Pattern Recognition #6A - Card Draw Part 1

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

27 October 2016

2257 views

Hello, and welcome back to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut's mish-mash article series written by me, berryjon, an Old Fogey who is here to educate, entertain and illuminate you all about Magic, it's history and whatever else I feel like talking about each week.

Today, I will address the first - and so far only - request I have received (HINT HINT), one that has come from a member of another forum who doesn't have an account here. Poor fellow. This person, calling themselves "Drenched in Megalomania" asked me:

"Oh, and I would love for you to look at methods of card drawing in each colour White in particular seems shafted in this area, and I would love to hear an explanation, as well as a proposed means of white drawing cards that doesn't involve a Curiosity effect."

My response to that was thus: "I'm not comfortable with the idea of creating things. My articles are part history lesson, part story time, part card design analysis, part hubris and with a good dash of meta critique. However, I am more than willing to look into the idea of Card Draw Engines, both as cards and mechanics. Man, I wonder how much mileage I could get out of introducing people to Slowtripping?"

But, a request is a request, and I did feel like I could handle examining the mechanical engine that resides under Magic's operation. I think in this case, I can show off some of the implications and how it can be unpacked during the turn. And if I play my cards right (pun fully intended), I can keep most of you in suspense wondering what the hell "Slowtripping" is.

When I first wrote this article, my reviewer pointed out that it was too long and too short at the same time. I was jumping from point to point, and not giving many of them the proper examination they could be. So I decided to break the whole article into two. The first will describe the various methods of card drawing, as well as examples therein. The second part will be a colour breakdown, showing how each colour deals with card draw along with a certain degree of cost-to-benefit analysis.

So, let's get to it then.

Drawing cards is integral to the game, as it allows for players to advance through the turns with a slowly replenishing hand. However, the initial rules were created when a deck of Magic was 40, not 60. With your initial hand of 7, you could go through half your deck before the game was done. But with larger decks came the need to be able to draw more cards, else what would be the point?

Magic's card draw occurs during the "Beginning Phase", and is the third part of it. Players new and old (myself included) may mutter "Untap, Upkeep, Draw" to remind ourselves of the order in which things happen. According to the Comprehensive Rules, what happens exactly is this:

504: Draw Step
504.1. First, the active player draws a card. This turn-based action doesn't use the stack.
504.2. Second, the active player gets priority. (See rule 116, “Timing and Priority.”)

The Draw Step is one of the more minor steps in the game, seen as a way to end out the start of a player's turn. Wizards has worked very hard to make sure all the important 'start of turn' events happen during the preceding Upkeep Step, but sometimes, something slips through. Armageddon Clock, a personal favourite of mine, increments on the Upkeep, but triggers also in the Draw Step. Giant Oyster is another one that operates on the Draw Step. And the surprising inclusion in the Kaladesh Inventions - Mana Vault damages you on the Draw Step if you haven't untapped it.

Story time! You can skip this paragraph if you want. I'm going to talk about other games. I've played quite a few CCGs in my time, and talking about drawing cards reminds me of how the Babylon 5 CCG from the now defunct Precedence Incorporated handled it. You see, Magic's format of drawing a card near the start of a player's turn is something of a CCG standard. Now, for legal reasons, other games can't copy that exactly. Some have the card draw occur before everything else, others at the very end of a player's turn. But the B5CCG, due to its multiplayer format, handled things a little differently. You had a resource called "Influence" (think mana) that was refreshed at the start of the turn, and could be used for various things over the course of the turn. At the end of the collective turn, each player could draw one card, then pay Influence in increments of 3 to draw additional cards. This gave players the choice of actively doing things during the turn, or holding off, letting their opponents advance the board state and then refreshing your hand at the end of the turn. To put this into perspective for Magic, imagine if there was a multiplayer rule that read "At the start of each player's End Step, any player may pay . If they do, that player draws a card." That's what B5 did, and what Magic can't because abusable card draw breaks the game in half.

And now, Story Time is over. Back to our regularly scheduled musings.

