Pattern Recognition #54C - Keyword Sandwich

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

18 January 2018

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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.

Oh Urza, has it been three weeks of this already? Man, the things I do for you guys out of the love in my heart. That, and might have noticed the names of the three articles. Soup, Salad and Sandwich. This is me taking a suggestion from one of my reviewers, and thinking I'm cunning my making a sly reference to how sets are named in development.

For what it's worth, Dominaria was developed using the Soup code-name, so bonus points!

But that's enough of a diversion. Let's get into the nitty-gritty for this week. The final five Evergreen Keywords - Menace, Prowess, Reach, Trample and Vigilance.

Menace, formerly known as the ability found on Goblin War Drums is the most recent ability to get a Keyword, thanks to Magic Origins. It is, in many ways, the simplest of the Keywords to understand, and I find it to be a useful teaching tool to help break new players out of the idea that you can only block a creature with a single creature.

gets no examples, given that Odric, Lunarch Marshal is an ability-sharing creature, and thus requires that there be some other source to work with. 's Wind Spirit was first printed in Ice Age of all places, and has never appeared in that colour since.

gets 26 creatures, has 39, 5, 6 multi-coloured and 2 .

Green's inclusions include two ability-sharing creatures, two that depend on having a Red mana source or a Mountain in play and one that has it natively, the somewhat random Vine Kami.

Which leaves us with Red and Black. I find it only natural that Red gets the majority here, what with having Goblin War Drums to start from. For , Menace represents more than just being scary, it means being a creature with such an aggressive attack that no single creature can hope to stop you. I kinda like that Vorthos bent to the ability, as it plays into Red's style.

Black, on the other hand, is equally true to the name of Menace. Now, while I didn't want to delve much into has-been mechanics (yes, I saw what I did there), Menace continues the trend form its predecessor mechanics of Fear and Intimidate in implying that the creature is so scary that no one can face it - alone.

Menace is the latest in a line of mechanics that Wizards has been forced to contend with to help give an evasive mechanic to Red. Previous mechanics tended to be Black in nature, and Red's theme and style doesn't play nice with other evasive abilities. With previous mechanics being too colour limiting in nature, Red finally stepped up with something that has the ability to work on any creature, regardless of colour, and Black happily adopted it in the process.

Prowess, on the other hand, is the newest Evergreen Keyword, but Menace was actually templated after it due to how Design and Development went from the Khan's block into Magic Origins and beyond.

With 5 , 19 , 13 and one , Prowess' young ange shows in its small pool of creatures that represent it.

As the Jeskai mechanic from the Khans of Tarkir block, this ability played into the fact that Blue and Red were the heaviest casters of non-creature spells, with White coming along for the ride. So, this mechanic was designed to help out creatures passively, rather than depending on being the target of a spell directly, as with the "Heroic" mechanic from Theros. And due to that passive nature, one spell could affect multiple creatures at the same time. Which is great!

Now, there's no real theme behind the ability and the colours represented, save that it's still locked into Jeskai () colours. I mean, it's not like Green needs to make their creatures bigger in more and different ways. They're already neck deep in +1/+1 counters. And Black? Doesn't care about their creatures. And the single colourless creature with this ability is Voracious Reader  ^Flip, which is the flipside of Curious Homunculus  ^Flip, meaning that it is still, technically in Blue!

Part of the problem here is that Prowess has so little thought put into it. It's there without meaning, rhyme or reason. It's there, simply because Wizards needed something for Blue that wasn't an Evasive ability, saw Prowess, and tossed it in, giving it to Red as well in order to not favour their favourite colour too much.

You know, there not really that much to say here. I've talked about it before, and feel that article did a better job than my quick overview here. Go read that one instead.

Moving on, Reach is...

Urza Dammit!

I can't do a proper colour breakdown because Gatherer likes to include the Reminder text in their text box searches, which is a pain in the arse. So, let me slide over to MagicCards.info and ... SAME BLOODY PROBLEM!

Allright, vague generalizations it is.

First appearing on Alpha's Giant Spider, Reach is an Evergreen Keyword dominated by Green, and only seeing some minor play in White and Red. This ability, while appearing since the beginning of the game, was only actually turned into a Keyword with an internal definition thanks to Future Sight's Thornweald Archer. Reach has the unique distinction of being the only 'counter' Keyword in the game, meaning that it has no use outside of acting against another Keyword - Flying.

Seriously. Reach does nothing except to act against creatures with Flying. Now, there is a couple of fringe cases where cards may say that they may only be blocked by creatures with flying - in which case, Reach does nothing, or by creatures that cannot be blocked by creatures with Flying - in which case, creatures with Reach still do their thing.

But the reason why this mechanic is dominated by Green and not by anyone else is because their traditional colour enemies - Blue and Black - have easy access to Flying, and rather than print more cards like Killer Bees or Unyaro Bees, Wizards decided to give Green a counter-ability to deal with this evasive ability that wouldn't affect their interactions with White or Red. Well, maybe not, as I mentioned earlier. White is right up there with Blue for fliers, and Red dabbles thanks to their Dragons and other mountainous birds.

