Thursday, December 26, 2013

Theros Review (Part 1—Multicolor)

The problem with reviewing a set when it first comes out is that all your opinions are speculation. No matter how talented or experienced you are at dissecting new sets and predicting card value, deck archetypes and how much fun it'll all be, you don't have the perspective born from playing with those actual cards in the actual environment and that will limit the value of your writing.

The flipside is that no one will care what you think if you write about it after everyone knows the environment. Unless you're not writing strategy tips, but instead analyzing the set for game design nuggets. Let's do that now, with a season of perspective under our belts.

Multicolor

Agent of Horizons and 9 more cards comprise a double cycle of common creatures with off-color activated abilities. These cards push players toward two-color combinations and help give direction in a draft without hurting a player's chance of casting her spells like gold cards do. For that reason, all five ally color pairs and all five enemy color pairs are represented—to keep the format interesting, we want at least those 10 decks to exist and have unique identities. Some of these cards are better than others (which is inevitable for a large cycle) and that might be an indication that Development thought the {B}{G} deck needed less help than the {U}{B} deck, for instance.


Along similar lines, Akroan Hoplite and friends form a 10-card gold cycle at uncommon. (Destructive Revelry stands out as the only non-creature—presumably Development thought {R}{G} had enough creatures, or just really liked what Naturalize-Spike was doing for the format.) Like the commons, these cards support a type of playstyle for a particular color pair. Unlike them, these uncommons are strong enough and focused enough to promote a more specific strategy. Chronicler of Heroes isn't just a dangerous flyer that can go in any {G}{W} deck like Setessan Griffin; while it is efficient enough, it's at its very best in a deck with lots of monsters, ordeals and the kinds of heroic creatures green and white specialize in.

We've got 10 more two-color cards at rare and 5 more at mythic. (Curiously, these rares are more open-ended than the uncommons, working at full power in almost any deck of their colors.) That's 35 cards across every rarity supporting multicolor play (not to mention the scry lands), which is a huge proportion of the set to dedicate to a theme. Why? Modern Design demands that adjacent blocks contain mechanical links to keep Standard evolving and interesting rather than devolving into Block v. Block as it has in the past. But Scars of Mirrodin only had four gold cards in the entire block. What gives? As an artifact set, most of its cards were colorless, making multicolor decks easy to build and making specific cards applicable to decks regardless of their colors. Innistrad block had 4 gold uncommons (one for each of the monster factions), 1 gold rare and 11 gold mythics between its three sets. Given that it had five two-color tribes, that's not a lot at all. Theros is clearly putting a much larger effort into playing with its neighbor.

I imagine that some combination of these things happened. The Ravnica team had a bunch of really sweet gold designs left that they wanted to follow up with; The design/creative/dev team was still subconsciously in gold mode and wasn't able to reset entirely; The idea of supporting deck archetypes with a few two-color-oriented cards got a little out of hand; and/or it turned out that Theros really needed gold cards—Perhaps WotC wasn't confident the set's mechanics were enough to excite people. If so, I think that was a bit of a mistake. Having so many golds cards in Theros makes Return to Ravnica less special in retrospect and hurts the set's own identity as it bleeds into last year's.

Were you surprised how much gold there was in Theros? Would you have used as much? What else strikes you about the use of multicolor in this set/block?

23 comments:

  1. What's that about scars of mirrodin and artefacts? The block before Return to Ravnica was Innistrad! Also, it sounds like you're confusing Chronicler of Heroes and Horizon Chimera

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    1. Scars was before Innistrad was before Return to Ravnica. My mistake. And an embarrassing one at that. Will rewrite that section.

      I was comparing Chronicler of Heroes at uncommon to Setessan Griffin at common, but there's no way anyone could have figured that out. Clarifying.

      Thanks.

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    2. It's been explicitly stated that the cycle of off-color Flashback cards that you didn't count was meant to play into RTR block. That's 20 more cards and makes for a much heftier multicolor investment than you make it to be.

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    3. Good point. I counted them for one set and not the other: clearly wrong.

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  2. Actually Jay, R&D has stated that -all- sets from now on will feature some amount of gold cards - presumably because their opinions on gold have changed from 'it's a special thing' to 'it's another tool in our repertoire'. Unfortunately I don't have the time to find a source right now, but I'll try to find it later.

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    1. Yeah, and 4-8 miscellaneous gold cards will be fun. This is very different. This is a huge proportion of the set, not a smattering.

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    2. "Virtual" Gold cards in common (like the flashback cards in Innistrad or the off-color activations in Theros) have a great effect on the Limited environment. They make each color combination very different while being flexible enough to go into other decks. The Uncommon and Rare "actual" multicolor cards are complementary to this and can guide or anchor players into certain color combinations.

