Promised End may be one of the most ‘pushed’ cards I have ever seen, and her colorless nature meant there was no restriction at all to how easily she could be played. Unlike Kozilek, she didn’t even require true colorless mana, making her incredibly easy to cast for any deck. And then she got banned.
CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES
More recently, we have Kaladesh. Kaladesh didn’t want to play the original Mirrodin game of rewarding players for playing artifacts, or require colorless mana like Oath of the Gatewatch. Kaladesh just decided to print powerful artifacts. Between Walking Ballista, Scrapheap Scrounger, Aetherworks Marvel, and, of course, the vehicles, Kaladesh gave us a number of artifacts that were just the best versions of their cards made better by their lack of colored costs.
It’s not a particularly controversial statement to say that standard has been bad since Kaladesh appeared, and we can point most of those problems to artifacts being more powerful than most in-color rewards. Smuggler’s Copter and Heart of Kiran are stronger, more aggressive, and more evasive than any creatures in any colors, with only the sheer synergy of Winding Constrictor being able to stand against it fairly (and even then leaning heavily on Walking Ballista), and the Saheeli Cat combo being an obviously synergistic mistake that can’t directly be faulted on the power level of either card. Aetherworks Marvel manages to be basically unstoppable, and counting as a casting makes it just that much stronger. Scrapheap Scrounger, while not too far ahead of the curve, has its competition in creatures that cost mana of two different colors, though it does have a drawback. There should be a reward for taking the risk of running multiple colors, but when the colorless cards are better it both lessens the risk and the rewards.
I understand that there’s a whole other rant in here, but you shouldn’t be able to just play all the colors you want without a serious risk of it going wrong. If a significant number of cards in your deck can use mana of any color, there’s no risk. This was part of the issue with Affinity: You didn’t need your colored mana most of the time, so there was no penalty for running the artifact lands of each color.
Vehicles, overall, are too strong. This isn’t to say every one of them is too strong, but that development both underestimated how good they’d be and pushed them too hard to make them interesting and cool. Tapping another creature just isn’t enough of a drawback when you’re the aggressor, especially when that creature was often unable to attack anyway.
The biggest problem with Kaladesh’s dominating artifacts, though, is that this isn’t a new problem. Every time in Magic’s history that Wizards has attempted an “artifact” set, it’s resulted in major problems, and the reason for this is the inherent contradiction of making colorless cards the face of a set. Colorless cards, by their nature, are supposed to be weaker spells that can go into any deck either to fulfill a weird, niche purpose or to act as an outside-of-color filler card. Making a colorless set requires the colorless cards to be cool and interesting. This conflict inevitably results in colorless cards that are problematic for one set or another.
Colorless cards should not be pushed. Colorless cards should not be the face of a set. Wizards needs to be far more careful when printing colorless cards than they are, lest the cards overtake the format and destroy the delicate color balance and mana management that is the very lifeblood of Magic: the Gathering.
There’s been a lot of talk on my feed about how the Gatewatch are just waltzing through the challenges they face like a home-made banner at a pep rally. While they are all currently whole in body, and the perceived threat from each plane is no longer actively threatening, follow me down this line of thought.
The Gatewatch have failed at what they have set out to do, every time.
Their name is synonymous with failure.
Battle For Zendikar
Nissa and Gideon toil on Zendikar. Ulamog is loose and really bringing everyone’s grand Hedrons and Felidars game night down. Scion and Spawn scuttle around, and the very color is draining out of the mana. Gideon hits his main man Jace up for a solid to gather some help, which Jace initailly fails to do, asking LIliana and Chandra, who for diverse reasons have bigger personal demons they are wrestling with. So Jace, heads back to Gideon, and decides what he needs most is information. Nissa is looking for Ashaya, as Nissa did for several stories in a row. Turns out Nissa just had to believe. But Jace stumbles upon Ugin, doing vague and portentous spirit dragon things, as spirit dragons do, at his Eye. He tells Jace “These are beings beyond our understanding, here for a purpose we cannot fathom’ and then proceeds to give a very understandable metaphor about fishermen in streams.
