Pattern Recognition #116 - Worlds and Planes

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

18 July 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!

Sorry y'all. I want to apologize. I can't start on my discussion about and its historical and contemporary slice of the Colour Pie today. I got bogged down in the writing, started banging my head against the wall, and realized that I couldn't get it out this week either. So I went into my very small pile of ideas and notes, pulled one out and decided to flesh it out.

This week will be a bit rambly, so please bear with me as I start my talk about a small selection of cards - 26 in all - that are only legal in Commander, Vintage and Legacy. They come in all colours, so there is no sense in trying to feel out a theme there. Rather, I would like to introduce you all to one of Magic's oddest card types, appearing from Legends to Visions:

Let's talk about World Enchantments!

A bit of back story and history of the World (and yes, I'm a JoJo fan. I'm not going to make the joke, thank you) should help set the stage for what comes after. You see, "World" as a concept developed concurrently with the Legend Rule in the set of the same name. And in a way, the two rules started with the same goal, but approached them in different manners.

Now, when I talked about the history of Legends last year around the time Dominaria was being released, I neglected to mention something very important about that mechanic, and that was something that took years to finally get past Wizards and into the cards in the players hands.

Did you know that Legends were originally something that specifically applied only to Creatures? It's true! Because of the way the cards were printed, to whit, the card type line, Legendary Creatures (as they are now known) were printed as "Summon Legend", something you can see on Adun Oakenshield. And if the creture's type was relevant, it would be printed on the card as "$CARDNAME counts as a Creature Type", like on Ertai, Wizard Adept, who counted as a Wizard in his original printing, but not as a human.

Because of this limitation to the cards, that Legend was a subtype, and not a full on card type, or even a supertype like Snow, that same effect was applied to the "World" was well. So, for cards of this type, they were printed as "Enchant World". Which actually was a stroke of fortune, as at the time, the target for Auras (as we call them now) was written into the card type. A card with the type of "Enchant Creature" could only target a creature, while a card with the type of "Enchant Land" could only go on a land. And cards that were just "Enchantment"? Well, they didn't target anything.

But what did it mean to Enchant the "World"?

In a fit of melding the Vorthos of the game with the mechanics (and I can tell you horror stories about that gone wrong, let me tell you), the "World" was deemed to be the game itself. A World Enchantment would be an enchantment that affected the whole of the game, not just a limited subset of the cards in the game.

This concept differed from the idea of the "Global" Enchantment, cards like Bad Moon, that may, at first glance, seem like they should have been World Enchantments, or visa-versa. But such was not the case at the time, as Enchantments that were Global in nature still only affected specific cards, like all creatures or all lands.

But World Enchantments affected the whole of the game itself. They affected each player, such as with Teferi's Realm, player's decks - Field of Dreams, or even weirder things, like Arboria.

But if this was just the end of it, this would be a pretty short article, and you guys would all be wondering why I was wasting your time talking about Legends, and types and supertypes.

So, here is where I come to the World Rule itself.

Pursuant to Rule 704.5k of the Comprehensive Rules Document, "If two or more permanents have the supertype world, all except the one that has had the world supertype for the shortest amount of time are put into their owners’ graveyards. In the event of a tie for the shortest amount of time, all are put into their owners’ graveyards. This is called the “world rule.”"

In essence, World was a souped up version of the concept of Legendary. While the Legend Rule only cares about the name of the specific card when looking for duplication, the World Rule looks to the World Supertype.

If your opponent has The Abyss in play, then simply resolving Living Plane would result in not only all lands becoming creatures, but in your opponent's card going straight to the graveyard, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Just like if your card was a copy of their Legendary card.

Of course, this could also work against you. Your Serra Aviary could be as easily destroyed by a Gravity Sphere.

And all this just meat a whole lot of mechanical complexity for not a whole lot of gain. Keeping track of multiple players looking at a card that was flavoured as causing a change to the whole of the game just wasn't all that appealing. So, after Visions, the experiment was dropped. There was no sense in keeping a fringe rule active in the game that just didn't matter in a lot of games. Assuming that it was even remembered at all.

But Wizards remembered. They actually did, and they brought back the idea of the World Enchantment, a means by which they could change the way the rules of the game. Something that could only exist one at a time, and could be replaced by another instance of the same card type.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give to you....

(drumroll please)

Planes.

Unique to the two Planechase expansions (which, I sadly, have played no where near enough), these cards were designed to appeal right back to the initial set up of the game. Recall, that the draw of the game was that you, you the player, were a Planeswalker. You were a mighty person, able to draw on the unlimited potential of the Multiverse to bend to your whim - so long as your imagination and your spells held out.

But what of the Planes themselves? What about the places that you fight on or over, the sources of your might? Sure, they might be shown on the cards, or represented by the Lands or creatures, but the Planes themselves?

Well, Planechase upped the ante there. No, not actual Ante. Rather, these special cards represented the battlefields themselves as you and your opponents flickered from Plane to Plane, chasing each other across the multiverse in search of a fertile ground from which you would grow your victory.

I make it sound as awesome as it was, and I really hope we get a third set in the future.

Now, I'm not going to go into the specific mechanics of the Planes and how you Chase players around. That's for you guys to experience, as I don't want to take away the joy of discovery.

World Enchantments and Planes occupy a curious design space in Magic. It is often said that "Symmetircal Effects Aren't", a long standing ode to the fact that from Balance on forward, they aren't.

You see, the problem with all these global effects, from World Enchantments, to Planes to more mundane effects like Wrath of God is that while they appear to be equal to all players, they most certainly are not.

At the very least, one person is more prepared for a symmetrical effect than another player, which means that even if all other factors are equal, the one who is prepared and has information the others do not will come out ahead. Damnation means nothing if I have a hand and mana to recover faster than my opponents. Or if I follow it up with a Bazaar of Wonders.

Or if I 'Walk away from a Plane before my opponent can get the best of it, and let Chaos take them instead.

World Enchantments and Planes also suffer from the same flaw. You can only have one on the Battlefield in total between all players at any given time. Is that fair? No. You run the risk of losing yours just as quickly as you caused someone else to lose their own. It's just not ... fun. To lose something like that.

Or maybe it's just old memories talking. What I can say though, is that while I'm glad that Legends have stuck around, I can be equally glad that World is gone, and that Planes are their own unique thing.

Join me next week when I try to unstick myself from my review of .

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!