I implied earlier that the default state of card draw in Magic is faulty. That's not true. What it is, is insufficient. Let me give you an example to show off what I'm talking about. Let us take a standard two player game. Andy goes first, and draws his initial hand of seven cards, which he keeps. As this is a duel, he does not draw a card as he has chosen to play first. He plays a land, then another card to the battlefield. He is now down to five cards in hand.

On his second turn, he draws a card, bringing his total up to six. He plays another land, then casts another card. Current cards in hand: 4. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Unless Andy stops playing more than one card a turn, he's going to run out on Turn 7! And if he plays more than that, or is forced to discard cards, his situation worsens. This is why Wizards introduced, and keeps trying to balance, mid-turn card draw.

So now we get to the meat of the first half of this series. What are the various methods of drawing more cards? The ones I'm going to touch on here are, in no particular order, Draw Engines, Cantrips, Slowtrips, Fastdraw, Topdecking, Looting and Cycling.

Let's start with Cantrips. I choose to start here because they are the simplest to explain and one of the more common methods of card draw. A card has a Cantrip when it includes the sentence "Draw a Card" with no additional qualifiers. Often, this sentence is at the end of the card, and is the last thing it does. These cards can be described as 'replacing themselves' in the player's hand. You cast it, you get another card in addition to other effects. Examples of this include Lashknife Barrier and Gitaxian Probe.

I mentioned in my first article that Cantrips also have a standard cost associated with them. Namely or . And yet, only one of my examples just now showed that off. Lashknife Barrier, when it was printed, had it's non-cantrip effect rated as costing when put on an enchantment. I can't say if that card would be the same cost if printed today, but we work with what we have.

On the other hand, the cost of the Cantrip can solve a minor problem that Wizards sometimes runs into. A card could have an effect so under powered that by any conventional metric, it would cost less that , but can't be for free. The other example I gave, Gitaxian Probe .... Actually, you know what? That card is from New Phyrexia, a horrible, broken set for whom my sheer hatred of keeps me warm at night and cooks my eggs in the morning. Let's pick something a little more reasonable, shall I?

Hrm... Let's go with Cerulean Wisps or Expedite instead. Here we have a card whose effect is so minor, so inconsequential, that paying for a card draw brings the cost of the card to or respectively, making the effect of the card effectively free!

Cantrips also serve a third, more subtle purpose. They slow down a card. By adding an additional cost to it, even if it is just a Cantrip, Wizards can optimize when a card is played. A higher cost means it comes out at a later turn, and the card draw is there to avoid having the card being arbitrarily over costed, as has happened in the horrible old days of yore that no one should ever think about.

In addition, Cantrips can help rebalance a card that is no longer considered viable for whatever reason. The example I like to look at for this is how Firebreathing became Dragon Mantle. Same cost, same card type, but the latter lets you draw a card, all without increasing the price of the card.

Finally, the best thing about Cantrips is that they can go into any colour. Remember, the price of a Cantrip has been established as or , meaning that if you ever see a card that does Cantrip, mentally deduct either cost to see what it would be like without that effect, and wonder if it's still playable at that point.

The next form of card draw I want to look at is what I call "Fastdraw". These cards are non-permanents whose sole purpose is to draw more cards. Harmonize and Divination for example. These cards tend to be of the Sorcery card type, as I can only see bad things coming from Fastdraw Instants that mono-blue players could use their unused mana on at the end of their opponents turn, refilling their hand and mana before their own turn starts. Mono-Blue has been historically powerful, but even that would be too much!

And yet, Fastdraw, with one exception, is Blue through and through, something I'm going to talk about next week when I break down card draw by colour Ancestral Recall, Treasure Cruise, Concentrate, Braingeyser, etc... Only Harmonize is out of this colour, and it is a colorshifted Concentrate thanks to Planar Chaos (take a drink).

