Pattern Recognition #33 - Volvers Redux

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

15 June 2017

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Hello everyone! My name is berryjon, and this is Pattern Recognition. I am TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey and self-described Smart Ass. Today's article is the result of technical difficulties. You see, back in January of this year, after I was coming off my first hiatus, I submitted this particular article to get me back into the game.

Except that I wasn't in control over my ability to publish articles at the time. I still needed someone else to actually push it out the door for me. And at the time, there was some confusion as to who it was.

As a result, while you can still go back and read it by using the links at the bottom of the previous or subsequent article, I decided this week to go back and redo it and tidy it up.

And becuase it wasn't published in the first place, this isn't technically a reprint!

Hello everyone! Welcome back to Pattern Recognition! It's been a quiet December on this front, though I can tell you that real life has been quite the headache. But I'm back, and you can all rejoice at the knowledge that I will fit mentions of Time Spiral into everything that I can.

For those of you who are just now joining me, my name is berryjon, an Old Fogey who will take you down my memory lane and I show you how the present of Magic grew out from the past.

Or whatever crosses my mind, really. I'm quite casual about that.

Today's subject wasn't based around a formal request. Rather, it came to me through the Card Creation Challenge thread in the forums. One of the participants, legendofa, asked for the creation of an alternate Volver cycle, one that was based on the Wedges, not the Shards. I came up with an idea for the challenge, and noted that this would actually make for a nice chat about multi-coloured.

So, what is a Volver? Well, they were a cycle of Rare Creatures from the set "Apocalypse". This Cycle shared the Kicker mechanic and combined it with the block's aggressive multicolor theme to create something unique and amazing.

I present to you the Degavolver, the Cetavolver, the Necravolver, the Rakavolver and the Anavolver.

I will now give you a moment to appreciate the utter beauty of their design.

((Checks Watch))

((Humms Songo di Voare ))

Now you're confused, right? Well, let's step back for a moment and look at the whole of the Invasion Block to show why I love these guys and everything they did right.

Invasion was meat to be the capstone of Magic's story at the time. The culmination of Urza's blocks-long, millennia long war against Phyrexia through the narrative lens of the Han Solo-esque Gerrard Capashen and the crew of the Skyship Weatherlight.

The first set in the block, Invasion, showed the initial stages of the invasion - and the ad hoc defence being put up by Dominaria as Urza's plans began to come together. And no one could stand alone. So Invasion became the block of alliances. No, not the set. But of Colours. Red reached out to Black and Green, Green to Red and White....

Dominaria would not Bend or Break. They would not Do or Die. It would not be a measure of Death or Glory. There was no choice between Fight or Flight. This was the moment when you separate Fact or Fiction. They would Stand / Deliver, they would Assault / Battery the Phyrexians back with all their Spite / Malice. They would feel all the Pain / Suffering as their fortunes Wax / Wane.

Why yes, the Invasion block is either my favourite or my second favourite, why do you ask? I mean, it's not like Ravnica, Zendikar, Alara and Tarkir all struggled and failed to match this block, right?

You see, Invasion was the first set in almost two years to include Gold cards. The modern staple of every set, the conjoining of colours? Was a dead idea before Invasion rolled back around, and it hit like a Pain Train. Magic changed with this set. Gold or Multi-coloured cards became the rule, not the exception (even as the sets immediately following dropped the idea for far too long).

Remember, Ravnica was 5 blocks away. And the sets between held a large dearth of gold cards.

Then came Planeshift. This was the Small Set in the block, a third the size of the other two. And it served as a transition, where Phyrexia's invasion advanced, and fault lines began to form. Multicoloured cards were toned back, and a lot of them came with drawbacks. Perhaps the most (in)famous of these were the bounce creatures. Silver Drake, Shivan Wurm... You may recognize this as very similar, thematically, to the Ravnican Bounce Lands, and worked in the same way.

There was now a cost to work together. Would you pay it?

It even showed in the 'scape Battlemages. This cycle of five would be the prototype of the Volver cycle - Sunscape Battlemage, Stormscape Battlemage, Nightscape Battlemage, Thunderscape Battlemage, and Thornscape Battlemage. These cards all had allied coloured kickers for an Enters the Battlefield effect.

And with the Apocalypse, even those bonds were broken. The original notion of the colour pie, that allies and enemies existed was gone. White couldn't reach out to Green or Blue for help, so they had to find strength in their enemies - Dega Disciple, Dega Sanctuary and finally Degavolver. And they too reached back - Desolation Angel and Desolation Giant.

The Volvers were the pinnacle of this. A complete cycle of creatures that utilized the kicker costs to show that they could, and would become more than what others thought they could be by their colour

And it worked. Without the ground broken in this set - this block, Ravnica would never have been, nor would the tri-coloured factions of Alara and Tarkir.

