Pattern Recognition #272 - Power Creep

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

23 February 2023

488 views

Good day everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut's longest running article series. I am something of an Old Fogey and a definite Smart Ass, and I have been around the block quite a few times. My experience is quite broad and deep, and so I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. Be it deck design, card construction, mechanics or in-universe characters and the history of the game. Or whatever happens to catch my attention each week. Which happens far more often than I care to admit. Please, feel free to talk about my subject matter in the comments at the bottom of the page, add suggestions or just plain correct me.

Power Creep is a hard to define concept, simply because there are so may potential avenues to approach hen addressing this concept. On one hand, it can be seen as the general improvement of cards over time as Wizards and the Players push boundaries and realize what can and cannot be done. Or Should or should not be done. It can be seen through the lens of petty one-upsmanship - I'M LOOKING AT YOU KEN NAGEL - that comes from ego and proclaiming to yourself and others that you can just do better.

But Power Creep is not, by necessity, a bad thing. Sometimes a card or mechanic massively under-performs, and so an improved version comes along later to try and bring it back to where it is intended to be. Sometimes it happens thanks to the needs of the set, where you can't simply reprint - or functionally reprint - an already existing card to fill a gap, as you need something with a little more kick to it to deal with a set mechanic or because you know something is coming down the line in a future set, and you want to future proof something.

Power Creep is incremental. It isn't some massive jump in power, people can see that coming and treat it as its own separate thing, but even then, people can see too many similarities between things to accept that they were supposed to be different. And sometimes, you get to see Power Creep within a set. Some of you may even remember when I talked about how Serra Angel and Baneslayer Angel were in the same set.

So, let's start with how this all began, because it's really hard for me to pin down just when the first power-creep'd card entered into the game. I mean, if you really want to be pedantic about it to the point where even I would have to give you a look of "what-are-you-thinking?" would be the case of the Dual Lands. Basics can only produce 1 colour, fixed to their type! Now you're telling me that there are lands that can make two colours?! What bull is this! Too powerful!

But as I said, Power Creep is a very subjective subject - for the most part. What can be objectively measured is that the very first proper expansion - Arabian Nights - held about a half dozen cards that were distinctly better than their immediate predecessor. All of them were creatures. Mons's Goblin Raiders, printed in Alpha, for example, was improved upon by no less than three creatures in Nights. Ali Baba and Hurr Jackal came with an activated ability of differing utility and effect, while Kird Ape got bigger if you had a Forest in play, and not just a Mountain.

Now part and parcel of this sort of power creep is the adding of abilities or effects that didn't have it before, or scaling a variable of one sort or another. Terrain Elemental was a slight creep up from Grizzly Bears and Accorder Paladin uses a set mechanic to be an improvement over Blade of the Sixth Pride.

This sort of Creep isn't bad, because these are often done at lower rarities, with lower powered cards that get such minor additions that their effect on the game is, for the most part, negligible. It helps shake things up, and provide a little bit of variety to the usual mill of cards that do the exact same thing each and every set or rotation.

Speaking of, another reason why this sort of Creep is allowable is because of how these cards and these sets Rotate. I've addressed this subject from that end before, but I'll point it out again. Because Magic has a rotation system for its sets for Standard (and Brawl, I suppose), cards that prove to be quite powerful, but not requiring the more drastic measure of restriction or banning can and will leave the format eventually. Of course, this does nothing for everyone playing against said problematic card until then, but there's always hope that a card in a future set can deal with it before rotation.

We hope. Sometimes, it doesn't happen.

Sometimes, a card sticks around because it's entered into the consciousness of a non-rotating format, like Mordern or Commander. When that happens, the slight increase of power becomes permanent across the entire format. A slip here, a word there, a number that goes up or down by one can turn over entire meta-games and archetypes. And correcting them is usually even more difficult as the larger format are far more intricate and interlaced than Standard in terms of their interactions. There may already be an effective response, but the players haven't found it yet. So when this sort of thing happens, players either adapt their strategies around this new incremental improvement, or they live with the change in the status quo, for good or for ill. I mean, look at what Modern Horizons did, introducing Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, Urza, Lord High Artificer and Wrenn and Six to Modern. One bit the Ban Bullet, while the other two definitely made waves.

