Pattern Recognition 119 - Populate

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

15 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, with the final reveals of all of the Commander 2019 preconstructed decks this past week (well, it's actually this week as I write this), I find myself mulling them over and thinking about what's up with them and what I can do with the cards there-in. And given that I'm currently sitting in the back seat of a van heading to a convention this weekend (last weekend for you readers), I have a lot of thinking on my hands.

Now, I want to thank my brother for this article, as it deals with a mechanic that he is more familiar with than I, having used it as a supplemental mechanic in Commander. He helped me with different viewpoints, that's for sure.

But, as you have already read the title of today's article when you clicked on the link from the main page, I feel there's no sense in skipping over the mystery, and it's now time to talk about the first of the Commander mechanics, Proliferate!

NO!

WAIT!

I meant POPULATE. That's what I meant to say. Honestly. Totally. Sorry, one is a lot more useful and recent in a lot of people's memory than the other.

Designed for Return to Ravnica, Populate was the mechanic that was assigned to the Selesnya Guild () as their unique mechanic. Now, I've mentioned before that the confluence of and in terms of colour pie is actually pretty well defined. These are the colours of creatures. Lots of creatures. Big creatures that only get bigger. So it was only natural that at some point, Wizards would experiment with the notion that These two colours would just be able to (effectively) spontaneously generate new creatures.

From a flavour perspective, Populate was framed as the idea that the Selesnya Guild, having seen the inevitable conflict between Guilds coming and without knowing about the Living Guildpact failsafe installed by Azor, prepared for the war by bulking up their armed forces. They knew that they didn't have the tricks of the Orzhov, the discipline of the Boros, the deception of the Dimir or anything else. What they did have, however, was sheer numbers, and the mechanic was designed to incorporate that.

Whenever Populate, as a Keyword action, goes onto the stack, you choose a token creature you control, and when that effect resolves, create a token that is a copy of that token.

Now, some cards, such as Rootborn Defenses or Sundering Growth operate on the idea that Populate is a distinct thing from the other effects of the card, and that its like adding a "Scry 1" to a card. It's just there to give the card extra value. On the flip side, there are cards like Horncaller's Chant or Coursers' Accord that first create a legal target for the Populate effect, then because of the way the mechanic operates, you can Populate the newly created token or a different token entirely.

As a side note, before the publication of Commander 2019, only Wake the Reflections had the Populate ability all by itself. Now, Full Flowering joins it, though at a slightly more expensive rate, but can be combined with 's natural mana growth to make the most out of the increasing casting cost.

Now, here we come to the first trip up with this mechanic. It doesn't make a copy of any creature you have, but rather it can only make a copy of a token creature you control. This makes a certain amount of sense from the Vorthos perspective as the bulk of the Selesnya army comes not from specialized training or bringing in people or creatures with special skills or abilities - but rather by augmenting the rank and file with everyday people who are willing to fight for what they feel is right. There's little special about them. They are so generic that they don't get a proper card, just tokens.

Now, sure, when it's a 1/1 Bird with Flying thanks to Eyes in the Skies, it may not seem like much. But when it's a 5/5 Wurm with Trample thanks to Advent of the Wurm or Armada Wurm, then a single instance of Populate can spell huge trouble for the opponents because while they may not be fancy or special, tokens tend to have a certain degree of efficiency all of their own. And where there's one, there's usually more.

Which is the whole point behind Populate.

Now, this is not to say that the mechanic is without problems. And let me tell you, the problems are quite pervasive in nature. There's a reason why it's been in the dustbin of mechanics for years, and it's not because it's too powerful.

The first and foremost problem with Populate is that it is a single target effect, with only a single output. Each instance of Populate could only generate one new token apiece, and it wasn't until Full Flowering that a spell could Populate multiple times. Now, yes, Growing Ranks and Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage both can repeatedly Populate, but again, you're only getting one effect per activation. And for a mechanic designed or intended to demonstrate the swelling of the ranks of your ever-growing army, this is kinda slow. It doesn't convey the sudden surge of numbers that March of the Multitudes allows for. There's a flavour failure here unless you want to portray the whole thing as a slow buildup, waiting for the inevitable rather than a sudden surge of danger.

I can see why it's this way, in order to prevent the creation of a mechanic that allows for surprise victories out of nowhere. And I'm looking at you, Infect. I just wish that there were more cards that could Populate multiple times, or those that could at Instant speed. Play up the 'we have reserves' mentality that comes from being in the two colours most devoted to having as many creatures on the board as possible. But these are also the same colours that have no problems pushing out multiple tokens on a single card, from Assure / Assemble to Blaze Commando to Crush of Wurms.

But this lacking, while understandable, seems to me to be a case of Wizards playing their cards a little too conservatively (and yes, I am aware of the pun. Let me have it) and the result is a mechanic that doesn't really resonate with the colours at all. It's just... there.

No, what Populate is, and this is after my brother telling me how he's abused it in the past, is that of a combo enabler.

To listen to my brother, he describes this ability not as something that is done for the purposes of generating the creature in of itself, but rather for the fact that by creating a creature effectively on command, you can set in motion a chain of events that, like all well crafted combos, results in a conclusion greater than the sum of his parts. In his case, he prefers to use Trostani, Selesnya's Voice to create a token on command, and then gain the life from his first ability to set into motion things that trigger "when you gain life" or words to that effect.

In a way, it makes more sense for Populate to be like this, rather than how I tended to view it. As an enabler, not an end in of itself. It's meant to start something, not end it.

There is another flaw with Populate, one that's a little more subtle. There are... now a grand total of 18 cards with this mechanic in the game. Out of 20,000+. Because before this Commander set, Populate only ever appeared in Return to Ravnica. And yes, I am aware of the two instances in Dragon's Maze. But that set was basically extras for RtR and Gatecrash, so I can't really identify it as a distinct set. There were a meager dozen cards with this mechanic before this set is released on the 23rd, and that doesn't actually give me a lot to work with.

When I talked, nearly three years ago, about Ninjitsu and why it was a successful failure, I mentioned that one of the problems with Wizards and Magic design is that they are so interested in moving on to the next new thing that they rarely give mechanics time to grow or mature, and while the other three mechanics from Commander 2019 have gotten that chance in the past, Populate hasn't.

It's inclusion in Commander is a nice sign, I think. It's a signal that Wizards is willing to go back and dust off old and under-utilized mechanics and give them a shot in the arm. Now if only we could have had the whole Commander 2019 be like that, a revitalization of old mechanics, rather than Populate, and three more ... popular (not sorry!) mechanics.

Populate is a thing. It's a mechanic. It's completely overshadowed by the similarly named Proliferate, and by the far more popular and viable Convoke, the other Selesnya mechanic. I'm not sure that this Commander set will revitalize it, instead being a flash in the pan. I'm still going to buy it though. No sense in not.

Join me next week when I talk about one of the other Commander Mechanics this year, one with a bit more meat to it to bite into.

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!