Pattern Recognition #270 - Split the Difference

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

9 February 2023

326 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.

Now, many, many, many years ago, I talked a little bit about the Nature of Modal spells (that's PR#49 if you want to look), and, well, I am not impressed with my past self from so long ago. I also talked about this subject back in #128, and it's been a few years since then as well. And so with my more refined skills, and several more years of cards to work with, I decided to come back to this subject and give it another go.

I've never really hid my love for the Invasion Block (second only to Time Spiral, because I'm still an Old Fogey, no matter what people say), and one of the things that I enjoyed about that block was its dedication to making mutli-coloured decks work. And one of the ways that they did that, something that was extremely creative, was in the creation of a new type of card that actually wasn't a new type. Here, let me show you.

Pain / Suffering

This horizontal cycle started in Invasion and moved through the rest of the block, and it was, without a doubt, one of the most innovative things to come from the block. In this first set, which focused a lot on the allied colours, these five cards at uncommon represented a core facet of each colour, something that later uncommon multi-coloured cards would take to heart, especially when draft focusing. But I digress. These Split Cards, as they are known, were, for all intents and purposes, a single card, but were also two cards. They take up one slot in your deck, so you can't have 38 regular cards and a single split card for 39(40) in a Limited deck, not to cheat the deck size restrictions of Commander either.

Speaking of Commander, for the purposes of colour identity, Split Cards are considered to be all the colours of both sides of the card, so in the case I showed above, it is both and , so long as it is in your hand, deck or graveyard. There are no - at the time of this writing - Split cards that are also permanents, though they can make token creatures on one side or the other. However, this colour combination actually ceases when the spell is on the stack.

You see, Split Cards are two-in one, but you can't cast two spells at the same time. Sure, you can modify a spell on the stack, such as with the Arcane mechanic (and I really need to do that article someday, don't I?), but you can only put a single spell onto the stack at any given time, and when you cast one side or the other of a split card, you no longer have that card in your hand. Hence, without the card in your hand, you can't play the other side at all!

And while the card is on the stack, it is only that card. You only pay the cost of one side or the other, and only that side is cast to be on the stack. So for Pain / Suffering, if you cast just the Suffering side, you have a Sorcery on the stack. This makes it a viable target for such responses as Blue Elemental Blast, but not for an activation of Lifeforce.

Yes, that's a real card.

But once the spell resolves, and hits the graveyard, then it becomes all relevant colours again. And, interestingly to note, thanks to a rules update during the Amonkhet set, a bad interaction between Split Cards and cards that checked for a card's mana-value was resolved. Before then, you could put a card like the Pain side of Pain / Suffering onto Isochron Scepter thanks to the former's cost of , but then activate the Scepter to cast the latter half of the split card despite being too expensive to cast normally at . Instead, at all times except when the spell is cast on the stack, all Split cards have a mana value equal to the total costs of both sides of the card, making them far more dangerous to use with things like Dark Confidant.

Split cards were something of a sleeper hit in the player base. They rewarded building decks in those colours, but also didn't punish you for not using both sides. It is quite alright to put Pain / Suffering into an otherwise mono- deck and basically use it as copies 5 through 8 of Duress with no issues.

Of course, like all good things, Wizards knew this was a good thing and quickly found another place for them to be printed. A few years later, Ravnica, City of Guilds provided us with more Split cards. Or rather, the set of Dissension. At Uncommon, we had a cycle of five Split cards that had represented two allied Guilds on each side. Hit / Run for example, has on both sides, but Hit has the allied colour of on it, and Run has the other allied colour of . At the Rare level, the central colour for the split card was paired with the Enemy colours to that one, meaning that for Odds / Ends, the central now is paired up with on one side, and on the other.

And much like the initial cycles, these cards had the same advantageous and disadvantages. You don't have to use both sides of the card, but to get the most out of them, you will be running a 3+ colour deck. I'm looking at you, Brawl and Commander.

This version was pretty well received, but Split Cards came back in the next block, with the publication of Dead / Gone, Rough / Tumble, and Boom / Bust. This cycle of cards proved that you didn't need to have different colours on each side, but both could be the same colour with no issues at all. In fact, is the only colour with this, thanks to the later printing of Fast / Furious. Actually, no I have to take that back. also got Said / Done. My bad.