But he tells Jace that they can’t just blow up Ulamog. It will have untold ramifications now and in whatever distopian future we can bring ourselves to imagine.
(Side note... what were the ramifications of metaphorically driving a stake through the hand of the fisherman for 10,000 years? Riddle me that, Ugin dear.)
So Jace knows the stakes Ulamog is a fragile and precious part of an ecosystem beyond our ken. So he agrees that perhaps just pinning him to a butterfly display is the best course of action. Jace, Nissa, Kiora, Gideon and Ob Nixilis respectively fail, fail, lose their pet leviathan, drown in a puddle, and successfully disrupt this plan using the tried and true ‘Surprise Kozilek with a chair from the top rope’ method. Ob reignited, Walked on, walked back and captured three planeswalkers. And he would have gotten away with it to, if it wasn’t for that meddling pyromancer.
Oath of the Gatewatch
What Gate do the Gatewatch watch, exactly?
Sea-gate. The Gatewatch are watching the Sea Gate fall, to Ulamog, then to Ulamog again, then to Kozilek and Ulamog.
Now a lot of nifty stuff happens in OGW, not least of which is the insight we get through General Tazri of what a world where Kozilek out-watches the gate looks like. And in the end, Zendikar is saved from the predation of the two titans. But Jace and co had to physically drag multi-demensional beings into three dimentional space, then channelXfireball in a way that hadn’t been done since the days of the oldwalkers. Impressive, no?
Imagine you go to the doctor and you find out you have a blood disease that delicate surgery could halt the ravages of. Now imagine that, while you were under anesthesia, , your doctor slipped up and the cancer was about to kill you before the Dr. House stormed in and told the surgery team to flush your entire body with pure oxygen, then light it on fire, flash burning away all the bad stuff. Your life is, indeed saved. Phew. I was worried there for a minute.
But would you call that a successful surgery?
Shadows over Innsmouth Innistrad
We have ourselves a good old fashioned mystery here. With Ugin’s warning ringing in our ear to remember they came as three, all apparently we had to figure out was who that mysterious ‘They’ were, that Ugin referred to in the middle of a conversation about the Eldrazi Titans. The stage is set. Liliana has a veil, Tamiyo has a Journal, Thraben has an inspector, and Jace has too many cloaks. Also, too many clues. Avacyn is going crazy. Bruna and Gisela start doing their Shining Twins cosplay, despite Sigarda telling them repeatedly that it creeps her out, and The Gitrog Monster is a fan of 1990s Elton John .
But who is this mysterious corrupting force, and seriously, what’s with all the spaghetti. Sorin’s mansion of foreboding has been renovated, but he’s nowhere to be found! Jace follows the hundred of arrow shaped rocks and finds Nephalia! Zombies! Mystery is solved, it must be Liliana! Liiiana says no. oh. The angels are turning on the humans, Avacyn must be stopped! Jace has GOT this one, guys.... nope. Jace is rescued by Tamiyo, and Sorin permanently grounds his daughter who in no way resembles his former protege. Well, Another successful investigation.Except it’s not.
Jace, you don’t know what it is at all right now, in fact you don’t find out until...
Eldritch Moon
...until Emrakul emerges from the water, like a tribute to all those bond girls before you. “I know who it is now!” says Jace, thinking he’s Hercule Poirot, but is in fact barely keeping up with Captain Hastings.
So here we are, Eldritch horror setting up residence in the middle of Thraben, and creating life like there’s no tomorrow, which might just well be the case. If only there was an inter-dimensional team of powerful mages, who had some dealings with.... oh my it’s the Gatewatch. We need the Gatewatch, don’t we. Well, they got together just in time, didn’t they. Innistrad, is today your lucky day. Jace 'walks to Zendikar, where presumably the Naya walkers are ‘overseeing’ the Zendikar rebuilding efforts from the comfort of a king-sized bed built for three. Come fastest, Jace cries, What’s with your outfit, they reply, Then off they go.
(meanwhile Sorin and Nahiri two oldwalkers that are battling with current generation powers, must feel like two former boxing champions having a punch-on in their retirement home. But that’s not really germane to the success or failure of the Gatewatch.)
