Pattern Recognition #198 - Anthems

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

3 June 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 so, welcome back. It's a point of pride that the first time I got a mention on Channel Fireball's "This Week in Magic" as written by Andrew Cooperfauss was when my article regarding Anthem effects - to whit Crusade and its follow ups.

And in respect for the decision made by Wizards, I'm not going to hot-link that card. Yes, there were non-racist versions of it, but my copy paper copy is one of those versions. So no linking. For those of you who haven't seen the card, it reads

Crusade

Enchantment
White Creatures get +1/+1

That's it. Very simple. But it was the progenitor of what is now called Anthem Effects, named for the slightly more robust Glorious Anthem. A style of card that just got a new version in Modern Horizons 2 in the spoilers from last week, a card that got me angry. Like, absolutely livid because it yet more evidence of something that I will talk about at the end of the article.

So, Anthems. Conceptually, they are one of the backbones of 's existence, the idea of a global boon to all creatures (you control) via the judicious use of enchantments. Things like Knighthood, which gives all your creatures First Strike, or Asceticism, which grants your creatures Hexproof.

Remind me again which colour is the colour of protection?

Anyway, Anthems come in more than just a global +1/+1 to your creatures. But on the other hand, when somene mentions an Anthem Effect, they are not conflating two games from Bioware, but rather describing in shorthand what Glorious Anthem does, regardless of the source. For the purposes of this little article, I'm going to be focusing exclusively on that effect and how it appears in the game over time.

In the beginning, Crusade was part of 's bailiwick, where they got global boons for all their creatures. This turned the archtypical White Weenie deck into non-Weenie creatures, able to survive a Lightning Bolt to the face or even more. However, it was built in an age where mono-coloured decks were the norm, unlike everything since about 2000, where multi-coloured decks became predominant. In these days, the 'drawback' of Crusade, in that it only affected creatures wasn't considered such a thing, rather it was a nice perk to keep your opponents from getting their own benefit. And if they were playing that colour as well, well, you could expect them to play their own version of Crusade and everyone wins!

However, starting in about 7th Edition, with Invasion Block on the coming horizon, multi-coloured decks started to get more support both directly and indirectly. And so we got Glorious Anthem. By the way, that's still my favourite quote across all printing of the card, especially as I can make it work with the tune to Ode to Joy.

Now, Glorious Anthem was an upgrade over Crusade. Despite costing more, it provided two benefits that outweighed that cost. First was that this card lost its symmetric ability; to whit, it no longer affected all creatures. And tying into that is the second point. That this card now affects all creatures you control, regardless of colour.

And when wants to act as the backbone of a creatures deck, being able to provide help to everyone rather than just a narrow division of your creature base is vitally important. Thus, Glorious Anthem was printed to expand 's reach into other colours and to help them along.

But there is also a hidden benefit to having this card having a mana value of . This moves it out of the already crowded Mana value slot, and into a higher one where there is less competition for value. Make no mistake, when you're already running Aegis of the Gods or True Believer, Ethersworn Canonist, Knight of the White Orchid, Leonin Arbiter, Stoneforge Mystic, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or plenty of other creatures that have immense value, but occupy this slot in your mana curve. Thus, moving Glorious Anthem up to three helps relieve the stress of trying to fit it into the curve.

However, this card only lasted for about four years in the game before it was rotated out of Standard, and we were introduced to its replacement in M10 with Honor of the Pure. This was something of a curious decision to me at the time as it was a measurable step backwards from Glorious Anthem. First is that its cost was reduced back to the already crowded mana value, in addition to only affecting your creatures.

But this was the new era in which multi-coloured decks were to be expected? Why? What was up with this? I mean, the card was printed for three years, from M10 to M12, so there had to be some reason for that, right?

Well after some thought, I considered the possibility that this was pretty much the last-gasp of colour-hate in the game, as the Circles of Protection last saw printings in 8th Edition for the anti-Black and anti-Red. This card ignoring other colours is a more passive form of hate, rather than something active like Story Circle.

Of course, that sort of colour... you know what, let's call it disinclenation is not longer a part of our game world. Aside from Legacy formats, and Modern if you dig really deep. It still doesn't explain why it was there in the first place. Maybe Wizards wanted a cheaper Anthem, and didn't want to do Crusade again?

