Pattern Recognition #1 - The Alpha Boons

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berryjon

22 September 2016

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Hello, and welcome to Pattern Recognition!

My name is Jon Berry, and I am bringing you this (hopefully) series of articles about the history of magic cards from a player's perspective. Now, this is not to say I'm going to be going on and on about the lore of the game. Rather, every update I'll be looking at some aspect of the card design or history and bringing them back into the spotlight.

This first article will be about one of the first Cycles in the game. The second one is planned to be talking about three similar game mechanics that have fallen out of use, while the third will be examining the history of a certain card, and how it's been changed over the years.

As for myself, I have been playing Magic since '97, when friends and I played 15 minute games on the bus to school. My DCI number is only 8 digits long, and I've worked selling Magic cards in a comic store. I'm one of those old school players that are in the minority, and I'm hoping that my different perspective will be of interest to many of you who are newer players.

So, I mentioned that this will be about one of the first Cycles. Well, history lesson time! When Alpha was being designed, one of the shortcuts involved was to create a set of cards that had similar effects, but were found in different colours, and tweaked to match. This concept is still alive and well today, and I'm not going to complain about it.

The cycle I want to talk about was a five card cycle, one that had an instance in each colour, and looked good on paper. In truth, however, the cycle's power varied wildly from the horrifically broken, to the 'meh' to the 'Modern staple'.

Let me tell you about Healing Salve, Ancestral Recall, Dark Ritual, Lightning Bolt and Giant Growth. Also known as the "Boons Cycle".

The purpose behind this cycle is clear. In modern terms, they are all Instants where you pay one mana for three of something. Of course, I say that because Dark Ritual started life as an Interrupt, became a Mana Source in 5th Edition, and finally current reprints list it as an Instant.

So, what's up with this cycle? Why did I pick it at interesting? Well, I'm interested in seeing where these five cards, nominally equal all wound up.

Let's start with Healing Salve. This card is actually very simple, and existed in the design space where cards like Serra Angel were considered game-winning bombs. Life gain has seen its share of ups and down in the history of Magic's design, and looking through Gatherer for that mechanic shows me that the idea itself of arbitrary life gain has been slowly phased out - though things like Angel's Mercy existed for a while.

Nowadays, life gain is usually linked to some other action, such as the mechanic "Lifelink", where the gain is contingent on dealing damage with your creatures, or as a side effect of some other effect, such as Absorb.

On the other side of the card, Damage Prevention as a mechanic appears to have been fairly constant across the history of Magic since this card's printing, with things like Dromoka's Command or Enshrouding Mist being more current examples. As a mechanic, it's purpose is clear - keep a creature or player alive, - and in that way, it works well. It's just situational.

I point these things out because I want to make certain that you recognize that these mechanics still exist, because the last time Healing Salve was printed in a regular set, and not part of a boxed deck was in 8th Edition.

So, why was this card dropped? Simply put, it wasn't that good. Life gain was of a situational benefit, and better cards existed, including Lifelink as a concept (which first made into a definite mechanic in Mirrodin, and keyworded in Futuresight on Daybreak Coronet). Healing Salve began to fall into that set of cards that were no longer keeping up with the design of the game and the power level of the cards therein.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Ancestral Recall. One of the Power Nine, this card is the least printed card in this cycle, last seeing the light of day in Unlimited.

Simply put, this card breaks the game wide open. In a design space where 'Draw a Card' as a rider on some other effect (often called a 'cantrip') is costed at U or (2), the ability to draw three for a single blue AT INSTANT SPEED has earned this card a rightful place as one of the most powerful cards in existence.

Cards like Brainstorm or Treasure Cruise, which attempt to mimic the effect with drawbacks are also considered quite powerful as well, just to give you an idea of what this Boon is capable of.

And compare this to something like Divination or Counsel of the Soratami, which are at sorcery speed, and are two cantrips stacked on each other for the unified cost. These cards don't see as much play as pure card draw, which is something that Wizards has been slowly moving against. Even Treasure Cruise included the Delve mechanic to avoid the pure draw, as much good as it did for card balance.

There's not a lot to say about this card that hasn't already been said, and I'm mostly interested in it because it's part of the Boons. But I will be coming back to it at the end.

Up next is the Black contribution to the cycle: Dark Ritual.

Yes, you read that right. Black had mana acceleration that makes Green look bad.

Now, Black's original gimmick, if it could be called that, was 'sacrifice'. That being Black was (and still is, just to a lesser degree) about giving up something for something else. As an example, Culling the Weak, or Phyrexian Tower. Dark Ritual had the idea that you were giving up the card itself for a short term gain - cards in hand for mana.

And when this card was printed, decks were 40 cards. This sort of gain was seen as acceptable as you were giving up something more durable or permanent for the now. It's last printing was Urza's Saga, which should give you an idea about how strong it was, to make it into that block.

But it didn't work as the game advanced, and card design became more mature and experienced. Mana acceleration in general became the purview of Green with a splash of Red ( Infernal Plunge ). But in Black? It was too much as you could accelerate out of the gate with other sacrifice effects to gain a huge lead over your opponent.