Actually, funny story. Before Alara, the tri-coloured decks took their names from the Legendary Dragons of Invasion - Naya was Rith, Esper was Dromar, Jund was Darigaaz, Grixis was Crosis, and Bant was Treva. Of course, the Alaran names are more recent, and a lot easier on the tongue. I don't blame people for using them. If I did, I would have to blame myself.

And before Tarkir? The 'Wedges' of a colour and its foes? They were named for the Volvers. Mardu used to be known as Dega, Temur was Ceta, the Abzan were the Necra, Jeskai came from the Raka, and lastly, the Sultai used Ana's colours.

You can see why people took to the new names, right? They roll of the tongue so much better.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. The Volvers themselves formed a cycle with their abilities. The Rakavolver and the Necravolver both shared the same White Kicker:
If (Name)volver was kicked with its kicker, it enters the battlefield with two +1/+1 counters on it and with "Whenever (Name)volver deals damage, you gain that much life."
And this went around the whole cycle. Everyone shared their opponent's Kicker in an interconnected cycle that was a true cycle, and not a set of five cards that did something similar and was called a 'cycle' for ease of identification.

But there is still more than that. You see, I ran this idea by the owner of my FLGS as I recognized that this was something I wanted to talk about yet wasn't sure I could go full-length on it. He pointed out that as part of the renaissance that Invasion heralded, the entire Block was the first one designed from the ground up to be used in Drafting or Sealed.

Lo there, did the light open up before me, and things made sense.

Because of the nature of the two limited formats - specifically in how you have a limited card pool to draw from, and you can't always get what you want, you tend to be forced into two colours. And not always allied ones. While I admit to the possibility of reaching into a third colour as a splash, that isn't always the case, or the option.

Side track here, but I want you guys to look up the gold cards in Magic Origins and Kaladesh. Where am I going with those two searches? Well, I want you to look at how Wizards has been treating Gold lately, and compare to how it was treated in the past.

In Origins, these ten cards were descriptive. I sold people on Magic Origin's multi coloured cards on this exact logic - that the creatures that represented what the intent behind the colour combinations was. That worked on global bonuses and could show up at any time, or that cared about your creatures while punishing the enemy for them. That sort of thing. It worked. But Kaladesh took that too far. You could look at the card and see for yourself how the combination synergized.

But how did Kaladesh go further? The multicoloured cards became prescriptive. They didn't so much as show you what you could do with the combination as tell you what you were doing in those colours. As awesome as Depala, Pilot Exemplar is, she is a problem. You play her, and your entire deck is set out in front of you. You're playing Red/White, and you're running Vehicles. End of story. Wizards is telling you, through this card and through similar ones in the set that "this is what you have to do".

And that's wrong.

Although I do have to give props to the player base for making the Vehicles deck run Mardu Colors () as a better option. Shows Wizards still can't predict everything.

The Volvers and their ilk succeeded in being an enabler where other sets turned them into limitations. It's something that Wizards has actually taken a step backwards in over time. Ravnica, City of Guilds (hah! Bet most of you didn't know that was the full name for the set!) began a theme, or simply a concept in the game where every time multiple colours are working together as part of the theme of the set, they have to have a mutual mechanic.

And hoo-boy, did Rav make a mess of it. You see, the ten guilds were separated into the three blocks, in a 4-3-3 pattern, and because of that, limited decks at the time were very samey. Constructed was different, but when you were forced by the nature of the set into three or four archetypes, it didn't do the format or the block any good. Lorwyn/Shadowmoor ran into a similar problem, but was more lax about it. The Tribal focus, while good, also meant that you had to play Tribal or go bust.

Alara and Tarkir, the other two major 'color themed' sets that I give recognition to, still had this problem, but tried to make it so that each segment of the colour pie was represented in each set of the block. Of course, this didn't stop those two blocks from throwing their hands up in the air and giving up part way through the block. Alara Reborn's set was entirely gold, and brought back Hybrid mana in order to make things work, while Tarkir stepped back from the wedge orientation for the Dragons of Tarkir set to allied color pairings.

But Invasion through Apocalypse? The Volvers let you go either way with their combinations, and at the same time said it was alright to go it alone, or even with all three. Not so with more recent sets, where they try to pigeon-hole you into certain styles of playing by your color choices - and while that's not wrong, it's not right either.

The Volvers opened up the game, and showed the way to a more interesting future. That's why I love them and the entire block. I just hope those lessons are remembered.

Thank you all for joining me as I totally didn't run out of time and energy to create something new this week, and join me next week when I take a look at some of the feedback regarding last week's issue of Pattern Recognition and ... you know what? I'm going to spoil it this time.

I'm going to talk about the Dual Lands, starting with Limited Edition Beta, and how Wizards keeps trying new things with them, both to keep them interesting and viable without making them too powerful or too weak.

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.