Regardless of my thoughts a decade later, Honor of the Pure itself would be replaced by a non-Core Set Anthem, Marshal's Anthem. Now, this is a card I have mixed feelings about. And not just because of its increased cost. No, what I find interesting about it is the Multikicker cost attached to this card. You see, taken at face value, Marshal's Anthem is strictly worse than Glorious Anthem is it costs , one more than Glorious' mana value of three. Yet, the former provides the same static effect as the latter, so why would you use it?

Well, the answer, of a sort, comes from the Multikicker cost. When you cast this card, for each additional you pay when you cast this card, you get to return a creature from your graveyard straight to the battlefield. From an Eager Cadet to Iona, Shield of Emeria, you can pull anything you want back into play. No Haste is granted though, so do be mindful of that.

What you have to measure when comparing the two is the opportunity cost of the kicker ability. In truth, you're not paying for the additional effect, you're paying for the first effect over Glorius Anthem. And a second instance would raise the additional cost to over and above that of the Anthem. The costs quickly spiral out of control in my view, and while it might be worth it for a single kicker instance, but after that? Either you have too much mana available, or something's gone wrong and you're not winning.

From here, let's move to Dictate of Heliod. This card from the original Theros block was part of a larger horizontal cycle of Dictates, some of which are pretty swank. But what they all had in common was the Keyword Flash. Now, for those of you who literally have no idea how Magic is played, and what that means, Flash allows a card to be played at any time, regardless of whether or not that card would normally have the timing allowed. And the Dictate of Heliod for a cost of , gives all your creatures +2/+2.

Let's break this down into two parts. The first is that the cost is actually pretty reasonable. There are certain 'hidden' costs in Magic, that are not normally obvious, but when you look at the cards in question, you can see how a single change can cause a very consistent change in the cost of a card. And for , adding Flash to a card costs with reliability. And so this places it, by the numbers, and in a void, perfectly in line with the standard of Glorious Anthem. Which is good, but not quite.

You see, Dictate of Heliod also gives your creatures +2/+2, and ... there's not really much I can compare it too. The closest I get is Crovax, Ascendant Hero who gives all your creatures +1/+1 and all non- creatures -1/-1. This gives a virtual +2/+2 to all your creatures, but on the whole, the -1/-1 has a far more disproportionate effect than the boon to your forces.

And the sooner that Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite dies in a fire, the better.

What we get is a card that is powerful for its cost, but its cost also makes it quite prohibitive to actually use. likes to spend its mana on creatures early and cheaply, while larger value cards are either reserved for board-state stabilizers, or outright winning. In this manner, Dictate of Heliod is a poor card as its best use is either when you are able to hold up five mana past your turn - a sure sign that something is coming - or as a reaction to an otherwise untenable combat step and you need the single largest combat trick in the history of the game.

You know, I can stand by that statement. Dictate of Heliod is the biggest combat trick that isn't an instant-speed boardwipe like Cyclonic Rift or Inferno. But those aren't tricks. They're Board Wipes, their own subject. No, the Dictate stands alone as a massive surprise threat on the offense and defense, and the only card that even comes close is Heroic Intervention.

Remind me again which colour is the colour of protection?

From here, we move into Dominaria, and the next Anthem. Or rather, we get Benalish Marshal.Second only to Goblin Chainwhirler (and that's a far distant second) in terms of effect on the game, this living Anthem came not on an Enchantment, but on a creature.

Seriously, the number of times I saw people hold up mana for the counter-play to the Marshal, from Wizard's Lightning to Cast Down, you'd swear that the Marshal had the creature type "Flagbearer" and not "Knight".

Glorious Anthem finally got reprinted this past summer in M21, and the return wasn't that huge of a deal. Now, this is not to say that the card is a junk rare or the like, but rather, it exists in a state of supplementary card to at this time, not groundbreaking or super-defining. Just part and parcel of what it means to be

Now, I've touched on only a few Anthems. There are many others, including Always Watchin , Angelic Voices for when you want to be aggressively mono-coloured, Day of Destiny, Gerrard's Battle Cry for a pumpable version, Hall of Triumph, Spear of Heliod and others.

But there are also Anthems in other colours, and I want to look at three of them today.

