Pattern Recognition #220 - The Errors of Logic

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

2 December 2021

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Hello everyone! This is Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series as written by myself, berryjon. I am something of an Old Fogey who has been around the block quite a few times where Magic is concerned, as as such, I use this series to talk about the various aspects of this game, be it deck design, card construction, mechanics chat, in-universe characters and history. Or whatever happens to cross my mind this week. Please, feel free to dissent in the comments below the article, add suggestions or just plain correct me! I am a Smart Ass, so I can take it.

And hello again everyone! This week's subject came about as the inheritance of a discussion that occurred many, many moons ago. It was a talk about mana acceleration, and multi-coloured decks and Commander / Brawl, because the card in question started out as a Brawl-printing only card, and quickly made such huge waves that it was seen as the third vital card to put into any Commander deck - right behind your Commander, and Sol Ring.

Let's talk about.... Arcane Signet

This card was the real reason why the Brawl decks (for the most part) sold out, and while some of that can be attributed to two of the Brawl Commanders themselves, it was this card that, for the longest time, drove sales. I remember one of the FLGS' offering $5 for one in the weeks after its release. It was just that valued and valuable.

So, what was the reason for this? Well, to put it simply, it was a cheap mana accelerator that wasn't dependent on colour in terms of input or output, so it could literally go into any deck and do work. And given that before this guy came along, you had the Signets, like Boros Signet, which were already considered Commander Staples, being put into the pre-constructed decks, or enters-tapped cards like Coldsteel Heart or Fire Diamond, or a creature like Gold Myr or had the drawback of not knowing what colours you were getting, like Fellwar Stone.

What I'm trying to say is that Arcane Signet hit a very solid space in mana-rock design that hadn't been filled, and did it without any drawbacks whatsoever. It was, to put it kindly, just a little too good. But this card wasn't created in a Void, rather there was some logic behind its creation. And today, I want to go over two aspects to that logic, and how they conjoined into a perfectly reasonable card - on paper - that didn't quite work out as well as it should have. Or worked out too well.

The first comparison I want to make starts with another Commander-only card, Commander's Sphere. For those of you not in the know, or can't properly cursor over the hyperlink as you're on mobile, the Sphere is a cost Artifact that can tap for one mana of any Colour in your Commander's identity. So, Sliver Queen *oversized* as your Commander would allow you to tap the Sphere for one of any of , but not . Funny thing, anything that references your Commander's colour finds nothing when your Commander is colourless, which was really annoying when I built a Traxos, Scourge of Kroog deck.

Right, with that digression out of the way, the Commander's Sphere can also be sacrificed to draw a card, meaning that even if you draw it late in the game, it's a card draw. Of note, you can still sacrifice it after you have tapped it for mana, something that makes this card pretty good, all things considered.

But with all this in mind, how does this lead to Arcane Signet?

Well, one of the ways that cards get created during design and development is by taking an existing card and adding or removing something that would make the card better, or more focused. Now, while this can create things that are Strictly Better or Strictly Worse - and I wrote an article about that subject a while ago - wherein a card can obsolete another card simply by being better than it, even if the new card is newer than the older one!

But sometimes, a card gets a little tweak to it and the card's cost changes. Compare Thrill of Possibility and Seize the Spoils. One costs more, but also generates a Treasure token in the process. Slightly different effects for a different cost, even if the final amount of mana spend evens out.

Here is where the first mistake for Arcane Signet happened. Take Commander's Sphere and remove the line of text saying "Sacrifice this card: Draw a Card". What you're left with is a card that is strictly worse than the original Sphere, but when you compare this to something like Moss Diamond, this is basically paying to allow for your artifact to enter the battlefield untapped, as well as being relevant to all colours of your Commander, rather than just . At this point, this hypothetical Arcane Signet would be ... Brawl legit, as Brawl was supposed to be Standard Commander, and having something to encourage players to move to Commander wouldn't be out of place.