Sometimes, on the other hand, Power Creep actually goes in the opposite direction, for good cause. There are cards that were either too good on their own, or combined too well with other cards in their surroundings that for whatever reason, Wizards decides to try again. Only with tweaks to make it less powerful, or more restrictive than before.

Consider, for example, how Birthing Pod is kinda broken. I'm serious, it is. It's so busted that it was one of many, many cards from New Phyrexia that has eaten a ban over the years thanks to the Phyrexian mana involved. Wizards learned from this mistake, and eventually printed Eldritch Evolution, a card that was effectively a one-shot version of the Pod, but could got for a mana value of higher. Then they did another version just last year with New Capenna's Evolving Door. Each time, Wizards has downgraded or side-graded the card in some manner to make it less prone to abuse, and more viable for general play.

In another way, look at how Lightning Bolt got downgraded to Shock, and how Shock has many versions that play on what it does and how it goes about it, including the very recent Play with Fire.

With this example in mind, consider that what we consider to be Power Creep, either upwards or downwards, is less creep, and more exploring boundaries. Wizards - for the most part - does try to take a long-term view of their game, and as such, knowing the upper and lower boundaries for what is good for the game and fun for the players becomes absolutely vital. Yes, you will get exceptions, but those either tend to be because people forget to change a +1 to -1 or because Wizards baked a built-in counter to the problem in the same set.

And yet, sometimes, they don't. There's no reason. There's no justification. An example pops up that's so powerful, so far above what came before - even accounting for the fact that the initial card was widely considered bad that when the better version comes along so much later, the pendulum has swung the other way around.

So when I went and asked people on the TappedOut discord what they considered to be their favourite or most despised examples of power creep. Now, I'm going to skip out on Phyrexian mana for reasons, but the first example that came up was the transition from Jackal Pup to Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. You may have heard of the latter for how it's making not just waves, but practically overturning any format it's legal in, while the former has a history of being perhaps the worst creature ever printed. It's not, but it's right up there.

Despite being over two decades apart in printing, this was given to me as an example of Power-Creep done wrong. When I talked about bounding earlier, I said that it was intended to find a safe space in which a card can have an effect without hurting the formats it is in. Jackal Pup was lower than the low to start with, not making the cut, so improving it was only natural. On the other side, Ragavan is seen - at least in the circles I pay attention to - as an extremely powerful card that requires a response right then and there, lest he explode out into victory through mana production and card stealing.

But this is also what I was talking about when I mentioned that sometimes, two cards are so far apart that you can barely tell that one came from the other. The only thing these two share is the mana value and the power/toughness. Beyond that, they have nothing in common, but it's still enough for people to see the connection.

Power Creep has, and will killed game systems. My favorite badly designed CCG, Decipher's Star Trek, 1st Edition, was by the end, a horrible mishmash of everything wrong with this. The constant updates and improvements can be seen as a viable way to bring the new stuff in line with the old, and to try and encourage people to keep buying your product, to get the new and amazing instead of the old and boring. I'm sure that those of you out there who play other systems right now see this going on.

This is also something that Wizards needs to be aware of themselves, as it's killing Standard. Or one of the reasons, in my opinion. Players like their stuff, so playing in formats where the card selection doesn't change is appealing to them. They don't loose the cards they like, and they can keep simply trading up whenever something even slightly better comes along.

Is there a solution to this? No. It's almost inevitable. It's in our nature to want better things, and Wizards will deliver. But how things improve, and how much they do so at the same time is something we need to be more and more wary of as time goes by.

Until, one day, there can be no more improvement. Then the game is dead.

Thanks for reading! Join me next week when I go through Weeks 3 and Four of my Slow Grow tournament! I should have better news for you then after my poor showing in the first two weeks.

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!