      If the purpose is to make archetypal play fun, I don't think you can make the numbers lower than in Theros as they need to be in cycles of 10.

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    3. I agree that virtual gold cards help a Limited environment, but I'm wondering if there's a threshold where actual gold becomes an overbearing influence. I love a card that can be played in a red deck or a green deck and is even better in a red-green deck, but a card that can only be played in a red-green deck will be played only there, and it will cause red-green decks to homogenize because they're all playing this card no one else wants. Not sure about that at all, but something has been bothering me slightly all season and I'm trying to put my finger on it.

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    4. That's interesting. I wonder what that feeling you're experiencing is.

      On a set scale, I'm sure the multicolor cards are helping diversify the set rather than homogenize. Usually it's hard to make different color pairs stand out as distinct entities but they're really well-defined in Theros.

      But on a color pair scale, maybe they are making each deck of that color pair more similar? I'm not sure.

      What's interesting is that it might have felt less that way if there were [i]more[/i] multicolor Uncommons. (Say, one RG card that's good in aggro blitz Gruul and one RG card that's good in fatty-ramp Gruul.

      Also, what you're experiencing as homogeneity might be good for beginners, as they can get a clear idea of what each color pair can do in this set.

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    5. By the way, one of my points was that a combination of open-ended "virtual" gold cards and narrow "actual" gold cards have good draft dynamics (better than if you just had one category) and that if you wanted to do that, 10 gold Uncs with one of each color pair is the lowest you can go.

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  3. I think Devotion was also a relevant concern. If you have a mechanic that strongly rewards monocolored decks, something in your set has to pull in the other direction.

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    1. Agreed, monocolored is a theme that should never be pushed on its own as it would only create 5 decks. It has to be one of many contrasting things you can do in a set and something has to pull in the other direction.

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    2. I think this is an important observation.

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    3. I do think it's not impossible to engineer an environment that pushes monocolor decks but also pushes the value of splashing in that monocolor deck. That would create a lot of color combinations. I'm not sure what theme would make that feel resonant, or how fun it would be to draft though.

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    4. The idea appeals to me. Then you could have Wu, Wb, Wr, Wg, Uw, Ub… etc for more than 10 archetypes.

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    5. I disagree with Chah's claim that "monocolored is a theme that should never be pushed on its own as it would only create 5 decks". It'd be perfectly possible to make some monocoloured-pushing cards that are only good in aggro decks, some monocoloured-pushing cards that are only good in control decks, etc, etc.

      That said, I prefer the idea of an environment that encourages monocolour but also encourages splashing.

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  4. I think the multicolor cards are certainly a relevant part of the design. Mostly, I'd guess that their purpose is to reward players for drafting multicolored themes that will be more present in the second and third sets. The hints are there: multicolored gods in sets two and three, how well hybrid plays with devotion (just like it did with Chroma in Shadowmoor), and having a bit more color-fixing at common. Especially because Ravnica really didn't play into the "color matters" theme, it seems like an easy way for the two blocks to have a bit more synergy without feeling to similar.

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    1. Agreed, the tie-in with Ravnica as well as with multicolor Gods later in the sets make multicolor extremely relevant.

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    2. I expect so. Multicolor as a counterpoint to devotion's push toward mono-color makes sense.

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  5. One possible stance to take with Gold cards are that they would look more dazzling to a player if they're only printed once every few years. I guess they would be, but I still think Gold sets are plenty exciting even if you've seen Gold cards before.

    When I started playing Magic, Ice Age block was already out, then Mirage came along. These sets had gold cards in them, but that use of mana symbols seemed like a natural, logical use of the mana symbol system. Then when Invasion came out, I was completely excited by the multicolor environment. It's not that I hadn't seen Gold cards before, but the environment was different, just like Mirrodin was different even though I've seen Artifact cards before.

    When R&D did a streak of color-themed sets with Shadowmoor and Shards of Alara, it may have seemed too much to players, but only because they were color-themed environments. I don't think there's a need to shield players' eyes from Gold cards in general.

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    1. I certainly agree there's no need to shield players from gold cards in general (and I support including a small smattering of them in most sets). I am still a bit concerned at the number of them in sets that aren't about multicolor, if Theros is an indicator of that (which I don't believe is the case).

      Just to play Devil's Advocate, do you feel the same way about hybrid? I wish I did, but I think because the mana symbols are different, they don't occupy the same "free innovation" space that multicolor and colorless cards do.

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  6. 10 of 101 commons, 10 of 60 uncommons, 15 of 53 rares, and 5 of 15 mythics gives a booster as-fan of 1.8 or 12%. 1-2 cards per booster pack will be multi-color friendly.

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