I mean, it's useful alright. But it's not effective. Green gets it as part of their general hate-on for Flying, White gets it because they tend to have guys like Longbow Archers, and red because ... Giants are huge? Seriously, why, of all things, did Skyraker Giant get it?

You know what? This is another one I'm just running out of steam on.

Let's talk about the glorious Trample instead! With 532 examples, White starts out small with a mere 16 creatures, Blue doesn't get much better with 18, Black is ahead with 35, Red gets 102 of them, Green dominates with 230 creatures, does fairly well for itself with 45 examples, and 84 multi-coloured representatives.

I like Trample. I love Trample. It's simple and pure in its design, and it's a perfect fit for the two colours it's in.

Oh, what about White, Blue and Black? Those cards were almost all printed in the dark days before the modern Colour Pie, and while I absolutely adore Elder Land Wurm and Jokulmorder, it's just not them any more. They have other ways to get Damage through to the opponent.

Red's Trample is part of their emotional distinction. Once they start, they don't stop. And it's a beautiful thing to see, when they act like the Embodiment of Fury they are. And for the colour that also dominates in dealing out direct damage, being able to assign your overflow damage from your creatures to the defending player is just icing on the cake.

You know, I had a brainwave. I thought that for some reason, Red had a preponderance of creatures that had both First or Double Strike and Trample. The theory being that Red, being the colour of aggression, would naturally combine the two(three) Keywords that would allow their creatures to hit the enemy with near impunity.

But it turns out, that's not the case. I'm looking at cards like Legion Loyalist, who only grants it through the Batallion mechanic, but that's not enough. Prophetic Flamespeaker attaches this combination to an additional ability. And the only pure example I can find is Pilgrim of the Fires, and Artifact Creature!

So much for my thoughts there.

But Green... Green, green, green. Trample is your signature ability. In fact, it's so signature, it almost displaces your mana acceleration for most prominent aspect to your colour!

Of course, not everything gets Trample. A look at the creatures that have it tells me that this ability tends to show up with a minimum power and toughness of 3/3. Which is only natural, as big creatures can easily Overrun smaller ones, and the bigger the creature in question, the more likely it will have Trample.

Of course, this isn't always the case. Charging Badger is an example of a small creature with Trample, which while it would normally be an academic ability at that point, Green has access to Giant Growth and its many, many imitators. That, and Badgers are vicious little things. Don't get them angry!

But, because of this ability to still deal damage to a defending player despite being blocked, Trample is one of those Keywords that tends to appear alone. That is, having Trample decreased (but does not remove) the chance that that same creature will have some other, complimentary ability or even a drawback.

Of course, talking about Green and Trample, I would be remiss to not mention Lone Wolf, Pride of Lions and Thorn Elemental, all of whom take Trample up to the next step, and ignore the defending creature entirely. Needless to say, this was ridiculously powerful, and the experiment was quietly dropped.

And lastly, we get Vigilance. No, wait, I mean Vigilance. Perhaps most famous for being on Serra Angel, this ability is found on, or given out by 247 creatures in the game. White rules over this ability with 139 creatures, Blue gets 8 (including, humorously enough, the Serra Sphinx, a colour-shifted Angel), 3 Black, 3 Red, 30 Green, 16 Colourless creatures and 48 Multicoloured.

Vigilance is the ability to both attack and defend with the same creature. Normally, this is a binary choice, as if you attack, you cannot defend with that creature on your opponents turns, and if you hold back with a creature to defend, it cannot attack.

This makes it perfect for White, being the colour of the slow and steady advance. Why over commit when you can act and still react in turn? This is probably why the other colours only get them as exceptions, or as a white activation ability. Except for Green. Green gets it on occasion, not as something regular, but on creatures where being patient and waiting seems to be the order of the day - like with Sentinel Spider, or because they are so big they can attack and defend at the same time, as with Oakgnarl Warrior.

The fact that White also gets the name-card for this ability (something it shares with Lifelink) just shows how deeply involved they are with this mechanic. Now, I'm going to take a side segue here, just to prove a point.

Did you know that it's White that has the most reliable way to tap opponents creatures? Sure, Blue gets everything from Twiddle to Breaching Leviathan, but it's actually White that gets the creatures that can tap to tap down another creature. There are over a hundred such creatures, starting (but most certainly not limited to) Akroan Jailer, Dazzling Ramparts, to Gerrard Capashen and beyond.

So, with tapping down the opponent, yet at the same time, not needing to tap to attack? This is a sublte, but very real advantage that White has, one that should not be ignored.

What I find funny, now that I'm reading through all these cards, is that the most common multicoloured creature with Vigilance is , and is paired with Haste on the same creature. Bull Cerodon, Mantis Rider (with for the Flying), and to Razia, Boros Archangel. Or maybe that's just my confirmation bias speaking.

That's enough for today. Next time will be a short retrospective article, where I make my general thoughts known about all these Keywords, and how they interact with the game. After that, I will answer a question from the audience that still inspires me to laugh. And not because it's funny. And after that, I think I will weigh in on a subject that just recently crossed my attention, and talk about Fetch Lands.

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!