How Expensive Should Removal Be?

No great truth was ever revealed to someone who blindly accepted what his parents told him. No revolution has come on the heels of accepting the status quo. Civilization is where it is because billions of people have figured out what's good and what's not for thousands of years, yet we haven't run out of innovation, reform or progress ...and we never will.

Question everything. You'll either learn why things are the way they are or how things could be better.

Suppose you're drafting Magic and open a pack with Djinn of Wishes, Condemn, Wurm's Tooth, Levitation, Doom Blade, Shock, Craw Wurm, Peek, Mighty Leap, Warpath Ghoul, Goblin Piker, Giant Growth, Maritime Guard and Siege Mastodon. What do you suppose the first four picks will be in the vast majority of groups? If you said the three removal spells and the big flier, we're on the same page. Why is that a problem?

It's important—nay, vital—to have answers. For every threat an opponent may present, it has to be possible for you to have a card that neutralizes it or else the game breaks down to who draws their unanswerable question first. It is similarly important that no removal spell is the best answer to all threats. Condemn can only deal with a creature that attacks, Doom Blade can only deal with nonblack creatures and Shock can only deal with small creatures. Iona's Judgment can handle any creature (without shroud, hexproof or protection from white) but it costs 5. If an efficient removal spell could handle any threat, it would be played ubiquitously and that's the surest sign of a degenerate metagame.

My question is this. Is it necessary that removal spells be so efficient? If you consider the vast majority of destruction effects that are played competitively, almost all of them cost 1 or 2 mana, unless they target a large number or type of permanents. Most threats, outside of Dead Guy Red, Suicide Black and White Weenie cost 3, 4, 5 mana and up. There's a definite discrepancy there. I don't know that it's wrong. But I do wonder.

One argument in favor of cheap removal is that if it cost as much to remove a threat as it did to play one, then the player on the draw might forever be on the defensive, always spending all of his resources to undo the advances the first player has made; If she misses once, she may never catch up. Another argument is that the applicability of a given removal spell is dependent on the threat, and so a discount to the cost of that spell offsets the opportunity cost that it may be irrelevant. These are not marginal factors.

But let's consider for a moment what would happen if removal were a bit more expensive. Would the game break or would it just play a little differently? Suppose Condemn cost 1W, Shock 1R and Doom Blade 2B. That cuts into your ability to play a creature and kill an opponent's creature in the same turn (by one turn's worth of mana) but does it unbalance the game in favor of one player over another? I can't be sure, but I don't think it does. If they've played a threat worth removing, your creature can wait another turn. If not, play your creature now and remove their threat later.

How do these less efficient cards fare in our pick order? I think Condemn and Doom Blade are still high picks because they answer so many things, but maybe Craw Wurm edges out Shock now, since it's not quite as vulnerable as it used to be. I would argue that's a good thing. Not because one type of card needs more help/attention/respect than another, but because the game is more skillful/interesting if the choice isn't obvious. How many people do you know that follow a route formula for draft picks? Bombs > removal > threats > utility > sideboard fodder.

In some ways, predictability is good for the game. That a brand new player can pick cards by the color of their expansion symbol and not make a complete fool out of themselves is a net positive. But ultimately, Magic is about exploration and discovery. The player who ventures beyond the status quo to discover that a deck full of Ironclaw Orcs can beat a deck full of Serra Angels deserves to be rewarded for the risk of innovation. Is it better to help new/casual players learn the game by making removal so good or is better to add depth to the game by muddying the lines of power?

In a world where an Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre can't be Path to Exile'd, maybe the game is more proactive. Maybe it's more about what you do and less about what you undo. I'm not suggesting removal do less, or even that all removal cost more (cheap threats still need cheap removal), but perhaps the average cost of "destroy most any creature" should be 3 instead of 2.

Modern Magic has seen a marked increase in the power level of creatures. Serra Angel used to be rare. Walking Dead used to be Scathe Zombies. Vengevine used to be... unprintable. That at least shows an awareness that creatures weren't on par with spells. But does it matter how good your creature is if it still dies to a handful of 1- or 2-mana spells? (Part of the reason the Titans were so good was they did something even if they died immediately.) The simpler solution could well be reducing the power level of removal.

I honestly don't know the answer. The fact that R&D has kept removal so efficient for so long may well mean there's a good reason for it. But possibly—like all of us until now—they've never really questioned it. Perhaps there's a better game just over the horizon and all we have to do is trot a bit off the beaten course for a while to find it. Then again, it could be all cactus out there.