Pattern Recognition #47 - Friends and Family

Features Pattern Recognition

berryjon

5 October 2017

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.net's most prolific article series, written by me, berryjon, your resident Old Fogey and Smart Ass. I write to entertain, educate and sometimes even horrify you all with my knowledge, experience and occasional screw up.

Today's article is definitely a historical one, as I'm about to talk about one of the Tribes that never really went anywhere, party due to what block they were from, but also because of what they were similar to.

Let's talk about the Kithkin.

Now, let's get something out of the way first. Yes, the Kithkin that showed up in Lorwyn and Shadowmoor were supposed to be Hobbits. Comments from the artist for Goldmeadow Harrier, Quinton Hoover (originals now sadly lost to to time), indicates that during development they were called exactly that.

However, it was decided to drop that name as doing so would incur the attention of the estate of J.R.R Tolkien, and the conflict wasn't worth the hassle. So, instead, they were renamed to the Kithkin, in part because of the same Old English sourcing that Tolkien was fond of, and because they had already committed to it with Time Spiral.

So, let's step back for a moment and start from the beginning. With Amrou Kithkin. First printed in Legends, then again in 4th Edition, Amrou Kithkin was unremarkable for the time. While for a 1/1 is horribly over priced, her ability is what drove her cost up at the time.

That ability is something that was a bit more common in the old days, but has faded out over time in favour of simply being unblockable. Having a small creature that can slip by larger creatures is a good design space as it keeps small creatures relevant in a creature heavy meta, or when you're playing against Green. But oddly enough, this is something that was more in line with Red than White. I cite Dwarven Warriors and Dwarven Nomad.

Amrou Kithkin was part of the problem of colour-sloshing at the time. The idea of the Colour Pie was still in its most protoplasmic at the time. was looking at being the colour of the small creature, and that left the problem of dealing with big creatures when your most likely big creature yourself was Serra Angel. Now, Banding was one way to try and fix that, but the other was to simply try and win the damage race by going around the larger, but fewer creatures. Add in cards like Crusade and Blessing to the mix, and you got creatures that couldn't be blocked by those that could survive the encounter.

And that was that. The ability was phased out of White for the most part, migrated to blue, eventually became Skulk and that's the end of that.

Then came Time Spiral. Huzzah for my favourite non-Ravnica, City of Guilds block!

As part of the throwback theme to the set, Amrou Kithkin got a nod through two new creatures. The first, Amrou Scout was more a reference in name only to Amrou Kithkin, as this creature was more designed to work with the Rebel cycle in the block, being able to search for more Rebels to take to the battlefield.

The other was Amrou Seekers. Also a Rebel, and it can be fetched by Amrou Scout too! But what it really did was exchange Amrou Kithkin's power based evasion with the evasion created by Seeker. Combining two older cards into a single one - and foreshadowing the effect of the colorshifted Skirk Shaman (formerly Severed Legion) and Dust Elemental.

If that was the end of it, that would be fine. It was a nice little callback, one among many that came from that set. Then we got to Future Sight. And we got Goldmeadow Lookout and Mistmeadow Skulk. And we, the players went "whaaaaaat".

I mean, we just had two Kithkin at the start of the block, and they were nice and all, but these two? They were Futureshifted. They were a promise. And they looked different. These weren't the small humans of the previous Kithkin, but something more alien in design.

The Mistmeadow Skulk was a curious thing, and while having a 1/1 with Lifelink for is below the curve nowadays, what with Bishop's Soldier just printed (thank you, for making my comments about Bears even more out of date, Wizards!), what really made this a Future card was the Protection effect. Now, I've also talked about Protections before, but this one was a curious thing, with it being that nothing over a certain casting cost could affect it. Well, aside from the usual work-arounds, like Damnation. It melded the interesting "what if"ism's of the Future Shifted cards with a different way to be evasive like the Seeker and the first Kithkin.

On the flip-side, the Goldmeadow Lookout was an interesting way to take something from the past - Spellshapers - and do something different with it. Previously, Spellshapers could only mimic spells, but with this instance, you could actually use the ability to create a creature (token)!

And when the next set was announced as Lorwyn, we got the Kithkin as a full tribe.

These new Kithkin were something different. As one of the design parameters of Lorwyn was that there were to be "No Humans", there needed to be something familiar to help tie the players to the story and the characters in it. In that way, the Kithkin were the most basic of supplements to help the players adapt, as they took the place of humans as the mono-white (centric) Race of choice.

The Kithkin of Lorwyn were also given, as was appropriate for the multi-coloured focus of the block, a side of . Though that was mostly by implication, and not because of Gaddock Teeg, Kithkin Daggerdare and Kithkin Mourncaller. This was represented, in the lore, by a sense of community and well being, that everyone could feel, through the thoughtweft, their fellows.

It's the same logic invoked by cards like Ajani Goldmane, who was actually first printed in this set. His -1 ability synergized well with the whole 'go wide' and 'everyone helps everyone else' aspect of the two colour's synergy.

However, when The Great Aurora happened, things changed and not for the better. The Kithkin stayed white as their predominant colour, but traded out the affiliation with for . The sense of community became one of hostility. You get Parapet Watchers and the lore on Zealous Guardian.

As Lorwyn is fairy tales in the light, and Shadowmoor are those same tales in the darkness, so too can you see the two sides to community. Welcoming and inclusive versus paranoid and rejecting.

You know, come to think of it, Shadowmoor Kithkin would be right at home on Innistrad or Ulgrotha.

So how does this play out?

Well, the Kithkin by default are a heavily tribal creature type, and I'm not just saying that because of Militia's Pride and Surge of Thoughtweft. They represent a solid White Weeny paradigm, in that the creatures tend to have low casting costs, low power and toughness, and in general emphasized going 'wide' over going 'tall' with their synergistic abilities.

When accounting for Green, there's not much to say, really. Gaddock Teeg, bane of Commander and Tiny Commanders, emphasizes control and lockdown of heavily costed cards, while Kithkin Daggerdare is an interesting combat trick of a creature, able to repeatedly 'cast' a toned down Giant Growth on any attacking creature. Kithkin Mourncaller just rewards you for having your attacking creatures die. And doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose?

Blue, on the other hand, has a much larger degree of synergy. And not only because Shadowmoor brought back the glorious Hybrid mana, allowing for cards to be played. This synergy was not only present in the Kithkin themselves, with Kinscaer Harpoonist forcing a creature down from flying in order to go past or Mistmeadow Witch and its ability to flicker any creature.

So, that's their past. The Kithkin were a 'middle ground' Tribe in Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, which is where most people know them from. They didn't have the same massive impact on the game that the Faerie, Merfolk and Elves had (and to a lesser extent, the Goblins), but they were still respectable in their own way. They still show up from time to time, as Preeminent Captain and Kinsbaile Skirmisher got a reprint in M15.

Can we expect to see them in the future? Unlikely. Lorwyn/Shadowmoor isn't a high priority for revisiting in a future set, partly due to feedback directed to Wizards about the lack of humans in the block. We did catch a glimpse of it in Origins, but that set focused on the Elves, not the Kithkin.

The only real sources for Kithkin in the near future that I can see are either in Magic 25, the anniversary set, or in the upcoming Dominaria expansion - though that would have to focus on the Amrou, not the Lorwyn Kithkin.

So, here is the promised deck! Ridiculous cards included because I could. I mean, Nimbus Maze? Seriously?

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Join me next week when I talk about a certain infinite combo that could go into any deck - and the single faint imitator that it spawned over a decade later.

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