Pattern Recognition #31 - NWO

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

1 June 2017

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Hello, and welcome back to Pattern Recognition! My name is berryjon, TappedOut's resident Old Fogey and Smart Ass. I have been playing this game since Beta edition, give or take, and this series is my bringing my viewpoint to the modern era, as well as explaining why.

I also check out cards on occasion. But today is not that day.

Now, some of you may be wondering what my promise last week was. What does a Wrestling Stable have to do with Magic the Gathering?

Not much apparently.

The New World Order, often abbreviated as nWo (with that capitalization) was a Heel group formed by Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall in 1996 as part of the World Championship Wresting, and later World Wresting Federation. This group had the stated goal of acting as a 'rogue' element in the system, to popular to ban, and too powerful to properly defeat. To that end, they bought into the idea of 'the little guy against the big guy' to play their angle.

Oh.

You don't want to hear me talk about that NWO, do you? No, you want to hear me talk about Research and Development's "New World Order". Introduced in 2008, the NWO had several primary goals, which I will address in turn. But first, I want to describe the general state of the game before the NWO hit the game.

The last three blocks before the NWO came into being were, in reverse order, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, Time Spiral, and Ravnica: City of Guilds.

These are rightly remembered as a high-point in Magic design. The mechanics were unique and powerful, the flavor was amazing, and everything just jelled into that perfect storm of design.

So, what was the problem that required implementing the NWO?

Complexity.

Magic suffers from a problem all constantly expanding games do. Power Creep. Complexity addiction. New Card Types. As the game advances, there becomes more and more things for players to learn and understand, more cards to figure out how to interact with and the like.

And for old players like me, this isn't a problem. Half the things we see are "Oh, this is like old thing X, but with Y" and we could move on. New Players don't have this experience. You know how I talked last time about Regeneration and how it was too complex, and because of that, it has been replaced by Indestructible?

Well, that's part of the New World Order.

The first tenant of the New World Order that I will address is complexity. You see, the game can't grow too complex over time, lest it become impossible for new players to gain an interest in the game. Time Spiral, for example, was a "Greatest Hits" of Magic mechanics, it also alienated new players with all these weird one-or-two of mechanics and abilities that had no context and no comparison. It didn't help.

One of the purposes of the NWO is to keep complexity down. The first way it does this is through Rarity.

WAIT! HOLD ON! LET ME EXPLAIN WHY THIS IS A GOOD THING!

One of the ways new players are introduced to the game is through the Limited Format. That being a small and limited card pool that may be the first cards they ever see. And you know what they will see the most of? Commons. And Commons, being the cards they will see first and most of, should be understandable and easy to comprehend.

Take, for example, the card False Orders. This is a common that was printed in Alpha/Beta/Unlimited. Now, to most players, this card is easy enough to understand, though very narrow. But to a new player, how do you explain it? Would they know how to use it? I've seen people try to cast Terashi's Verdict on a defending creature, and trying to escalate what is going on through False Orders?

The New World Order intends to prevent that. Cards with a lower rarity have to be simpler in nature. Creatures don't have fancy abilities, or many of them. Cards have easy to understand effects. But as you go up in rarity, you can add more. You can make cards larger in effect as new players won't see them as often and risk being confused or alienated by these many cards they don't understand.

So, the second point, tied to the first, is that the higher the rarity, the more powerful the effect can be.

Example?

Compare the common Samite Healer and Master Healer. The first is Common, the second is a Rare. Both of these cards have the exact same effect, but because the latter is larger, it is placed at a higher rarity. Note that it's not the casting cost, or the Power/Toughness that matters - I mean, Craw Wurm is Common - but rather the scale of the effect.

And when you deal with cards like Akroma, Angel of Wrath, it gets to be Rare if only by dint of having so many abilities!

This has the secondary effect of encouraging players to buy more packs for the chance to get the more powerful rare cards for their deck, as well as helping the secondary market. But a full examination of that is well outside how this article series works.

Now, my utter disdain for Mythic Rares is known enough by people who read my previous article on the subject, but it does tie in here. You see, aside from the first five Planeswalkers in the Lorwyn block, which were printed before Mythic Rares existed, all Planeswalkers are Mythic. This isn't because they are chase cards, driving people to buy them. That wasn't the intent. No, they are at that rarity because they are the most complex cards in the game.

Imagine, for a second, you printed a 'Walker at Uncommon. What would it be like? It would be like Kamigawa again, with Legendary Creatures at Uncommon! But worse, because there is nothing else like them.

So, as much as I may dislike it, I have to admit that there is a purpose to the whole thing, and it works. It keeps the complicated and 'big' stuff as something that is a nice bonus for new players, and not something they have to deal with from the get-go. It's something they can ease into knowing they exist, but don't have slammed in their face.

