Pattern Recognition #219 - From the Hand

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

25 November 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 welcome back! Sorry about missing last week, but for the past couple of weeks at work, the question hasn't been if I'm going to be getting overtime every day, but how much. Which means money in the bank, and less time to relax and write.

But regardless, let me start this week by talking about the line of logic that led me to this article. I was sorting my cards, getting ready for Crimson Vow to drop, when I came across Shinen of Stars' Light. Now, this article isn't about Neon Dynasty, our long awaited return to Kamigawa. No, it's about the ability this creature has, and how it's come and gone over time.

So let's start with Channel. Which is most definitely not Channel. No, Channel was an ability from the Kamigawa block that was found on Spirits. The theory behind the was that you could either play the creature for its regular cost and get its regular text. In this case, you would pay for a 2/1 with First Strike. At common, mind you. So comparing this creature to Blade of the Sixth Pride, or Nightguard Patrol isn't the best as creatures have gotten a lot better since those days.

Regardless, there was an option with this creature, this ability, to simply pay a cost and discard the card in order to give another creature an ability reflective of the creature in question. In my example, that's giving First Strike until the end of the turn to a creature you control.

But this wasn't the end. No. I remembered that there were other abilities like this, where you could 'cast' a card from your hand for an effect, but without actually casting anything. My thoughts went to the Gruul mechanic called Bloodrush. This ability was phrased in the exact same way, and in fact, it was literally the same ability with a different name.

Hold on... lemme check something.... Weird. Bloodrush is a 6 on the Storm Scale, while Channel is a 7. Huh. types message to Blogatog, hoping for an answer.

And I got one! Looks like MaRo answered me, and he says that Bloodrush is a subset of Channel. Which means that in his view, the former is a narrower application of the latter.

Back to the cards at hand. I then went digging. I mean, if the ability could get a rebrand, why not again?

From there, I remembered Cycling, that wonderful ability that is 'Pay cost, discard card, draw card'. OK, there's that, but it's not really what I'm looking for. Next on the idea list was Evoke, but that was a cast and self-sacrifice effect, and by that point, I just want to move on and actually look at these two abilities in more detail.

Bloodrush and Channel are both interesting mechanics because they touch on something that is only relatively rarely done in Magic as it bypasses one of the fundamental conceits of the game. Not one of the rules, as obviously this 'rule' was already broken before Kamigawa.

In source, these abilities exploit the curious relationship between the hand and the battlefield. And if you're wondering what I'm talking about, the hand is less a zone in the game, at least when these cards were first printed, but rather it was seen as a resource, where cards went to from the deck, and could be affected by additional draws or discard effects.

But the first foray into pushing this relationship with the battlefield came with Cycling itself, from Urza's Block. Now at the time, this wasn't something serious. It was the payment of a cost to discard a card, then draw a card. Simple, really. It's why it's made something of a comeback for a variety of reasons.

Yet, the real result of this wasn't in Cycling, but rather is was looking at the hand as less a place to store your spells before you cast them - as these were yon innocent days of yore where the Graveyard had yet to be an extension of the hand, and casting off the top of your library was even rarer. Yes, I know Future Sight was a thing, but that was exceptional, not common.

No, the result was in providing your hand with the ability to affect by board state by using activated abilities.

Now, for a lot of you, this may not seem like much. But for good or for ill, I'm not like a lot of people when it comes to this game. I see things. And the thing I see here is that using your hand to generate abilities without casting spells is a huge deal.

So, let me get the first big thing out of the way. If I asked you to list counter spells, most of you would have six out by the time I finished this sentence. So when a card leaves the hand as it is being cast, and goes onto the stack, there it can be countered. Everyone has seen this at some point. It's baked into the game.

How many cards can you name that counter an ability?

That's a bit harder.

I can name three off the top of my head, because I've been prepping this for a while now, but Stifle, Disallow and Nimble Obstructionist. I know there are others, but that's just off the top of my head. So here's the thing; counter a spell is easy. You can sneeze and it can happen. Countering an ability is no where near as widespread, with maybe one card in any given standard rotation doing it, if at all. Activated Abilities are something that Wizards is loathe to address as it's one of the things that makes permanents more viable in the game, rather than as just stats.

I don't mind. What I do mind are powerful activated abilities on Lands, because that's where we get the conflux of something Wizards shouldn't touch in order to maintain the viability of permanents - I mean, can you imagine not being able to activate Dawn of Hope, or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries - and Lands, which absolutely should have more Stone Rains aimed at non-basic Lands.

Yes, I know, Runic Armasaur is a thing that rewards you for when players do something with abilities, and Harsh Mentor punishes them for the same. But nothing counters them, or does so very rarely.

Essentially, activating an ability from your hand is one of the safest actions you can take as there's no permanent to disrupt, no spell on the stack to counter. It's just an ability.

And because it's just an ability, you know what timing restrictions it has? That's right! Unless otherwise stated, you can activate an ability at any time you can cast an Instant. Shinen of Life's Roar for example, has a built-in Lure effect on it. Great if you can give it Deathtouch. Which is pretty easy nowadays. But for , you can give any creature a Lure effect. At Instant speed.

This example may not seem like a lot, but in a multiplayer game? Forcing a sudden Lure after attackers are declared, but before blockers can kill off a lot of creatures from multiple players. It's a narrow effect, but potentially game-swinging. Then again, a lot of cards with a lot of effects are the same, so this isn't unique, but it is not something you would expect out of . , more likely, but not .

It's this Instant aspect, that really makes this use of an ability shine, rather than limiting it to sorcery speed, or only on your turn. Wait a minute....!

FORECAST! That's what I was trying to think of. OK, so from the original Ravnica block, the Azorius mechanic was designed to be an uninterrupted action, revealing their hand - literally - in order to get a small effect now, but can accumulate for a larger effect later. I do like Pride of the Clouds, and it's going into my developing Commander Aggro deck as it can be a nice synergistic early drop, or a way to make tokens in the mid to late game. Sure, you can only do it during your upkeep and only once per turn, but it's still a renewable - albeit expensive - resource that is relatively hard to interact with. Sure, you can be forced to discard, but that's something that only is really consistent at doing.

Which I suppose is the best way to describe activating abilities from your hand. They're a surprise when they happen, and are hard to interact with, meaning that they are extra annoying for your opponent. Of course, the opposite does happen as well. Sometimes, you get the card taken from you before you can cast it, or the player does have a Sublime Epiphany in hand to make things worse.

And in that vein, I can also understand why Wizards, or at least MaRo doesn't view them as likely to return. They are hard to balance design around and harder to interact with. That lack of interaction is what really takes the metaphorical cake when it comes to resisting making more cards outside of specialty sets.

It was an experiment, and while full on abilities-as-spells is something I don't think needs to be a major part of the game, I think that the basic Cycling mechanic is something could and should come back on occasion. But Channel? Forecast? That sort of thing? Nah, that was an experiment that needed to be made, and now we know better.

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!

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!