Pattern Recognition #51 - Morph

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

16 November 2017

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Hello everyone! My name is berryjon, and I am TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey and part time Smart Ass. I write this series, Pattern Recognition, as a means to entertain, educate and something else that starts with an E.

Today's article comes from last week's Commander game held every Monday night on our Twitch stream (found here), in which our own zandl ran a deck using cards from Tarkir and therefore found himself using a large contingent of cards for today's subject.

So, just to delay things further, can someone tell me what this card is:

No, I'm not talking about the Deckmaster logo with the graphic error on it.

No, it's not the top of your opponent's library. Seriously, has my love for Future Sight taught you so little? ;)

What this card is, is a nameless, typeless, colourless 2/2 creature. It's a Morph.

Morphs are a very interesting creature non-type, and they are far older than Tarkir. Which makes what was done with them in that block a certain degree of "Huh, is that where they want to go with that?"

To begin with, Morph appeared first in the pre-Modern block of Onslaught, in the set of the same name. From a thematic and Vorthos point of view, Morph is one of the things that was involved with the Riptide Project.

If you're wondering where you've heard about those guys, they're the ones who thought bringing Slivers back to life was a good idea, and one of said Slivers utilized its ability to Morph (or was it the Mistform? Eh, I'll shake out some more research later) to escape containment and wreck the Project, allowing the Slivers to escape.

And the rest is history. Slivers were back for good.

But that's not what I want to talk about! I want to talk about Morph!

Morph came about are a result of Wizards trying to retemplate and 'fix' Illusionary Mask and Camouflage, or at least make them work better with the way the rules were at the time. The question being asked was "What defines a Face Down card on the battlefield?"

If you say "It's a Contingency, duh", I have some Dire Consequences for you. Now, back to the right game!

Morphs are (with a couple exceptions) creatures that enter the battlefield face down for a cost of . While on the battlefield, they are the most generic 2/2 creatures imaginable, lacking even a name or a type. This cost is important, because as you may recall from my previous articles - such as when talking about drawing cards - you can substitute a single coloured mana for , and the cost would be effectively the same.

So, what costs and one coloured mana, and is a 2/2?

That's right! Morphs are Bears. And we come back to this notion about what the core creature in the game is.

At any point - breaking even the stack - you can pay a creature's Morph cost (as defined on the card), and turn it over. At this point, the creature is now on the battlefield normally, but didn't actually enter the battlefield in the process.

Onslaught experimented with three different ways to explore this design space, and then did several more the next two times this mechanic showed up.

The first is one of the most, well, let's say 'typical'. Cards like Daru Lancer, or better yet, Scornful Egotist are cards that have a massively, hugely inflated mana cost, but their Morph cost is more in line with what that card is actually worth. I've talked about alternate casting costs in the past and here we see the same thing in the works. These are cards that are meant to be played as Morphs, and then turned face up at at a later time. If ever.

Second is the most obvious. And by most obvious, I mean, "When this card turns face up...." as a triggered ability, such as those found on ... Proteus Machine and way too many other examples to list. These are cards that take advantage of the fact that this creature is in play already, and can now have a one-use triggered ability that in all other cards without Morph or its similar mechanics, would have to be an "Enters the Battlefield" effect.

And the difference between an EtB effect, and a Face up effect?

Timing. I'm serious here. This is 'faster than Flash' speed. Effects moving so fast, that I'm not even sure Stifle could get in the way. For an example of just how powerful this effect can be, look no further than a card so useful that it got reprinted in Time Spiral (take a drink): Willbender.

That card that's about to win your opponent the game? Yeah, not gonna happen. Counterspell on the stack? Find something else to take out, please and thank you.

Skirk Volcanist is another example, as it demonstrates an alternate Morph cost in sacrificing two mountains, and an interesting effect when it is revealed, dealing out three damage distributed among different targets. Or maybe I just wanted to show off a non-Blue Wizard.

The third effect is one of the most subtle, but also one of the most devastating. What's the difference between a 2/2 and ... Krosan Cloudscraper? The latter is a 13/13, one of the largest creatures in the game. And before it turns face up, it looks just like all those other innocuous 2/2's out there.

You see, Morph cards are the ultimate in Bluff cards. Your opponent cannot know what they are, and has to treat each of them like they could be a grand and lethal threat.

