Pattern Recognition #53 - Resurrection

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

30 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.

So, welcome back everyone! I hope you're all excited for Unstable, as after seeing the image to be used for the new card for Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, I've decided to skip on this silver border set and save for a second box of Dominaria.

No, it's not because I can't find any of my Unhinged or Unglued cards at all. Why would you think that?

But that's enough of a distraction. This week's subject is the result of a request by one of our own here on Tapped Out, TheRedGoat. He said:

You know, my brain works in mysterious ways when all this talk of modern makes me think right past Death's Shadow working with Orzhov Charm and gets me wondering why white has a surprisingly high number of reanimation effects throughout the years. I know you've had an article or two on colour-shifted effects, but I can't remember you talking about that particular aspect of white. Mind taking a crack at it?

I have no idea how Orzhov Charm works into this, given that the reanimation ability in question is lifted straight from Reanimate or Unearth, except not as abusable.

Regardless, let's have a look at that subject, shall we?

Here's the thing. If I asked you which colours you think did the most 'pull stuff from the graveyard' interaction, what would your answers be?

Well, I think it's self-apparent that Black is the king of this particular aspect of the game. I mean, I just mentioned three cards just a couple of paragraphs ago that do exactly that!

In second place, I think that most of you would say Green. And you're not wrong. I mean, look at the Golgari mechanic from Ravnica, City of Guilds! Dredge is a ridiculously powerful mechanic that has gotten Golgari Grave-Troll banned and unbanned and banned again in Modern. And even by itself, Green provides us with the surprisingly useful Reclaim, the probably-over costed Elven Cache, Cartographer (which I am surprised I don't see more of in Gitrog EDH decks), or the obligatory Time Spiral reference in Evolution Charm.

In third place, we have White. Which I will get to in more detail in a moment.

As for Red and Blue? Well, the best number to describe them would be in the negative, as while Blue has slight recursion of instants and sorceries, red's interactions with the graveyard can be best described as "put as many things into it as fast as possible".

But this was not always the case. It used to be White that played second fiddle to Black in terms of graveyard recursion, and it is this state of affairs that TheRedGoat wanted me to talk about.

To explain this, let us go back to the very beginning. Again. As part of the initial flavour for the game, was given positive religious symbology. Hence, cards like Serra Angel, and the general 'good guyness' of White that persists even to this day. On the other hand, was given the opposite. They invoked the Lord of the Pit and other 'evil' creatures like Drudge Skeletons.

And Vorthos provided for both the shared aspect of 'returning from the dead'. In Black's case, this is pretty obviously things like necromancy and undeath, returning from the grave without restoring them to what they were before. As time went on, Black refined this idea into one of 'conservation of resources'. That being the idea that just because a creature is in the graveyard and dead, does not mean that its usefulness is at an end.

Even in death, they still serve - to slightly modify a phrase often attributed to Warhammer 40,000.

on the other hand, saw their creature recursion in a more positive light. They were restoring them to their original state. And the card that exemplified that from the very beginning was Resurrection. Coming to us all the way from the very first printing of the game, this card helped codify the idea that the graveyard wasn't the be-all, end-all of a creature's life in the game.

So... what happened? Where did White fall by the wayside and leave it to Green to take second place?

First off, still does this on occasion. Defy Death or the Dawn side of Dusk / Dawn or Rally the Ancestors (which I lost a game casting because it doesn't give the creatures haste. It caught my opponent off guard too, and he agreed that it wasn't really my fault. We both assumed it gave the returned creatures haste).

But what really changed was what White pulled back from the graveyard. You see, White is really the grand master of pulling Enchantments from there to the Battlefield as part of White's synergy with enchantments in general. You have cards like Auramancer, Evershrike, and Monk Idealist.

These cards served more that just as a means to get your enchantments back, they also existed in a design space that tried its best to reduce and mitigate the opportunity costs associated with the fact that Auras, being enchantments that go onto creatures, go away when that creature does.

Oh wait, I wrote a whole article about that, and the solution offered in Equipment.

So naturally, White extended this recursive mastery to Artifacts as well. The first one I can think of is Argivian Find, and through cards like Ironclad Slayer, or combined with in Hanna, Ship's Navigator. And pardon me while I hold my nose up at New Phyrexia and Remember the Fallen. yeugh.

What I find interesting though, is that when I look at a listing of all these cards, I see that quite a few of them are creatures. Creatures that either recur or restore something when they enter the battlefield, or you have to sacrifice them for the effect.

I mean, I can understand the calculus involved. This makes creatures more valuable in the deck, requiring different counters for - and in a pinch, the creature can swing to attack as well.

And why Tragic Poet didn't get a reprint in Theros, I will never know.

A mechanic that I only remembered while I was writing this (and seeing I was still a ways off my self-imposed word count) that fits into this subject matter perfectly is Embalm. This mechanic from Amonkhet cut out the middle-man (or card as the case may be), and allowed creatures to return themselves to the battlefield. Albeit as a White Zombie token. Sacred Cat is a surprisingly powerful card thanks to this ability, and being two creatures for the price of one at the very least.

Embalm works thanks to the flavour of the set, as Mummies are something that people think about when thinking about ancient Egypt. So being able to make mummies of your creatures only comes naturally in addition to being in-colour. A nice convergence of flavour and mechanics there.

There's also its Hour of Devastation counterpart, Eternalize, but that's black in nature, so we won't talk about that too much.

Soulshift is another mechanic that does something similar, though it is from the much maligned Kamigawa block, and is limited to the Spirit tribe. Each instance of Soulshift, with one exception, can also only allow you to pull a smaller creature from the graveyard, furthering limiting its usefulness.

White has also branched out in this regard. While phasing out direct graveyard interaction, keeping it as a minor tool in its tool chest, White has expanded in three other areas. The first is in making your creatures bigger. Cards like Righteousness work to keep a creature on the battlefield, keeping it alive through dint of having shear bigger numbers.

Secondly, through the use of Protection effects. Creatures can't leave the battlefield in the first place if they can't be hit by whatever kills them, right?

The third, however, is the most common (for a given measure of common) replacement for the majority of creature recursion. Simply making their creatures or other cards in general Indestructible.

All of this changes the emphasis on White from getting things back to making sure they never leave in the first place. Whereas Black is the opposite. To them, the getting back is more important, even if it's part of the reactive Regeneration mechanic that as since fallen by the wayside as well.

Pulling cards from the graveyard is nothing new to the game, and because of this legacy, cannot really go away. But what Wizards has been trying to do for a long time is to limit the when something can come back, as well as the what. Black goes for creatures. White for Enchantments and Artifacts. Green touches on Creatures and Lands. Blue and to a very minor extent Red goes for Instants and Sorceries. This division allows each colour to enforce their preferences in the face of all the others and keeping each slice of the colour pie distinct.

Thank you all, and join me next week when I address another viewer suggestion, and this time, it's about creatures!

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!