Pattern Recognition 121 - Flashback

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

29 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!

My subject matter this week is another mechanic that got its start in the early days of Magic, and in fact, started in the same block as last week's mechanic, Odyssey! Flashback is mechanic that has seen printing again and again, and as of this writing, now has over 100 cards to its name. It is a solid, dependable, reliable, and mechanic without guile because it doesn't hide anything exceptional in its design.

As part of the "Graveyard Matters" theme of Odyssey, Flashback is a very simple mechanic, while at the same time holding a great depth to it. Namely, while it is in the Graveyard, you can cast this spell for its Flashback cost, and if it resolves, it goes into exile.

That's it. That's the sum totality of how the mechanic works, and from this comes a disproportionate utility.

Let me step back for a moment and explain the flavour of this mechanic. Unlike Madness last week, Flashback is not a mechanic associated with any one colour or faction or tribe. Instead, if you were to break it down by colour, you would find that has over a quarter of cards with this mechanic, followed by , , then . Each colour has, in their own way, the application of being able to reach into the graveyard to cast a spell one more time.

Flashback's inclusion in Innistrad was a curious choice, but one that I think was well intended and well received. Much like everything about Innistrad. In a plane set around Victorian Horror, the idea that what is gone and dead won't stay Dead / Gone, the idea that cards can be cast from the Graveyard in one last horrific return from beyond just makes sense.

But back to its origin in Odyssey. For a block which looked into the Graveyard as a resource, this card was the simplest and most effective way to do that, by treating certain cards in the graveyard as though they were in your hand. There is no grand design for this mechanic, it simply is, one that was not driven by a theme like many other mechanics, but rather by a specific top-down design schema - to cast a card from the graveyard.

Which then may leave you wondering why gets the most out of this. Why not or , those who already interact with the graveyard the most? Or who can dip back in on occasion? Or , whose entire gimmick is doing what other people do? Why ?

Well, the answer, I think, comes in two parts. First comes from one of the inherent limitations on Flashback. It can only be found on Instants and Sorceries. Because the card is exiled as it resolves in order to avoid eternal recurrence nightmares, the only cards with this ability are those that are not permanents. And as I mentioned when I talked about and how it interacts with , these are the two colours that Wizards seems dedicated into making the colours of non-permanence. Therefore, would be the sort of colour that would try to get the most use out of their existing cards.

also has the weakness that does not, in that it can't draw cards as fast or as reliably as can, so in a way, the ability to cast a card a second time from the Graveyard is a way to overcome this deficiency.

May I take a moment here to ask for a Moment of Silence for Faithless Looting? A card that died for the sins of other cards, and not because in of itself was a bad card?

Thank you. Back to your regularly scheduled article.

While gets the most use, it is that just keeps going by drawing more and more cards. Oh, sure, it can look into the past for successes, but in reality, it is a colour that wants to look forward to more and new exciting things!

In addition, , because of its association with Fire, is also the colour that can allow for the idea of making one last gasp, one last effort to burn brightly even as the cinders are extinguished. One more casting at extreme cost, to lose the card forever.

Now, moving on to mechanics, Flashback is all over the place when it comes to costs and effects. Even in the original Odyssey block, the costs ranged from "equal" like on Alter Reality (who would play that card ever?) and even into the Innistrad block with Artful Dodge. Then it goes into the ridiculously expensive on cards like Chainer's Edict or Firebolt. I mean seriously, look at the costs for playing those cards from the Graveyard!

So, allow me to make s segue here into why this is with regards to Flashback. When you cast a card from the graveyard, you're not just casting the card. You're playing it from a zone which (normally) doesn't allow cards to be played from, and there is only a limited ability to get cards out of the graveyard and into your hand to cast them 'properly'. What you are paying for with this absurd costs is the price of convenience when it comes to being able to cast them again.

At the time, playing cards from the graveyard was supposed to be the exception and not the rule. Flashback was a premium that enabled you to get some extra value out of these cards, and if yo had to pay through the nose for it? Well, that was just the cost of doing business with the graveyard.

But the alternate costs didn't stop there. Because Flashback was more than just a cost in the upper right corner of the card. It was its own static ability and as such, the cost could be quite unusual, or requiring more words in the text box if it were part of the text of the card. Flash of Defiance was part of a horizontal cycle of cards where the Flashback cost was the same as the normal casting cost, with an additional cost of three life. Or Cabal Therapy, one of the most powerful Flashback cards in the game whose 'cost' is the sacrifice of a creature to play it again, no mana required!

