Pattern Recognition 118 - Blue Filling

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

1 August 2019

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Written by myself, berryjon, I aim to bring to my reading audience each week a different look into some aspect of Magic: The Gathering - be it an individual card, a mechanic, a theme, or even just general history. I am something of an Old Fogey and Smart Ass, so please take what I say with a grain of salt. I enjoy a good discussion on the relevant subject matter!

So, my issues with going over and trying to parse it down into something that you, my lovely audience can understand in a way that I don't have to overfill your mind with all the knowledge I possess. Or in a way that doesn't make me sound like an arrogant ponce.

Thus, this week will be about how interacts with the other colours. I chose this way to show off because it helps to highlight the sheer breadth and scope of colour itself in a way that is meant to be a fairly positive manner.

Let's get right to it then!

Starting out with , the colour combination called Azorious after the Ravnican Guild, this is one of the more stable and well oiled colour pairs in the game. The primary core of this interaction is their mutual appreciation for Order and Logic. To this combination, the purpose of the spells is to create a carefully curated experience for themselves, protecting the developing board state through precise counterspells, spot removal and protective creatures until the board state is firmly locked up in your favour.

Just in the current Standard Rotation (or until October, at least), we have Deputy of Detention, Dovin's Veto, Lawmage's Binding, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and Teferi, Time Raveler

These chosen cards all highlight the core aspect to how these two colours interact, and it's all about Control. One of the three pillars of deck design (the others being Combo and Aggro), and is so perfectly suited for it, that it has become the colour combination's defining trait. And this is nothing new either! Even before multi-coloured cards were introduced, these two colours got along amazingly well. would provide solutions that could not, and would be able to cover 's inability to draw fast, or to get at something that could not. They simply worked together so well that it's almost natural at this point.

Even in the pre-Modern era, we see this sort of cooperation. Chromatic Armor was a very old-school way to protect your creatures from harm. Cloud Cover allowed you to preemptively save something you might lose, at the cost of needing to recast it. Meddling Mage prevents a card from being played that you might not want to see.

Moving into Modern? oooh boy , do I have examples to show you. Curse of Chains combines how the two colours can lock down a single creature, Enchanted Evening is an excellent combo-piece. Grand Arbiter Augustin IV is a walking control and taxing creature that earns a lot of hate from your opponents when you reveal him as your Commander. And I even started this segment off with Standard!

Yet, this beautiful synergy, this perfect ability to reduce your opponent to tears by not letting them move while maintaining your own Pacifism is not the be-all, end-all of their interaction. Something that's been slowly, ever so slowly gaining traction in this combination has absolutely nothing to do with contol or counters or card draw at all!

I see you're confused. I mean, I just spent a bit of time expounding how the Azorious are all about doing one thing, and doing it well.

What if I told you that this was also a ridiculously good Aggro combination as well?

No?

You don't believe me?

I'm serious! has a near complete lock on creatures with Flying, one of the most basic evasion abilities in the game. On top of that, we have cards like Empyrean Eagle and Thunderclap Wyvern, two cards printed in Core Sets to emphasize their utility. And even then, gets one of their exceedingly rare global Anthems with Favorable Winds on top of that.

, as an Aggro deck, is the undisputed master of turning a horde of unblockable weenies that aren't so small sideways and into your opponent's face. Other colors may have bigger creatures, or other ways to clear the way for their face beatings. But will darken the skies with their hordes of flying creatures, each as big as a Giant, and the poor opponent/victim can do nothing but watch it happen!

Moving on, in the words of MaRo and Wizards themselves, the color combination between and is one of the harder ones to develop and give a voice to. The biggest issue with the Dimir color pair is that there is actually very little mechanical or flavour overlap between the two colours. Both of them are seekers of knowledge, but while treats knowledge as an abstract to be gained through study and practice, looks at it as something to be sacrificed for.

This is why, when you look at the mechanics they share thanks to Ravnica, they don't really have a theme or any sort of cohesion between them. What they do have is a certain degree of respect - or lack there of - for player's hands. draws cards while likes to force discards.

Now, while Drawing and then Discarding is something that can be done through mono- thanks to cards like Faithless Looting, where these two hand interactions really combine is where you skip the hand itself entirely.

What am I talking about?

Well, allow me to pull back the curtain and show off what likes to do, but can't exactly keyword. Allow me to allow you to Glimpse the Unthinkable.

That's right, is the color of Mill, of destroying the opponent's library, and not their life total.

It's a curious and interesting line being drawn here as it means that this color pair is the one that doesn't really act like any other pair in the game. It's hard to describe, but when you play a game with this style of deck, it's almost like you're playing a slightly different game than your opponent. There's enough overlap to interact, but that slight asymmetry is enough to make players who still think that their library is sacrosanct quite cross with you.

Not that I've been on both sides of that equation myself, mind.

Now, like all other colour pairs, that isn't to say that this is the be-all and end-all of how this works. It's just that, true to Wizards' problems, there's not a lot to go on or build up from here. However, I think I do see a couple of things that can be drawn out.

The first is that is one of the best colors for Tutoring. Not because there are cards that require both of those colors to cast, but because between the two of them, middling things like deck sizes and what cards you actually have in your hand become less and less relevant. Diabolic Tutor or Johnny, Combo Player for example. When you're playing with these colours, you don't need to run more than one copy of a given card to draw it during the game. Just run the relevant tutors and you can get it into your hand, no matter where it is in your library! And if you already have it, well those same tutors can grab other things that you might want or need!

The other thing that I've noticed going on in the background of these two colours is the idea of Permanent Stealing. That is, when you look at Hostage Taker and Thief of Sanity, they both steal from your opponent. One, a creature in play and the other from the top couple of cards on their library.

