Pattern Recognition #44 - Flowstone

Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

14 September 2017

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Good day everyone! My name is berryjon, TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey, and part-time Smart Ass. I write this series, Pattern Recognition in order to entertain, educate and perhaps even improve your appreciation for the past, present and future of Magic. I'll even shoehorn in a reference to the Time Spiral block if I can. Because I can!

Toady's subject came to me from a comment made on a different forum, where I link my articles here for them to come here to read. Gotta drive up site views, right? ;)

So, how many of you remember Rath?

You know, the Plane? Setting of Nemesis in the Tempest block?

Anyone? Aside from you. Yes! You in the back! You don't count. ;)

OK, so history time. Rath was an artificial plane constructed by Phyrexia to act as a staging ground for their invasion of Dominaria. At its core, the literal centre of the plane was the Stronghold, sitting in an active volcano above the City of Traitors and the Furnace of Rath. It served multiple purposes, including acting as a hanger for the Predator, Flagship, home of the Evincar of Rath (be it Vorath the Fallen, or Crovax the Cursed in his Ascendant Evincar form - but not Ertai, the Corrupted) and their Mogg armies.

But the real purpose of the Stronghold was to act as the centre of Flowstone production. Flowstone was a form of nano-magical material that was produced over the course of centuries to expand the mass and volume of the artificial plane. The end goal was to make Rath large enough to punch through the multiverse, overlaying on Dominaria and acting as a bridge between Phyrexia and Dominaria, being subsumed in the process. However, with the failure of the Invasion, large portions of Dominaria have the stuff lying around, as we will see.

Yeah, you think Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh is thinking big by turning an entire plane into a Zombie factory? He's a putz compared to what Yawgmoth did, and he wasn't even a Planeswalker!

Now, one of the properties of Flowstone was that it could be shaped. Not by traditional carving methods, but rather through magic, or in the case of the Evincar or Rath, as a perk of the position. It was used for many things, from shaping homes and maps, through its most infamous on-card use - forging weapons.

You see, when you look at the Flowstone cards, you see that they all have the same basic function. For , the relevant creature gets +1/-1 as a repeatable effect.

For such a simple thing, there's a lot of complexity in its implications.

Let's step back for a moment, and look at one of the first instances of this in play that I can remember - if only because I loved the hell out of this card in ages past. Blood Lust was an absolutely ridiculous card that allowed you to give a creature an extra four power at the cost of up to four toughness - as long as the toughness would not be reduced past one. This latter limitation was put in place to avoid it being used as instant speed removal for a cheaper cost than cards like Flame Lash or Lightning Blast.

But the real use of Blood Lust, as I saw it, was to make my creature far larger, either to deliver a killing blow to an opponent, or to make a chump-block into a surprise trade. I mean, if I'm tossing a 1/1 in the way, I might as well make it a 5/1 if it's going to die regardless, right?

Flowstone cards fit the same mould, except that they were not seen in the same, expendable light. In fact, Flowstone creatures tended to be in the small minority of creatures who didn't have a power higher than their toughness! In fact, looking at the list, it seems that four out of the twelve examples all had their toughness higher than their power, with the other eight having equal power and toughness.

Of course, this isn't just a ability, as gets in on the act with cards like Breathstealer and gets the powerful Morphling.

But as you may have noticed from a couple of my examples, you may have seen that there is the reverse ability - cards that grant -1/+1 to the relevant creature. The card that jumped to mind when I started to plot out this article was actually Karn, Silver Golem *oversized* and his ability to turn from a 4/4 to a 0/8 when he blocks or is blocked.

Now, here's the thing. If a creature's toughness goes below zero, it dies as a state based action. But if a creature's power is reduced to less than zero, it is treated as having a power of zero. So unless there is some other limit in play, a creature with this ability can pump their toughness as high as is conceivable!

You can't do that with the Flowstone ability. There is a limit to the number of times the ability can be activated due to the creature's toughness. You can eventually get an X/1, where X is the sum of the creature's power and toughness minus 1.

The point here is that this ties into one of the functional truths behind the game, and how creature cards are costed - in addition to how cards that modify a creature's power and toughness are costed.

You see, power is worth more than toughness.

Let me provide an example. Blade of the Sixth Pride is a 3/1 for . Arashin Cleric is a 1/3 that gives you 3 life when it comes into play. Or Jeskai Student at the same cost, is a 1/3 with Prowess. Or the Nyx-Fleece Ram, which is a 0/5 that gives you more life on your upkeep.

As you can see by my carefully chosen examples, creatures with higher toughness tend to come either with a huge differential, like Kami of Old Stone, or with some form of advantage to make having a non-offensive creature worth having.

Why is this? Well, in a game of resources, and one where Creatures are a self-correcting Resource problem (through combat and the like), creatures with higher power become better able to kill other creatures, regardless of the power of the other creature. High power creatures are also better able to deal with Planeswalkers and can end the game faster when hitting players. And when games are on a timer, more damage is better in this regard.

Higher toughness creatures slow down the game in a way, as it becomes harder to remove them. They clog up the battlefield, and can stall out the board state.

Flowstone, and the cards and abilities that resemble it, work by shifting the balance of a creature from the defence to the offence. But on another side of the balance, creatures with this ability are a headache to design around from a theory-crafting standpoint. With most creatures, their power and toughness as printed are fixed, and while variables do exist (such as with Beast of Burden), those are easily accounted for. What causes complexity is that with these creatures, the power and toughness are both fixed to a total, but can be variable in practice.

There is a huge difference in combat between knowing if you're dealing with a 0/5, or if you're dealing with a creature that can be that or a 1/4, or a 2/3, or a 3/2 or a 4/1. Morphling and its equals are rares for a reason. In some manner, Wizards doesn't like this confusion, as it makes combat, while more engaging, also more confusing.

That this can be done at instant speed after blockers have been declared can add to the problem.

In confession, I have totally done, when the rules still allowed it, to put combat damage on the stack, then boost a creature's toughness with its -1/+1 ability to prevent it from dying while still dishing out full damage. Morphling.

Now, I like Flowstone. It's a beautiful point where flavour and mechanics mesh. And while it is definitely a mechanic, very little stops it from hopping to other colours in a major manner. And with our return to Dominaria coming in a couple years, I hope to see, if not a proper Flowstone card, but at least a mention of it on the Plane.

Who knows? Maybe Flowstone Embrace will get a non-Future printing.

And to round out my obligatory Time Spiral reference, Flowstone Channeler casts Flowstone Strike!

Join me next week, when I build a deck.

Until then, I'm selling out! Or is that tapping out? Visit my Patreon page, and see if you want to help me 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.