So, why is Fastdraw a thing? Well, please forgive me if I tread over this again next week, but I'll say it here first. Fastdraw works because you're spending mana you could be using on other things (because of the timing of Sorceries) and using a card in hand (that could be doing something else) to gain more cards in hand. What Fastdraw does is it sacrifices the now for the later, which is something quite viable as it helps draw the game out. It also acts as an advantage, however momentary, for the other players as those are resources going into the player and not interfering with their own plans - this turn.

And alas, I've avoided this as long as I could. I've talked about card draw riders, I've talked about straight up drawing more cards. It's time to talk about Slowtrips. At some point around the time of Visions, Wizards liked the idea of Cantrips, but decided they were too powerful. It was important to replace the card in your hand with a new one before the next draw step, but how to do that? So someone, whose name has been lost to the mists of time, suggested that the best way to get the best results would be to deal the card draw.

"Delay it?" I can hear you asking of me from the past and across the internet. "What's wrong with that?"

Nothing. In theory. What we got was a new rider on cards which now read "Draw a card at the beginning of the next upkeep." Not your Upkeep. The next one. I did Foreshadow this, I think. This ability is poorly designed, and the implementation is typical of the era in card design. MaRo has talked in his company blog "Making Magic" about the concept of 'memory' in the game - that is, the ability of the game state to remember what has happened before as well as the players themselves.

Slowtripping extends the memory of actions into the next turn, something that Wizards has realized can' really work out. Multi-turn effects tend to involve the card still in play in some way, such as with the Rebound mechanic. But even that one simply stays on your turn, not the opponent. By forcing the Slowtrip to act on the opponents turn, the game goes into awkward design space that Wizards has decided is better left untouched.

But the existence of the Slowtrip also belied a fundamental assumption behind the game that was still alive and well in the early years. Slowtripping only worked as well as it did when you accept that there were only two players in a game. That's right, Multiplayer wasn't a thing. In the back-and-forth of a game between two players, it is easier to justify having the non-active player draw a card on the active player's turn. In a game with three or more people? It becomes less viable.

I suppose this mechanic could work in an electronic format, where the computer can take care of the memory, but Magic is a game meant to be played by people against other people. Yes, MtG Online is a thing, but it's new and most of the people I know still play face to face. And we have enough problems remembering things that happened that turn, let alone last turn, especially in a more casual setting!

The next concept is going to be Looting. Named after the effect first printed on Merfolk Looter in Exodus, to 'Loot' is to draw a card, then discard a card. This is actually a very important distinction, as Draw then Discard is a far cry from Discard then Draw.

You see, Looting's concept works better if you imagine someone desperately searching for something. And as they dig thorough their resources, they toss aside anything that isn't immediately useful. That's what Looting does. You pick something up by drawing a card, then if it's useful, you keep it and throw something else away in the discard. Or if it's useless, then you toss that instead.

Although Looting is found predominately in Red, it is very similar to what Blue and Black can do, in addition to straight out milling. It combines pure draw with forced discard, something that ties into my complaints last week about how Red keeps pushing into the realms of other colours and they try to push back. Here is one of them.

However, Looting does have a very interesting Synergy to it, using a mechanic that first appeared in Torment of all places with cards like Obsessive Search, received a minor comeback in Time Spiral because everything did, before finding a home in Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon. I'm talking about Madness. If you're going to discard a card anyways, why not discard a card that you can cast on the cheap because you discarded it. It's such a beautiful thing, how they work together, that I really hope Madness goes Evergreen.

In addition ABadMagicPlayer100, a fellow article writer made a deck called Mad Orrey which shows Looting and Madness in action. You should check it out if you haven't already!

Now, Cycling is a mechanic new and old that in many ways, is the opposite of Looting. Cycling, when you read the cards that it is printed on, allows you to discard the card for a cost, then draw a new one to replace it. You were literally cycling through your deck to try and find what you wanted because the card you had in your hand wasn't working for you.

Cycling, I think, is better than Looting because it's discard and then draw. While I just admitted that Looting has some good synergy with one mechanic, Cycling is actually more versatile. At it's core, it's tossing a card you don't need for the next card in your deck, but then you get Mountaincycling or Slivercycling or Vedalken Æthermage | Wizardcycling.

