Pattern Recognition #13 - Board Wipes

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

19 January 2017

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Pattern Recognition! This is issue #13, which apparently means I'm supposed to do something regarding Triskaidekaphobia, right? Well, there's this sticky note on my computer that says otherwise, so you're all out of luck!

Instead, this issue will be in response to a request I received over the winter break from a reader on another board. This person, by the name of Aranfan, asked of me:

I don't suppose you'd be able to do a piece on board wipes and the evolution thereof?

So, why not? Boardwipes are boardwipes. Should be nice and light. Except for the part where everything dies, naturally.

Let's start this off by talking about what they are and why they exist. Boardwipes are important and powerful cards that deserve respect when they are in the format, but every last one of them can be removed without adversely affecting the game too much.

So, what exactly is a Boardwipe? Well, it is a card - and not a combo - that picks a type, or types of card and destroys them all. It's that simple on paper.

Here, let's give you all some examples to show what I'm talking about: Wrath of God, Languish, Armageddon, Magus of the Disk, Akroma's Vengeance, Elspeth Tirel, Impending Disaster, Jokulhaups, Supreme Verdict and Void.

First of all, let's look at some commonalities with them. For the most part, these cards are sorceries. Yes, there are exceptions, but in the general, every card that invokes "Destroy everything!" is done at sorcery speed. This is an important balance factor in these cards which I will come back to in a moment.

The other thing you should observe is that of all these cards, the colour that gets the most of them is ... white. Not Red, not Black, but White. White, the colour of protection, group hugs, life gain and general 'eh, it can wait' attitude - is the first to jump straight into "DESTROY EVERYTHING!!!"

So let's break this down, shall we? Or I will, because this isn't a real conversation. Sorcery speed. To put it simply, is a safety feature. When you have the option to destroy all creatures, or all the lands, or even just plain old everything, being able to do it at Instant speed is a bad idea. Even the Magus of the Disk and its progenitor, Nevinyrral's Disk comes into play tapped to avoid that problem.

Now, this isn't true in all cases, but the exceptions are rare and usually very narrow in scope. Back to Nature, and it's not-as-cheap White version, Tempest of Light, are both instant speed, but only target Enchantments. And given that Theros and Urza's were both enchantment heavy, it's not seen as a major problem to make these cards instant speed.

I could delve into the idea that this is because Enchantments are inherently not as vital to the game as other types of permanents, but that is a whole different can of worms that I don't want to touch.

On the other side of the coin, when you have things like Boil that are legal in Modern, you have to wonder just what the heck was Wizards thinking!

Moving on to colours now. You've probably been thinking about why White gets the majority of the wipes in the game. Well, the answer to that actually comes from the historical design paradigms of the game and the original colour pie. You see, back in the bad old days when Richard Garfield, Ph.D. was still directly in charge...

Let me make something clear! I am not blaming him for the bad decisions. I am simply pointing out the age with which some of these concepts and decisions have been in the game, and using him is just a means to establish the age of the issues. I do not intend to disparage Richard Garfield, Ph.D. or the wonderful work he has done.

Anyways, as I was saying, back when he was in charge, the identities of the colours were more grounded in real world mythology and culture. It's why Arabian Nights was a thing - they rummaged around mythology for ideas to put onto cards. White, in this time, due to the influence of the skies, became also associated with the heavens, and through the creature type of Angel, with the Christian concept of Heaven and God. So what is one of the things that the Christian God is known for? Wiping everything out.

And thus White got Wrath of God to destroy creatures, and Armageddon to take out lands. Two large symbols of religious ... symbolism ... sigh to help solidify White's position as the 'nice guy who will wreck you if you piss them off'.

After that, Red and Black get into the game with their themes of death and destruction. Even Green started to pick up a couple tricks here and there, but never really went for it. Blue got a couple from back in the day where Blue's theme was 'do everything everyone else does, but not as good', but has mostly fallen back on Boardbounces, not wipes. Evacuation anyone?

Some of you are probably questioning my choice to include Languish in my list of board wipes. Well, here's the thing. Not all wipes are outright 'destroy' effects. Rather they can be a little more selective in what they affect. In the case of Languish, it's a sort of a means of culling the weak from the battlefield without actually casting Culling the Weak. Which is not a board wipe, but one of the failed attempts to make Dark Ritual workable. And completely off topic.

With Black out of the way with their ability to wipe out the board through slow or indirect means, let's move on to the other heavy hitter in this regard - . Red's never been sublte about thier ability to mess with the board state, and my personal favourite is Inferno, and the Spellshaper who casts it - Jaya Ballard, Task Mage. Sheer damage to take out things is something Red does well. But what most people don't realize is that Red is also very precise about how much damage they can apply. Pyroclasm takes out the chaff creatures, allowing for Red's heavier hitters to come through. Pyrohemia is Red's version of Pestilence. And it can be tailored quite perfectly to the needs of the player.