Dark Ritual represented a 'could have been' of Magic, one of faster play and higher stakes in card advantage, but that was not the way the game was going, and it faded out as one of the mistakes of the past.

Lightning Bolt. Staple of many Modern decks, this card is something that Wizards seems to love and hate, much for the same reasons. Show me a Red Burn deck that doesn't run four of this card, and I'll show you a deck that probably running 4 Skred instead. Perhaps one of the biggest demonstrations of this is how long it was out of print. While printed in Alpha through Revised, it was last seen in 4th Edition before finally seeing the light of day in M10!

When you look at this card, and look at many other cards that deal damage in Red (and there are a lot), you begin to see that Lightning Bolt is perhaps the top measure of such spells, and in a way it is. Cards like Shock are the staple in terms of damage efficiency, at 1:2 in terms of mana to damage. Lava Spike is a sorcery (a drawback), and can only target a player (another drawback). Fiery Impulse is a Shock that can be upgraded to Lightning Bolt only under Spell Mastery.

Just to give you an idea of how powerful this card is in the early game, here's the list of creatures you can play on turn 1 that will survive it: Death's Shadow (which will die after you cast it on T1 unless you somehow lose 8 life - 11 if you want it to survive a Turn 1 Bolt), Disowned Ancestor, Kraken Hatchling, Lagonna-Band Trailblazer, Perimeter Captain, Phyrexian Dreadnought (good luck having 12 power of creatures on turn 1), Shield Sphere, Sidisi's Faithful, Steel Wall and Yoked Ox.

Every other Turn 1 creature dies to the Bolt. Shock too (Except for the 23 creatures you can cast for 1 or 0 mana with exactly 3 toughness.) And even then, three damage deals with a lot of creatures at any point in the game.

What I'm saying is that Bolt is really good for what it does, and what it does is makes things dead. Really dead. And is good enough at that job that it hasn't been printed in a regular set since M11! And yet, Wizards can't give up on Red's direct damage - that's too much a part of its portion of the colour pie. And yet, Lightning Bolt can't really be printed again without doing dangerous things to standard with the creatures in it. Which is why we'll see more of Shock and cards that do less damage, but can go higher if certain conditions are met.

The last Boon is not the least. In fact, it's probably the most stable of them all in terms of card design. Giant Growth has been around all the way through to M14, and there is nothing in its design preventing it from being reprinted in the future.

For a single Green mana, one creature becomes - well - giant! This design is elegant and simple, and has seen nearly 30 different variations on it. These variations usually come down to +2/+2 with some sort of alternate bonus such as Buyback (Elvish Fury), or a +1/+1 that can be repeated, such as Might of the Masses. But they are all more complex cards. Giant Growth's strength is in its simplicity. It's a card that even the newest of players can understand. It makes a creature bigger so it can deal more damage, or take more damage - or both!

Except because of its blandness, it doesn't see as much play as Lightning Bolt does. The only time I've really seen it played seriously is in Infect decks, where the +3 power is far more important than the +3 toughness. And other variations on it can go higher! Might of Alara as an example. It's solid. It's middle of the road, and it's greatest sin is that it's unoffensive. It still requires a creature to work upon, which makes it less effective at dealing damage as the Lightning Bolt, and Healing Salve also has a Life gain choice that Giant Growth doesn't.

I think it's a safe choice for Wizards to print again.

I find it interesting to note that even in this cycle, there is also a mini-cycle of sorts. When used against each other, Healing Salve, Lightning Bolt and Giant Growth all cancel out. The Salve prevents the lethal damage from the Bolt or the Growth, the Bolt counters the added toughness or life from the Salve and Growth, whilst the Growth pushes into the life gained from the Salve, and helps creatures survive the Bolt.

Dark Ritual and Ancestral Recall don't fit this pattern, but that's alright.

Now, because that particular set was full of references, the Boons showed up in the Time Spiral Block. Healing Salve was given to Green as Healing Leaves and Giant Growth became Red's Brute Force - which got a Modern Masters printing for some reason. Lightning Bolt and Ancestral Recall were given the Suspend mechanic as Rift Bolt and Ancestral Vision. Alas, Dark Ritual was left out, as even putting that into Green would have been format warping. Remember that Tarmogoyf was in this block, and having it in play on turn 1 with an instant in the graveyard would have been extremely viable. (Black Lotus was altered into Lotus Bloom, and thus not a Boon.)

And for one last piece in the pattern - Lightning Helix as printed was a combination of Lightning Bolt and the life gain of Healing Salve on a single gard for their mutual price of RW. Alas, this is the only such combination of the Boons, as the other combinations are either ridicuous or involve Blue.

In the end, the Boons were a product of their time - limited cards in a deck, limited time to play. Every resource counted. As the game matured, some of those design decisions were overturned. Cards became more effective in their given roles - though thankfully not always through power creep - and they were left behind as cards of the past, no longer suitable for more modern sensibilities. They are an indelible part of Magic's history, and for that, we should at least make the effort to remember where they came from, and to remember that they are still going forward in one way or another.

I'll see you all next time, when my dive into Alpha brought back bad memories of a very powerful cycle of cards that took far too long to fade away.