Pattern Recognition #224 - Casting Into Play

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

20 January 2022

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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.

This week's article is the result of a comment and a request from last week, in which I was asked to talk about the difference between casting a spell resulting in a permanent and putting that permanent directly into play?

Well, as it turns out, there's a lit of difference between the two. Let's actually start with how the game is played. When players learn the very basics of the game, one of the things they are taught is Lands, and their nature. At least, is should be.

Lands enter into play. You can take one from your hand - cards like Crucible of Worlds not withstanding - and put it right onto the Battlefield. No fuss, no muss, you even skip things like the stack in the process, retaining priority. On the other side of the picture, every other card in the game is cast. Yes, I know about things like The Prismatic Bridge  ^Flip cheating cards into play, but that's not the point right now.

Mechanically speaking, the difference between the two is in how they interact with the Stack. Casting a card uses it, while putting straight into play bypasses it entirely. But of course, things don't just end there, otherwise it would have been a silly question. And we can't have those, can we?

The act of putting permanents into play is not a new thing to the game, for as I pointed out, Lands are put into play, while everything else is cast. But once a card that is a permanent leaves the stack because it resolves, it is then put onto the battlefield. What you're seeing here is something similar to my talk long ago about the difference between damage and Life loss in that there is an extra step between where both things start and where they end up.

Good Lord, that's from 2017! Yeesh!

Anyway, Casting, putting things onto the stack, brings with it all the inherent dangers that come with anything going onto the stack. Things like Counterspell. Or redirection, or being bounced back to your hand. Yes, I know, this is the realm of , but I have to put it out there. For much like Life Loss vis-a-vis damage, for the majority of time, the stack isn't intractable, but a fair warning of what's coming so that you can prepare or alter the nature of things when the card leaves the stack and hits the table.

But I think that all this is merely a sideshow to the real difference between casting and putting into play.

What do you guys think about tokens? Like, say... Treasure Tokens or Flesh / Blood Tokens? or say the Soldier tokens from Darien, King of Kjeldor? You can't cast these, but rather they are the result of another card being cast, or the result of a triggered or activated ability on a card that's already on the Battlefield, like Dawn of Hope.

Tokens are created, and not cast. They are permanents that aren't permanent. If they leave the battlefield for whatever reason, they go to where they are going to go - important for things like your Treasure tokens hitting the graveyard for the purposes of Marionette Master, or the card:Servo tokens it creates. I'm serious, there's a reason why this card was put into the Dungeons and Dragons Commander set led by Prosper, Tome-Bound. And it wasn't the Servos.

Tokens are things that can be created, put into play, repeatedly or in batches. Token generation, even on Instants, like with Dance with Devils results in multiple tokens for a single action, and that is where the strength lay, one of the root results of the difference between simply casting for an effect, and being able to put something right into play.

Of course, Token generation in Instants is effectively giving that creature Flash without actually giving them that ability, but that's just a side thing.

However, there are other aspects to this division that I touched on earlier, but looked at it more as a condition than as a result. For in this game, there are cards that actually want to check on whether a card has been cast, or if a permanent/card has been put into play. Take, for example, the Prowess Mechanic, which only checks that you've cast a non-creature spell. That's alright, as the mere act of putting the card onto the stack is enough to get the result you're looking for.

But sometimes, all that is being looked for is the act of creation. Reckless Fireweaver doesn't care if the Artifact was cast, created or otherwise cheated into play. Simply having a new Artifact is enough to trigger the ability. Or an entire mechanic based around Enchantments entering the battlefield called Constellation from Theros block and Theros: Beyond Death. Something that Ghen, Arcanum Weaver excels at.

In the end, it's a difference that isn't much of a difference. I know that may not be what sort of conclusion you were hoping I was going to draw, but much like the difference between Life Loss and Damage, it's not really that big of a difference in terms of play. Casting involves the card directly, while putting into pay requires an enabler, using the stack most of the time, and is then the result of the action, not the action in of itself.

The game checks for different things when something comes onto the battlefield, and while yes, they can and do overlap, there's still enough of a difference that the game has to recognize the difference.

I do apologize. I went into this subject thinking I had more material to work with than I did, and thus, it's pretty short. Join me next week when I finally do something Kamigawa related, assuming I don't start talking about the impending Slow Grow and my plans for that.

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!