Now this also extends into the block format. While working to keep individual cards away from driving off new players, the existence of Standard as a format owes a lot to the New World Order. I mentioned power creep right? Well, that's a problem in games where later cards are stronger than older cards in order to encourage older players to buy into newer sets.

Standard and the NWO exist to help balance sets across time. It does this through a concept call "Cyclical Balance". You see, Wizards knows that it's impossible to create new sets and new cards without something being stronger or weaker than other sets in part or in whole.

Examples of high points include New Phyrexia (shudder), Khans of Tarkir and Ravnica: City of Guilds. Examples of lows would include Kamigawa, Theros and ... I'm sure you guys can fill in the blank there. I don't feel like talking about Mercadian Masques.

But the idea is that while their are ups and downs, the average in any given set of Standard blocks is about the same. This is the final intent of Standard. To create a constructed environment that is neither the complicated mass of options that Modern/Legacy/Commander can become, nor the narrow confines of Draft and Sealed.

Of course, Wizards is having a problem over the past few years marketing this, but that's another subject for another day.

Alright, so I would like to think I've established what the New World Order does, but like Magic's Golden Rule (the specific card overrides the general rule), it does have some exceptions.

Like what, you may be asking.

Well, I sure you are. I mean, I'm writing this in advance and you're just reading it after the fact.

Well, let me point out something relatively recent from my perspective. Just in case you're reading this long after the fact. Do you guys know the Madness mechanic? Well, for those of you who don't, it's an alternate method of casting a card that does so by replacing the fact that you are discarding a card with Madness from your hand by casting it instead. Just read the reminder text on Alchemist's Greeting.

Madness works, despite breaking one of the rules of the game, and raising the complexity of it in the process for a couple reasons. First, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Madness is in a block that also incorporates a lot of discarding effects and other mechanics that look at the graveyard - like Delirium and Flashback. Thus, to new players, the complexity overall is reduced because they can recognize a pattern in the way the cards work.

I'm not sorry at all.

And not only that, but the rarity-affects-complexity aspect to the NWO is also applied to Madness. Alchemist's Greeting is common. It does flat damage. Compare that to Avacyn's Judgment. While both are spells that do direct damage, the latter changes how much damage is dealt by switching from a fixed Madness cost to a variable one. Increased complexity, increased rarity.

Crew is another mechanic that works out well, both with new and old players. What if I told you that Crew as a mechanic was related to Convoke? You know, the one where you tap creatures instead of lands to help cast a spell? Well, instead of casting a spell through creatures, you're activating an ability on an Artifact - Vehicle, and you're checking power rather than colour.

It's easy enough to understand, but then you also have to deal with the existence of Heart of Kiran, that allows for an alternate Crew cost through the use of a Planeswalker's loyalty counter. And because that particular example is Mythic Rare, in addition to all the Planeswalkers, there is a commonality in the access to the more complex version of the mechanic.

To paraphrase Mark Rosewater: "If your core mechanic is not at common, it is not your core mechanic." That being, in order for a mechanic to be justifiably part of the set, it has to exist at all rarities, and not just the higher ones. Players with limited access to cards have to be able to reliably interact with it, and not just save it for the people who get lucky or buy lots of cards.

In the end, this is what the New World Order boils down to. Keep the card complexity down, and avoid power creep. Avoid making cards that are objectively better than others, and then replace those with other cards that are better still. Lava Dart to Shock to Lightning Bolt. It's alright to step back to help reset the game state overall. Yes, the old players may moan, but they aren't who you make the game for.

Just remember one of the base truisms of Magic - every set is someone's first, and everyone opens a pack for the first time. The game lives on drawing new players in, and bringing old players back after a sabbatical. You don't want to make them think that the game is unlearnable and arcane. I've seen what happens when that happens.

I'm serious. In fact, I can prove it with three words. Three words from a different game that failed to learn the lessons that Magic did.

Event, Objective, Incident.

If you know what I'm talking about, I feel your pain. If you don't, don't go looking. Madness lies that way. But not the Madness of Magic. Madness in the sense of crazyness. Madness in the sense of poor game design.

So whenever you start to complain about how a set is just boring, or the cards in it are weak, just remember that you're remembering the highs. And with the highs, there have to be lows to compensate. Make the best with what you've got, and wait for the next high point!

Oh, and here's another article for you guys to read about the NWO.

I'll see you all next week, when I talk about why some cards are repeated, and some are not.

Until then, I'm selling out! Or is that tapping out? Basic donors get a preview copy of the final article, while advanced donors get that as well as the opportunity to join me in a podcast version of the series where I talk and you respond.