Pattern Recognition #98

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

24 January 2019

1016 views

Hello everyone! Welcome back to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.net's longest running article series about the bric and brac of Magic: The Gathering, card design, game history and theory as well as being my own personal soap box for when I want to go on and on about things that interest me. Who am I? Well, I am berryjon, self professed Old Fogey and yes, I've been playing this game for longer than some of you have been alive. I've earned that title.

So, here I am, closing in on magical #100 (though if you're a stickler, I already passed that thanks to putting multiple articles under the same number), and I have to find something to talk about to not burn you guys out on my flailing about in the Slow Grow League. Then, lo and behold, Wizards starts doing their Ravnica reveals and the Azorious Mechanic comes to light!

Literally. As in the proverbial lightbulb went on over my head, and I found myself with a Glimmer of Genius.

For those of you not in the know, and because you don't want to be spoiled about the set that's being released tomorrow, the Azorious mechanic is Addendum, where in if you cast this card during your Main Phase, you get a bonus effect. Now, this may seem initially confusing, but this key word only appears on Instants.

This is an interesting thing, as the whole thing about being an Instant is that you can cast this card at any time, not restricted to being on your turn. This is something that is shared with the mechanic Flash (but not Flash). And the Azorious have decided if they are going to do something, they will do it properly and in the right order of things.

With Addendum, you can still play these Instants at any time for their basic effect, but if you do in on your turn in your main phase, first or second, you get an additional benefit.

But I've already noticed some things. Right off the top, Arrester's Admonition is, effectively an overpriced Unsummon. Now, there is nothing wrong with this, as I have an article lined up in a few weeks regarding why some cards are strictly better or strictly worse than others. Instead, this is another case where the card is meant to be cast during your Main Phase. I've long since established that adding "Draw a Card" onto a card tends to cost or , so when you add that cantrip to the cost of Unsummon, you get the Addendum effect of Arrester's Admonition.

And for the most part, this holds up. I mean, sure, some cards don't quite make the proper balance. Sphinx's Insight, for instance, isn't quite Healing Salve stapled to Divination in the Main Phase. And out of the Main Phase, it's simply easier to cast Divination - assuming you don't mind the Sorcery speed. So... yeah, not exactly the best comparison, but I think that the tendency still holds.

I just want to say that I talked about Alternate Casting Costs in the past. And in that article I pointed out that when alternate costs are in play, the default, unmodified cost tends to be higher than what the cards should cost because you are expected to pay the alternate cost. Or in the case of Addendum, this "cost" is in playing the spell in question on your turn, on your main phase.

BUT!

This isn't actually the first time that this mechanic has shown up! When Addendum was revealed to the world, I, along with many other people, instantly recognized this from the past, and we grinned. Because a Time Spiral mechanic had come back to the game, and there was no way to back out of it now as it was printed in a Ravnica set.

And so, all hail Careful Consideration, Haunting Hymn, Might off Old Krosa, Return to Dust and Sulfurous Blast. These five are a cycle of cards from Time Spiral that helped remind people that you can cast Instants on your own turn, and you can gain an additional benefit from doing so.

Hell, Might of Old Krosa is a staple in Infect decks because it's even better than Giant Growth!

Of course, please don't mistake this as approval in any way, shape or form for a New Phyrexia mechanic. It's just that it's utilizing a good card for its own horrible, horrible benefit. Because Infect sucks.

"But berryjon!", some of you may be asking, "Everything in Time Spiral is a reference to something that came before! What is this mechanic referring to?"

Well, let's see.... Return to Dust is a supercharged Disenchant, and Haunting Hymn is Hymn to Tourach. But that's not what you want to know, is it?

Here's the thing. The subject I'm about to talk about is something so archaic, so esoteric and so marginal that even I forgot about it. Me! The Old Fogey of Old Fogies! It took someone else making a mention for me to go "What?" and look it up.

How many of you remember the Substance keyword?

None of you? Cool.

Let's roll back the clock a bit further, past Time Spiral and into the deep and Dark Depths of Magic's history and design. Before Flash was a keyworded mechanic (something that happened in Time Spiral with the glorious, perfect and awesome Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, and a hell of a lot of cards in Time Spiral.

But no, I'm talking really far back. As in Mirage and Visions. Yes. That far back. At that time, Mark Rosewater (I think, it could be someone else) was experimenting with the idea of the temporary permanent.

Also, the first card with the non-Keyworded Flash was printed in Visions - King Cheetah.

Anyway, the idea behind the 'temporary permanent' would be to play a card that was a permanent, but that it wouldn't actually stick around. If you're thinking that this led to Fading/Vanishing as mechanics, you're right. But it also led to a very awkward and painful time frame where the way the game was changing mechanically in terms of turn order and introducing the Stack to the game led to some cards being worded poorly and losing their functionality of working-as-printed.

Let's talk about cards like Ward of Lights, and Armor of Thorns. Seriously. Look at those! The wording on the Vintage Masters printing of Armor of Thorns is aweful in its execution.

You see, in theory, you could play these cards as normal Enchantments that would, in later updates to the game, be described as Auras. All would be well, as they would follow the normal rules, and everything would be fine. However, you can also cast them as though they were instants, and they would become Auras that would self-sacrifice at the end of the turn.

It sounds simple, but mechanically speaking, it was a mess because a lot of the things we take for granted today weren't in the rules then. Like the Stack. And a clear delineation off when things happened during the different phases.

Substance, as a weird thing, finally died when the rules got changed and finalized in the modern formatting around Shards of Alara and 10th Edition. It was removed, and no one missed it.

But to tie this in with how Addendum works, Substance did indeed give you a boon for playing the card in question in your Main Phase. It let you keep the card after the turn was over. In a way, it was an Instant that became an Enchantment if you played it at the right time.

So yeah, the mechanical history of Addendum. Not much, but it does go pretty far back into the game, and helps leverage some past design choices into something more workable.

I do apologize for the shortness of the article, but it just turned out to be one of those that I could finish off pretty neatly. Join me next week when I come back to my Slow Grow League, and the results of Week 2.

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!