What you're seeing there is the ability to discard a card from your hand and search your library for a replacement. As a limited utility Tutor, it's not actually that limited as you as a player would build your deck with that in mind. Careful and judicious use of what can or cannot be searched for would be necessary to help with balance, but it's a viable option - as long as you understand that you are losing the primary effect of the card you are cycling in favor of what you're looking for.

Another neat thing about Cycling is that you can trigger alternate effects with it. Look at Slice and Dice, where you can cast it as normal, or Cycle it, get a new card, and have an effect that is smaller than the default casting state. And compare this to Madness - you have to loot out a Madness card, but with Cycling, each card is self-contained, rather than having a Looter and a Madness card, and when you cycle like this, you still get to draw a replacement card!

A Draw Engine is any permanent or any combo of cards that can repeatedly and reliably cause their user to draw more cards. Now, the vast majority of card draw is done through self-contained cards, such as Howling Mine or Archivist, such is not always the case.

And example of a multi-card engine would be Azami, Lady of Scrolls. This creature from Kamigawa is an example of a tribal draw engine, for as long as you have Wizard creatures - including herself - you can always get more cards. And because it's repeatable - you have Wizards, and reliable, this qualifies as an Engine.

What doesn't qualify however, is something like Evermind. Evermind turns any spell with the subtype of Arcane into a cantrip. Sure, the cost is slightly above that of a normal cantrip, but that's the price you are paying to being able to repeat the card draw in the future. What this is not however, reliable as it still requires that you be casting spells with the Arcane subtype. And as those were only printed in Kamigawa, there tend to be better options out there.

Of note, Splicing Evermind onto Reach Through Mists gives you a Counsel of the Soratami for a slight mana increase!

Yet, proper Draw Engines require permanents in play to work properly, and there is a certain degree of risk to having Artifacts or Creatures in play that do something so important. I mean, it would be a shame if they got Smashed or Electrolyzed, right?

Why yes, I did choose those two examples for a reason. :)

Finally, I want to talk about Topdecking. Topdecking isn't a draw mechanic per-se. Rather it is a state for a player where they have no cards in hand, and draws their only card for the turn then turns around and immediately plays it. This is a very dangerous state to be in as you have nothing in hand to cause your opponent pause. You can't bluff with a basic land (which I've done - I've stalemated a game for a couple turns by holding a mountain in hand and my opponent knew I was holding a burn spell), nor can you just hold on for later.

If you want to see an example of topdecking in action, and how tense it can be, your homework is to research the "$10,000 Lightning Helix".

Now, Wizards knows about this, and recognizes it as a problem. So, they've gone and tried a couple things to fix it, or rather work with topdecking. The first is Hellbent from the original Ravnica block. This mechanic worked to promote the idea that this colour combination would rapidly deplete their in-hand resources, and play dangerously with no cards in hand. So cards with Hellbent would have some bonus to them for not having cards. From Demonfire's ability to ignore anything that would try to prevent or counter it to Slithering Shade's capacity to attack when least expected, Hellbent was fun, though limited in scope as it didn't deal with the topdeck directly but rather exploited what happened after the emptying of the hand.

The other solution offered up by Wizards was Miracle, from Avacyn Restored. Now, this wasn't affecting topdecking directly, but rather exploited the 'draw then cast' state a player could find themselves in to give them a cheap alternative to hard casting the spell properly. And Miracle cards didn't bother looking at cards in hand, all it cared about was being your first draw.

Yet, they have tried other things as well. The most recent card to address that topdecking isn't fun is Ghirapur Orrery, a card that lets you replenish your hand partway if you're out, but will do the same for your opponents as well. Another option that appeared was Idle Thoughts, which could allow you to draw a card during your upkeep before picking up your normal card draw, or during the turn when you run out and want to see what's coming next.

I think I'm going to stop here. This half of the article is already long in tooth - longer than the per-revision version, and I still have more to talk about. So please, join me next time when I break down each of the colours, and then talk about why Scrying is so important to card draw.

And don't forget to make Pattern suggestions for me to write about!