Green doesn't really do boardwipes, but my good reviewer, Simon_Williamson suggested that I bring The Great Aurora to your attention, if only so that the color doesn't feel left out. This particular example would have been Red in the old days, no questions about that. It's a perfect example of flipping the table - and having the table land back in the correct position, only with all new cards on it!

I'm sure someone has developed a good use for this card, but it honestly feels shoehorned in thanks to Magic Origins and Nissa's trip to Lorwyn. It's also out of color for Oona, Queen of the Fae and her plans.

Blue? Well, I think I mentioned Evacuation already as an example of how Blue does wipes - they simply bounce everything back to your hand, and then people start discarding cards to bring them down to seven. Why no, I haven't done that myself, why do you ask?

And of course the Eldrazi get involved. All is Dust, for the low, low cost of , blows up everything that has a color. Or rather, causes each player to sacrifice them, a neat way to bypass protection effects and indestructability. Other than that, it's also a colorless boardwipe, which means that everyone has access to this particular reset button.

Something else that is also brought to mind is the cost of these cards. To me, the ability to press the big white button of doom comes into play on turn 4. However, Wizards has been experimenting with pushing that back to turn 5 with cards such as Winds of Rath, Fumigate or Crux of Fate. The increased cost of these cards are not, I think, the result of attempting to add in more conditionals to each version, but rather to slow down the wipe. To give other decks another turn to act. Why? Well, read on and I'll explain.

So, to what end do these cards exist? I thought it over, and came to the conclusion that boardwipes are a countermeasure against excess and that they reset the board-state. Two different things with a lot of things in common.

First, excess. Ever stared down a horde of infinite tokens? Well, Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian prove that this can still happen, even in the current Standard. Being able to take them all out with a single card is a wonderful experience. Not that I've ever done something like that. Honest.

Yet, what is it about excessive lands? As I pointed out last week, that's not the problem lands have. It's the uselessness of those extra lands. That leads into the other side of boardwipes. Resetting the board in some fashion. And blowing up all lands will certainly do that. The idea here is one of control. By removing a vital resource from your opponents, while at the same time being prepared for it yourself (I'm looking at you, Ajani Vengeant for being unfun) means that you can control the pace of the game, as well as the ability of your opponents to react.

I'm also not going to segue into a discussion about Land Destruction. Wrong article for that. Even though I could. This particular article is a little short as it is.

Boardwipes exist because they are all about exercising control. They do this by eliminating everything that could be used against you. Direct removal can be prevented, protected from, or otherwise circumvented. But global Boardwipes? Not so easy to dismiss. This is their purpose in the game, to slow it down a little, to keep the threats of runaway board states down while at the same time keeping up the pressure on players to be a little more conservative with their plays.

But I think I've done enough for you now. There's one last thing to do. Those of you eagerly awaiting a proper Time Spiral drink may have been dissappointed that I let Magus of the Disk be the only mention so far when you all know there is one more card from that block that is vitally important to that block and to the idea of Wipes.

I'm going to talk for a moment about Nevinyrral's Disk instead.

Back in the good old days of Magic... (WHAT? They can't all be bad!), Wizards would often sneak in references to real world events and people, and one of the most blatant of them was the Disk. Well, I would like you to read the name. Backwards.

I have no idea why this is the case, but hey, at least it's not a Superman reference.

And now we come back to Time Spiral for one last Boardwipe.

Planar Chaos was the second set in the block, after Time Spiral and before Future Sight. The theme for the set was 'what if'. Whereas the first set pulled cards from the past into the present, and the next set showed off cards from potential future sets, Planar Chaos looked at how the colours could have gone, how the Pie could have developed over the years instead of the way it did. And to mark these cards, Planar Chaos introduced colour-negative frames. Instead of dark text in the name and type, they were light coloured.

And when the concept of the set was announced, there was some worry that things would get, well, wrong with the set. But Wizards knew what they were doing, and they spoiled the first card in the set, they went big, and with the single perfect example of what the set was about.

Damnation

This colour-shifted version of Wrath of God was given a full page splash image in the magazines of the time, and all detractors were silenced. It was perfect in that it fit Black with exquisite taste, and the image for the card was a beautiful inversion of the picture that first appeared in 7th Edition (which is the card image I have at the start of the paragraph).

I should stop now before I spend too much time on my favourite block.

Anyways, that's it for today. A little short, I know, but I can't win them all. Join me next week when I ... checks his notes ... talk either about the Formats, from Type 1 to Frontier, or about the two Great Cycles in Magic. See you next time!