The first is Bad Moon. Not to be confused with Blood Moon, this card was printed in Alpha, and was designed as a counterpart to Crusade, as part of the whole "Each Colour hates two others" deal. The version was Orcish Oriflamme. Which wasn't anywhere near as good as the other ones.

Now, Bad Moon was actually cheaper than Crusade, coming in at rather than . The reason for this is actually something simple, something that's been one of the few consistent parts of the game since the beginning.

That is, Black doesn't care about their creatures as much as White. The slightly reduced price for the same effect was representative of this, as didn't really have the same number of creatures that had, and certainly didn't care for them as much. Hence, the cost of their Anthem was reduced to account for that.

Of course, never really embraced the full Anthem effect, instead depending on their Lords to see them through for their Zombies and Vampires.

But on the other hand, we got Gaea's Anthem in . This colour-shifted card from Planar Chaos was one of the few "Huh, this makes sense" cards in this case, as is also the primary Creature colour, and they are filled with low-cost creatures, so why not have an Anthem effect to help them along? It even got reprinted as an uncommon in Time Spiral Remastered! Which is nice. Really.

What isn't so nice is the card that got revealed a week ago and got my blood boiling.

Sylvan Anthem

Enchantment
Green Creatures you control get +1/+1.
Whenever a Green creature enters the battlefield under your control, Scry 1.

I'm sorry.... but....

WHAT IN THE NAME OF URZA?

Ok, let's step back here and have a look at it. For a Mana Value of 2, this card is in the same position as Crusade and Honor of the Pure. And if that was the end of it, then this card would stil be a solid addition to , a colour shift of Honor that happens to require two coloured mana, rather than one.

If that was the end of it, it would be a good, but not explosively spectacular card.

This is not the end of it.

How many of you remember Season of Growth? Or as my first impression was, Lifecrafter's Bestiary. But Season is more accurate. Sylvan Anthem has the first ability of Season of Growth stapled onto it, which is a huge effect. Scrying repeatably is not something that can be underestimated, and when you have cards like The Great Henge, the sum of the effects are greater than the sum of their parts.

Now, Mark Rosewater addressed some of these issues, or tried to on his blog. Part of his defense of this card was that the first part of the card, the actual Anthem effect itself wasn't as much a big deal in as it was in . In his view, it was because tended to use fewer, but larger creatures, often with Trample, to deal combat damage, whereas tended to go wide, and swings with many creatures to go around an overloaded defense. Thus, an Anthem in was more powerful as it would affect more creatures.

There are two counters to that, one that I saw, and one that I didn't. The one that wasn't was that even when you're trampling, every point helps. I will gladly throw down this card for anyone from an un-kicked Llanowar Elite through to Ghalta, Primal Hunger. It doesn't matter how large the swing is, larger is always better, and again, every little bit helps. That this is an Anthem effect only makes it better as it isn't vulnerable to removing the creature it is attached to.

The other concern and counter is that the way this card interacts with token generation, from Rhys the Redeemed to Ghired, Conclave Exile to Trostani, Selesnya's Voice. Mister Rosewater's counter to this was that isn't as good at token-creature generation as , and while that may be true on the whole, is not without plenty of token making. In fact, the recent Strixhaven set has symbol:GB tokens that give life when they die. And the same set that is publishing Sylvan Anthem is also printing Hunting Pack, a card that for produces a 4/4 Beast token with Storm. Or Chitterspitter. Or Herd Baloth or Scurry Oak or Verdant Command or Chatterstorm... all in this set! Look, it's not hard for to make tokens, and it's hard to take this objection seriously when the set that introduces this potentially problematic card is full of cards that make light of the counterpoint.

Hell, I'm seriously tempted to buy one myself and put it into my Slimefoot, the Stowaway deck for Commander. It's that good.

Let's see here...

Anthems are a fundamental part of the game, but they aren't a supporting structure. They're an addition that the game can operate without, but it's better if there's some effect that does it lying around somewhere that's accessible. It's not much, but every little piece helps. is a colour that has to apply what it can into every little advantage. And Anthems are a little advantage that build up over time. It's one of those things that should be mostly in 's section of the pie, but seems adamant on eating everything it can. How Phyrexian.

I like the variations on Anthems we can see, and have seen, and look forward to what we see in the future.

As long as it's WHITE.

So, join me next week when I talk about the potential mechanics of my developing set, and where I run into my first major hurdle. I suck at making new things.

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!