Also note that as printed, Hostage Taker can steal itself, creating a one-card infinite loop where the Hostage Taker takes itself, then returns itself to the battlefield once it exiles itself, allowing it to take itself hostage again. It was very quickly errated, that's for sure.

But why does this even exist? I mean, yeah, cards like Grinning Totem have existed for a long time, but what is it about these two colours that allow players to do something like this? In a way, I think it's a combination of factors. The first is that is the colour that likes to destroy things, and is also the colour to bring things out of the graveyard. This has been seen before, where you can pull creatures from your opponent's graveyard and onto the battlefield. But where does come into this? Well, after some thought, I think that brings a skipping of the graveyard into play. It adds on the creature and the long-standing ability of to steal permanents from Control Magic to Mass Manipulation.

It's like Wizards is meshing two different things here into something that works, but by all rights shouldn't. Each colour alone can do what's going on here, so why go through the extra hoops? I can't say, and perhaps I'm just reading too much into a couple of cards that are rares and might not be part of an experiment from Wizards.

Next, we come to .

Oh, how I think Wizards has gone wrong with this. But first, let me tell you what Wizards thinks this colour pair is all about.

Adeliz, the Cinder Wind, Enigma Drake, Thousand-Year Storm, Blistercoil Weird, Guttersnipe, Murmuring Mystic.

What Wizards is trying to say is that as far as they are concerned, is the colour of Instants and Sorceries. Cast them cheaply, copy them, cast them from your graveyard, and do it all over again! Creatures? They only exist to make your Instants and Sorceries more powerful and with more utility. Enchantments? Pft, who needs them? Planeswalkers? Unless they're named Jace, don't make me laugh!

It's honestly frustrating seeing this happen in front of me, set after set, card after card. I'll say it straight here, because it's something that Wizards is leaning on because it's easy to do.

Wizards Play Design is in a rut where this color pair is concerned. They don't do anything with it, they don't even bother going back and looking at their own design documents, their own card history to see that this combination is so much more than Instants and Sorceries!

Except, well, they sorta did last year with the completely lacklustre and boring Commander deck from last year starring Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer ... err, no, sorry, I meant Saheeli, the Gifted.

You see, of all the colours in the game, it is and that love Artifacts the most. Now, they express it in different ways, and is just as likely to Shatter them as is to Tinker with them. But in the end, they both are the colours with the most positive interactions with .

Now, there are a lot of reasons why this is. First, Artifacts have been massively problematic over the course of Magic's history, and it's only in the past year that Wizards has embraced the idea of Coloured Artifacts in order to help address this issue. I mean, just look at Mizzium Tank! I'm having a blast using those as a 4-of in my current Chandra.Dec because it's not like I'm running much in the way of Creatures, so why not use it to its fullest advantage?

I mean, even in their own flavor, symbol:RU is artifact aligned. Try as they might to portray the Izzet Guild as a bunch of Mad Scientists doing their best maniacal laughter impressions, you read what Izzet actually does, and it's basic machine work. They're the plumbers and the electricians of Ravnica, and Wizards has steadfastly refused to admit to this on the cards, let alone mechanically. It's a massive gaping hole in how the colour is portayed, and one that I wish Wizards would buckle down and address at some point, rather than leaving us hanging. I mean, seriously, Saheeli Rai got shafted in her own set because Jace was present, don't let her archetype go to waste as well!

Sorry, just a little peeved at what I see going on.

Now, for the last colour, .

Unlike , there is actually some design overlap between these two colors that you can build mechanics around. It's just blatantly obvious when it comes to the Simic Guild that there should be more to this than simple +1/+1 counters.

I suppose I should explain a little here. The adoration of the +1/+1 counters that the has actually has some basis in reality. You see, loves bigger creatures, but for the most part, also disdains the use of performance enhancing drugs. I MEAN ENCHANTMENTS!

Yes, gives us cards like Blanchwood Armor, but is more at odds with enchantments than they are going to be buddy-buddy with them, unlike . But on the other hand, isn't to concerned with making their creatures better in terms of power and toughness. Rather, they want to have more utility in their creatures. Being bigger is only a side effect.

So, how do these two different concepts mesh? Well, in +1/+1 counters, of course! They are a way for to get their bigger creatures, while at the same time, can look at the presence or absence of those same counters to determine what that create can do. And the Adapt Mechanic is almost there, as it doesn't always have creatures that check themselves for +1/+1 counters to see what new and special abilities they get.

I commented also, a long time ago, that when the mono-coloured Planeswalker Commander decks were published by Wizards, that the one led by Teferi, Temporal Archmage, played out more like a deck in terms of acceleration of mana and having big creatures out.

So that's also something the two colours can agree on. Untapping resources. can Twiddle to its hearts content, while gets Elder Druid and cards like that to make sure that they have more resources as well. I mean, it's not like Prophet of Kruphix is a real card that causes so many headaches, right?

And that's pretty much how and synergize. They care about what their creatures do, and they care about being able to untap their permanents to gain more value out of them. Of course, they are traditional enemies, so they tend toward not liking each other more than anything, what with having the most creatures that can't be countered, like the ever-lovely Carnage Tyrant.

There you have it. How interacts with the other colours in a positive manner. I'm sure that if you dug deeper, you can find more examples of how these pairs have orchestrated the downfall of their enemies in the past, but I think this has been a good enough primer for now.

I might not have an article next week, as I will be attending Animethon 26 as a medic, and that requires some prep work that will be taking up my time. If you do happen to be there, swing by the first aid station! I'll be bringing a couple Commander decks and will enjoy sitting down and playing.

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!