Pattern Recognition #117 - Blue Crust

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

25 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!

"There are only four colours in Magic. White, Black, Red and Green. Blue isn't a color. It's the glue that holds the rest of the game together." - Anon

You know, I honestly dreaded coming to this particular segment of my article series about the nature of the Colour Pie. The history of has been quite the varied one since the start of the game, and it, perhaps more than any other colour, has been changed over time as the game has evolved and a more stable equilibrium between colours is sought.

This is in thanks to just how... let's use the term "Wide Spread" the colour has been in Magic's history. And here, I suppose a little bit of history is in order. You see, back at the start of Magic, each of the five colours was described in very broad overtones to focus their core design philosophy.

Yes, I know that sounds like a bunch of corporate hogwash, but roll with me here.

White was "Order", Black was "Death", Red was "Aggression", Green was "Nature". But where did that leave ? Well, while you may want to say that was "Knowledge", such was not the case. You have to understand that in the first days of Magic, 's gimmick, it's theme and it's driving force was magic.

No, not Magic: The Gathering. Rather, it was magic in the lower case. Magic in the abstract definition of a person casting spells and not the more material spells of the other colours. But let me put one thing to rest here. Each colour does magic. It's written into the name of the game for crying out loud!

But 's spells had a divine flavour to them. Blessing. Wrath of God. held the opposite with Terror or Demonic Attorney. had the definitive Lightning Bolt to show off just how direct it was, while had Hurricane or Stream of Life to show off their dedication to the power to save or destroy.

wasn't about knowledge. They only had two card draw spells at the time, Braingeyser and Ancestral Recall, both of which were printed at Rare! No, they cared about the spells themselves more often than not. I mean, they had seven spells that interacted with other spells on the stack! Blue Elemental Blast, Counterspell, Magical Hack, Power Sink, Sleight of Mind, Spellblast and Thoughtlace.

is the colour of magic itself, and that is both its greatest strength and its greatest failing.

Can you begin to see why I chose that quote above?

Now, part of this envisioning of as the colour of magic in a game about just that was that this colour should be able to mimic things other colurs did. Just not as well. It was the colour of being 'second best' at a lot of things, while being best at fewer things than the other colours.

In Theory, this meant that was balanced around playing around the strengths of the opponent with the various other strengths they had. In practice, had so many strengths that the could control the flow of the game better than other colours, undercutting the basic premise that the competitive balance of the game relied on.

I can state, without an ounce of exaggeration or hyperbole, that mono- is by far the strongest single colour in the game, even today, because of this early implementation.

Some examples, just to help prove my point, don't you think? gets High Tide where got Mana Flare. Or Psionic Blast compared to Lightning Bolt. Or Merfolk of the Pearl Trident when compared to Llanowar Elves, or Shanodin Dryads.

got things that everyone else got, just not as often, or as common, or as good as everyone else. This was their shtick. This is what they did, to keep the game solidly by providing a base foundation for everyone else to excel from.

Yeah, I don't believe a word of that either. Because what was good at, it did with aplomb and better than anyone else to the point where it came to define and dominate the definition of the colour and how it interacted with everyone else.

So let's not start with the obvious factor, and go the one that's even more important and core to the colour.

Let's talk about card draw.

Now, when I talked about this nearly three years ago, I pointed out that was the best at drawing cards, no ifs, ands or buts about it. is the color of Braingeyeser, of Treasure Cruise, of Concentrate, of Divination and so many others. If there is a way to put cards right into your hand without any other effects, conditions or riders, has it.

is the colour that has very general answers to problems. But in order to reach them, on order to best optimize their deck for them, needs to be able to Dig Through Time and the like to get to those answers.

is at its most threatening when it has a hand full of cards, and a table full of open mana. Not because of their advanced board state, but rather because of their ability to affect the board state at any time and being able to draw cards to replenish their hand? That just keeps the threats going, rather than letting them decay away over time as they are only able to draw one card per turn with their natural card draws.

So let me say this again, to make it clear. Because can draw cards at (almost) any time, they never stop being a threat to the the opponent, and the only time they stop being a threat isn't when they are out of cards in hand, but when they are out of mana.

And this leads directly into the other major aspect of , the one that is at the forefront of most people's minds when they see that the opponent has left two Island up and open at the end of their turn.

That is, and you all know it, you all dread it (or love it). Counterspell.

When I commented about how is the colour of magic itself, I also said that they interacted with the magic of other players - listing no less than four different ways for them to counter spells all the way back in Limited Edition Alpha. The ability simply say "No" to a spell is something that has hoarded very, very carefully, to the point where non- counterspells are so rare that I can count all of them on two hands.

Why is this? Well, not the hoarding, that's ony natural. But why does even get this in the first place?

Well, it's because counter spells actually makes up for a major deficiency in . That being, outside of temporary measures like Unsummon, once a card hits the battlefield, can't really do much about it. A permanent in play, stays in play when against the player, and they often have to rely on the solutions of other colours to deal with that problem.

No, has to deal with problem cards, for the most part, only when they are on the stack. Here is where is at its strongest, and conversely, where it gets a lot of detractors.

A spell is countered, and it goes into the graveyard. And many players don't like this as it is seem as taking away some degree of control over their own deck and putting it into the hands of the opponent's own deck. It seems like a waste of a card, especially when all it seems like is that the player is only doing that - countering spells and drawing cards. The infamous "Draw, Go" deck archetype which lives to the day in the card Brineborn Cutthroat, which came out in the Core 2020 set.

In a game about positive interactions, or at least in the modern sense thanks to the New World Order, counterspells aren't really that, so while they are an indelible and unavoidable part of 's part of the colour pie, they are something that Wizards done in moderation, and often comes with built in limitations, such as limited targeting, or with an escape clause for the opponent such as paying more mana for the spell, rather than losing it entirely, like with Syncopate.

So in response, has been slowly, ever so slowly more into the realm of bounce. Bounce is a colloquial term for the ability of to return a permanent to the hand of the opponent. Cards like Unsummon or Boomerang are a softer means of resource denial and control, one that I think should be getting more into. And I don't mean Cyclonic Rift.

You see, Bounce doesn't deal with things as permanently as a counter spell. Rather, what it does is slow down the opponent, forcing them to spend time and resources on the cards they had already played. A delaying tactic, if you will.

In limited quantities, Bounce can be used to remove a specific threat, or remove a vital combo piece from the opponent. But more cunning players can bounce their own resources in order to reuse them, or reset them. Like, say, a deck that can bounce their own Pentarch Paladin to change the colour it interacts with.

Now, this is not to say that is all advantages and no weaknesses. actually has some quite glaring problems that, unfortunately, are either made irrelevant by the sheer width and breadth of the options that has regarding them.

Straight up, you don't use creatures in for their power or toughness. Sure, they are useful for things like blocking, or absorbing a Lightning Bolt that could have gone to your face. This, being a trait it shares with , but for different reasons. No, 's creatures are there to put forth another piece in the puzzle that is their deck, providing some ability required for the win, not through dealing damage.

Creatures like Vizier of Many Faces or Alhammarret, High Arbiter.

Or even just foregoing creatures entirely to focus on the spells that actually will win you the game. There is a reason why "Creatureless" is not only a deck archetype, it is one so common, it even has its own tag here on TappedOut. Why bother even having a weakness in your deck when you can focus on your advantages instead?

So, here is Blue historically. I have a lot more to talk about, but that will have to start coming next time when I start talking about their interactions with other colours. I've only barely begun to talk about , don't you worry.

So join me next week when I start digging more 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!