Instead, the people at Wizards didn't see that, or maybe they did, but they didn't consider the old common mana rocks to be relevant to Commander any more (until they did, and they got a reprint in Commander Legends!) And what they did do was think to themselves, "Hey, we just took an ability off of Commander's Sphere, we had better reduce the cost appropriately. Down to would be too much, so why not instead?"

And people agreed, giving us Arcane Signet.

But there is also another line of logic that converges on this design.

There is a curious line of design that pops up from time to time in Magic, one that had to be pointed out by you, my nice and glorious audience. And that is there seems to be a small theory that anything a land can do, a cost Artifact can as well. The people who revealed this to me showed how Mossfire Valley got rarity-shifted down to Common and printed as Gruul Signet.

And when you look at it in these terms, what is Arcane Signet, but a Command Tower turned into an Artifact?

I thought about that, but I mean, sure, I see the pattern now, I recognize it. But I can't, for the life of me, figure out why. Sure. Copper Myr is a Forest, Fellwar Stone is an Exotic Orchard, Kalideostone is a Crystal Quarry. The Talisman Cycle, with Talisman of Creativity for example, is Shivan Reef.

What is it about that makes it so appealing to this logic? Or rather, why that number?

My first gut reaction is that mana acceleration at is both too good, and when it does happen it is supposed to be in the realm of . Cards like Llanowar Elves for additional mana straight away, or Adventurous Impulse to go grab another land or something else to work with.

Cards like Sol Ring, which costs or the Moxen () or cards like Mana Vault, all of which are the results of early game design lack of experience and the general immaturity of the game as a whole.

But as time went on, it seemed that seemed to be the 'right' cost for mana acceleration. Not to quick to cause explosive growth, growth that was and is well known for. And not so slow that it becomes too useless. seems to be the point where it becomes reliable, with cards like Cultivate.

I want to look back earlier this year to Strixhaven, and the card Environmental Sciences as well. Here, we were given a Sorcery that was also colourless that allowed you to go fetch a basic land from your library to put it into your hand, as well as gain some incidental life. This means that even this year, we see in Standard, a card that only has a cost of that can be used to fetch a land from your deck. Sure, it's not literal acceleration, but it is mana fixing. And that extra two life can really count.

But that doesn't actually answer the question I have. Why Artifacts at ?

Doing some hypothesizing here, but what if there was a thought about tying the cost of the nama rock to the number of colours it could produce? I mean, obviously not, but when I look at Mardu Banner for one, I can't help but feel that might have been a thought at some point before it got dismissed.

Yet while I know it's not right, I feel there is still something there worth looking at.

There is a piece of information about the game that shows up every so often, but never really gets looked at because it's so ubiquitous, and really, it's mostly trivia. Did you know that the most common decks are Two-Color? Followed by a close tie between Mono- and Three- colored decks, with Five Color then Four Colour in last place?

Well, as I said, it's Trivia, but it does cast a side-eye toward how sets are designed. But with the notion that most decks will be dual coloured, wouldn't that mean that dual-coloured sources of mana be more viable?

Or rather, when you only need to worry about two colours, having a mana rock at means that you can fix your mana with just two lands, and it didn't matter what they were because you only needed two colours and even if you were stuck with two lands of the same color, a simple fix keeps you in the game.

And if you're running a tri-colour deck, having Arcane Signet at means that you can have mana sources of A and B in your opening hand, and use the Signet to fill in for C until another source comes along.

Logic. Logical. There are quite a few reasons why you would want that card at that particular mana value, and these are all great reasons. It doesn't help any that this card is still amazingly good. It's a must-include in practically every Commander deck, even mono- as it's still colourless mana acceleration.

But in spite all of this, is the sum of the reasoning more than the sum of the parts? Are all these reasons for Arcane Signet as it is good enough? Or Too Good.

Comment below. And any other cards you think are the result of slight changes that makes then too good or too bad?

Thanks for reading, and comment in the comments below. Join me next week when I talk about something else. What, I don't know yet!

Actually. I do know. And it's December's Video Update! Woo-hoo!

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!