Another common thing to do with Flashback, one that has caused more than one Commander player to groan and hit their head against the table, is where the Flashback cost is a different colour than the normal casting cost. Ancient Grudge is a powerful card in that regard, one often played because of its utility and relative cheapness in Commander in a format where everyone (should) at least be running Sol Ring.

Even then, you get Mystic Retreival, which is yet another point I like to pull out in proof of Wizard's obsession with symbol:RU and non-permanents. :sigh:

Yet, my favourite alternate cost for a Flashback card is Fireccat Blitz. Because when you look at the card and its Flashback cost, you realize that this card is meant to be an all-in game ender. Tap everything except for , then flashback the card and destroy your mana base to swing with a surprise horde of 1/1 Cats with Haste!

Too bad Cats are pretty much in now.

Flashback works because it's not changing a spell, it's just providing a way to cast it a second time. This is one of those things that just works and its inclusion in Commander 2019 was not something I can find fault with. Unlike Madness or Populate, it is the most mature of the four mechanics, the one with the most viability and the most support because it's a mechanic that is already supported when you have cards like Snapcaster Mage or Backdraft Hellkite, cards that allow you to cast as though cards had Flashback.

However, all is not well in Flashback land. Last week's banning of Faithless Looting is part of an ongoing epidemic in Magic across all formats, Modern especially, where the Graveyard is a more viable and reliable resource than ones hand or deck. Flashback, I am sad to say was the first real opening in the floodgates of Graveyard interaction.

Earlier in this very article, I praised Flashback for doing this exact thing, being able to reach into the Graveyard to recur a resource, and in a game about resources, getting twice the effect for the price of one card is a good thing. What isn't is when this exception becomes the rule, and that's what Flashback started.

I maintain that it wasn't until a couple of years later when Wizards printed Dredge as a mechanic for the Golgari in Ravnica that this whole thing got out of hand (and here I am, looking at some of the other bannings that got handed down last week in not-surprise). But it was still Flashback that got it started. Before Flashback, the Graveyard was the endstate of most cards, now it's not. Exile is. But because of the way the game is designed and its etneral formats, we are stuck living with the long-term damage that being able to reach into or out of the graveyard has caused.

This subject requires a whole article to itself, and it is on the backburner, I assure you.

Then Amonkeht came out with their own version of the cards. Aftermath cards, like Onward / Victory are all cards that have a certain effect when cast from the hand, but are a completely different (but often synergistic) card when cast from the graveyard. This alternate take on Flashback is something that I would like to see again as it encourages more creative play, and multi-step plans to see things through to the end.

Sure, each side of the card tended to have small effects due to having smaller text boxes to work with, but it did work, and I'm wondering how well the lessons learned from that are going into the "Storybook" cards we have previewed from Throne of Eldraine.

Is Flashback a bad thing? No. I don't think so. I think it's a good thing. Not just in constructed formats, but in Limited, where the decks are smaller, being able to cast a card twice can be a good thing. The expanded costs keep the cards interesting and oftentimes flavourful as you see things like paying life in or tapping creatures in .

But being a self-contained mechanic, with each individual card having its own unique cost makes this mechanic more understandable and restricted than the other ways the Graveyard can be accessed. Flashback didn't require massive, sweeping, mainboard graveyard hate to counter as even in Amonkhet with the Aftermaths, Crook of Condemnation was never seen as an anti-Aftermath or anti-Embalm/Eternalize cards, but as something to punch out God-Pharaoh's Gift. Something to take out unrestricted Graveyard access.

Flashback (and Aftermaths) are a good balance point. Too bad we're well past that now.

Now, two more things before I close out. I picked this subject for this week because I am going into another Slow Grow Tournament this year, so expect me to talk about my experiences with that over the coming weeks. And going in, I decided to pick up the Mystic Intellect Commander Deck, which is all about this mechanic, and roll with it. Hopefully I'll do better than dead-last this time. And because of that, I wanted to talk about Flashback this week to better prepare myself for it.

The other thing is that yes, I will be looking into Morph next week to round out the mini-series. I talked about this all the way back in Issue 51, but it's been so long that I think that a second or hopefully more mature look is warranted. After that though, I think I'm going to talk about a card that I think is a really bad card by being too powerful and why that is so.

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!