Smash cut to the Battle of Thraben. Olivia and the vampires are here. Sigarda, Thalia, St Traft, form an unlikely alliance, killing Brisela. Also Arlinn Cord and the wolves. Surely they are around here somewhere during this battle? Maybe they just were on the other side of town. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Liliana is drunk on Chain Veil power and summons zombies by the hordeful and marches on the town. The Gatewatch are in the thick of it, somehow managing not to get sural’d to pieces every time Gideon has a backswing. Emrakul’s massive form crowns the town. The vampires, humans, geists, even Rem Karolus’s are driven back. Only Jace and the Gatewatch can help us now. They try their most successful Eldrazi Titan-defeating play in the playbook, aaand... it fails. It fails so badly that Tamiyo is about to read her plane-destroying story spell. But Emrakul and Jace had a mutual Zach-Morris ‘Time-out’ and Jace saved the sanity of the gatewatchers and Tamiyo (by delving into their deepest, darkest story hooks, apparently) and Emmy simply re-wrote Tamiyo’s story, taking a vacation into the moon for the now.
Was that a win? What aims were achieved? Again the ‘plane was saved’, but despite all the effort that Jace and co. put in, the final call was Emrakuls. And i doubt she locked herself in without taking the key with her.
So, Zendikar is safe. But the ecosystem of the Multiverse may be irreparably altered; innistrad has gone from passively being influenced by Emrakul to ACTIVELY being influenced by Emrakul to being passively influenced by Emrakul again. Great job guys and gals.
Which leaves us with...
Kaladesh
You know, I wonder exactly how many mage traps Captain Baral has around the city, Whether they are one-countermagic-fits-all, or if he has to lead the fire mages to different ornately engineered snares than the telepaths. Also, Can you planeswalk to the plane that you’re on? If you can, neither Nissa or Chandra know of it. And I have to say, I guess that in the Kaladesh block, ultimately the Gatewatch succeeded.
Succeeded in picking the queen in Three Card Monte while street hustler Tezzeret picked their metaphorical pocket. Yes, they saved Pia. But Tezzeret simply used the conflict between the Consulate of benign-if-overly-paternalistic-bureaucrats and the revolution-if-that’s-alright-with-the-rest-of-you guys renegades to snatch up the inventions and Stockholm Syndrome the inventors.
Aether Revolt
So while Chandra is focused on the personal issues, and their ramifications vis-a-vis the cancer within the consulate, Jace and Liliana, with backing vocals from Gideon and Ajani, identify Tezzeret’s plans with, well with anything Tezzeret plans is going to be bad news. Especially when they find out about the planar portal. So they defeat him! I mean, do they? He puts something suspiciously like the functioning part of the portal into his own arm and then planeswalks away as the roof caves in. The Bridge on Kaladesh is no longer functional. But we find out that Tezzeret is doing something (planar portal or othewise) for Bolas. And the Scooby Gang have no idea what that, in fact is, or if he completed it, or anything.
Going Forward
So each time, the Gatewatch have gotten something accomplished that subjectively gets them a tick in the win column, but with more scrutiny are questionable at best. Going to Amonkhet with no plan, no intel, and no backup just because ‘well, bolas would use that time better’ seems like a great way to stumble into, once again, a technical victory that has lasting consequences that are at best uncertain, and at worst offer comfort to the enemy.But I suppose, given their track record, going in with no plan merely skips the Gatewatch past the part where they come up with a plan and then completely fail to execute on it.
The Vorthos Guide to Magic: The Gathering Follow Archive Trap on Twitter and Tumblr Welcome back to Archive Trap, the unofficial guide to Magic: the...
The second part of Kaladesh, covering up through Aether Revolt!
If you’re following me, you’ve probably read up on Kaladesh already, but I do these summaries more for the people just getting in to the story later than those already invested.
When I tell A MAN that his nose really compliments his features, I'm being "Nice" and "Friendly" but when I say THE EXACT same thing to A GREMLIN suddenly I'm "a renegade sympathizer" and "trespassing on Consulate Property!"