Or it could be some random Headhunter.

Or maybe the Morph stays unflipped, saving its reveal for later. Or never.

And Time Spiral. Get out your flasks people, because this block did something amazing. No, I'm not talking about how Maelstrom Djinn let's you cheat out a huge creature on the cheap in exchange for it vanishing on you in a couple turns. Or how Whip-Spine Drake used an off-colour Morph cost that is above the curve on aggression.

No, what this block did was to print Lumithread Field. It printed Whetwheel. It printed Zoetic Cavern.

So, what's so special about them? And it's not that they all share the Future Frame.

They're not creatures.

These are Morphs, that when they turn face up, stop being creatures, and start being something else entirely. Lumithread Field stops being a 2/2 in exchange for making all your other creatures tougher. Whetwheel becomes a proto-Sands of Delirium. And Zoetic Cavern becomes a non-basic Wastes.

And I love all of them. The thread found its way into my white-weeny deck of the time as it could help both sides of the equation - more creatures or better creatures. The Wheel is a key component in my training deck "The Lumbermill". And the Cavern fills in that gap of drawing a land in the mid to late game in a deck that isn't running Landfall.

Of course, that's not all there is to these cards. Because they switch card types when they flip over, they can avoid or gain the benefits of that switch. Someone casting Abrade on your Morph? Flip it over to reveal it as a land! Although if you wind up with your opponent casting something like Putrefy on your Whetwheel, flipping it over won't help as both card types can be blown up by it. Sorry!

Alright, that's enough with me gushing over three cards that are little more than rules headaches today. It's time to talk Tarkir.

The introduction of Morph into Tarkir was an interesting one. You see, part of the theme behind the block was how the actions of Sarkhan Vol altered the timeline of Tarkir, and how the plane developed with or without the Dragons. And the Morph mechanic made a comeback as something that could be easily altered to suit the changing times.

So, Morph was a thing. I'll skip talking about it, save to say that it did the exact same things as all the time previous. Now, the middle set in the block introduced the Manifest mechanic.

Manifest is an interesting twist on Morph. It allowed you to turn the top card on any library into a 2/2 creature. Which is absolutely wonderful when you can actively Scry at the same time. But what separated the two mechanics was that you could turn your face-down Manifest card face up for their normal casting cost or for their Morph cost if they had one. This allowed players to not lose out on their powerful (hopefully) creatures due to a bad Manifest, while acting as a sort of soft-lock on their deck for anything that wasn't a creature.

Megamorph ... was Morph. Exactly. Except when it turned face up, you got a +1/+1 counter on the creature in the process. Yeah. Very underwhelming. Aside from the usual synergy with Doubling Season, Megamorph was quite the lacklustre mechanic, and one I will not expect to see again in a regular set. I mean, sure, I got a lot of use out of Gudul Lurker in my Can't Touch This!] deck, but that's an exception. Norm.

So, what is the point behind all this?

Well, I mentioned before that Morphs and similar cards are one of the ways you can bluff in this game. Where information is paramount, a creature that is simply a 2/2 that could become something else at any time was a huge blank spot in that knowledge. It caused doubt in the minds of the players, and that doubt can lead to mistakes and poor plays. Which is great for high-level players, but for the introductory players? The ones who are necessary for the well being of the game? Not so much.

But the other side of the coin comes from Limited play. You know what makes Morphs so valuable in limited?

Their casting cost is . No colours needed. Which means that you can not only put them into any deck regardless of the colours involved, but you also don't need to worry so much about when you get your colours to flip them over. If you do at all. I recall during one draft at my LGS when I worked there, I basically pulled all the Morph cards I could, and put them all into the deck with something approximating a mana-base. I could cast all the Morphs I could, but my opponents were always caught off guard trying to figure out what I was 'really' doing by my open mana.

I lost badly. It was a bad idea.

But that doesn't change the fact that in Limited, you may be in the position where having a 2/2 for is a good option, and what else it may be is a secondary concern. And that makes Morph something to keep in the back of your mind. It will come again, I'm sure of it. As long as it gets good support, and not thrown out at random.

But if you do decide to try out Morphs for yourself, can I recommend Muraganda Petroglyphs? After all, they don't have any abilities while face down, and therefore get the benefit....

Join me next time, when I talk about a set.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream, and you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!