Moving on, Split cards had become associated with the plane of Ravnica thanks to the Guild-coloured cards, and so when Return to Ravnica happened, Split Cards were seen as coming back. But they did so at the end of the block, in Dragon's Maze. This small set was the last one in the block, and we got two separate cycles, both held together by a new take on Split cards - Fuse.

Fuse is a mechanic that only works on Split Cards, and it allows you to cast both sides at the same, if you cast it from your hand. No graveyard tricks here! Now, for the most part, this was a nice option, but given the massive multi-coloured focus that this set and block had, including introducing the Guildgates to draft packs to ensure mana fixing, this was surprisingly viable. Games have been won and lost on a surprise Profit / Loss utterly ruining a combat step for people.

But at the Uncommon level, these Fuse cards were all mono-coloured on each side, and there were 10 of them, one for each such pairing. And at the Rare level, there was only five. But they were not symmetric in nature, as Beck / Call had the central colour split between ally and enemy - along with Flesh / Blood and Ready / Willing. Catch / Release has both enemy colours to the central , with Breaking / Entering being 's allies.

I can't really complain about that, as it's a case of what worked best for the cards themselves, and not to keep to a theme for the cycle. And in addition, as a rules effect of Fuse, if you cast both sides at the same time, the spells resolve from left to right, and are intended to be resolved that way. Give / Take for example, is a very expensive way to draw 3 cards - but it is also in a colour pairing that liked to put +1/+1 counters on their creatures, so adding more counters, then removing them all when there were already some on them? And drawing cards in the process? You can get some pretty good value out of them if you're willing to go through the effort.

In addition, I mentioned that Dragon's Maze was a small set, right? Which means that it had fewer cards than in a normal set. This means that by including those 15 split cards, the set's actual, practical card count was inflated by 15, making limited environments a little easier to work with. It was a brilliant and elegant solution to a minor, but endemic problem with a format, but with the change to all sets being the same size now, I doubt we'll see it again in that fashion any time soon.

I'm going to skip the next chronological example, and move to the third Ravnica block. By now, Split Cards were as associated with Ravnica as Shocklands are, and it was no surprise to anyone with a sense of pattern recognition (HAH!) that they would be coming back. The question was, in what way?

Well, we got our answer. In this block, the Split Cards lost both Fuse, as well as being tri-coloured in nature. Instead, between both sets, we got a full megacycle of cards at both Uncommon and Rare, where both halves of the card were the same colour pair. What made them unique was that the left side of the card was cheaper, and could be paid for with Hybrid mana. Expansion / Explosion was a massive threat in Standard, but you can see how the former side of the card had a purely Hybrid casting cost, while the right side had a more traditional mutli-coloured cost.

This was something of a step backwards in compatibility and usefulness, as these split cards moved away from and Either/Or setting, where you could pay either one cost or the other, and became a case of Either/And, where you could pay either X or Y in terms of mana costs, or you would pay both. Sure, it made them a little more focused for colour-oriented formats, but I lament the reduction in utility that cost.

Of course, this wasn't the end of it, nor the start. Split Cards have appeared in both Modern Horizons sets to varying degrees, and they worked in them just as they have in the regular sets. With skill and to good effect.

But the story of Split doesn't end there. Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation introduced a new style of Split Card. These Aftermath cards had two interesting aspects to them. First is how they were laid out. Unlike traditional Split cards, which were aligned with their tops to the left side of the card, Aftermath cards had the default side aligned to the top as normal, with the Aftermath side aligned to the right side of the card, making it visually distinct.

And this visual distinction helps make the mechanical gimmick distinct. You see, Aftermath cards have the second side of the card only being able to be cast from the graveyard. This curious iteration on Flashback means the card changes in the graveyard, yet has all the same benefits and restrictions of a normal split card. Of course, this ties back into the visual distinction, as you can put the Aftermath card into your graveyard sideways, to make it easy to see what sort of card you have available to cast in a more distinct manner than flashback. Heck, I turn by Flashback cards sideways anyways, just to keep the theme consistent with Aftermath. This is something that I have Commit / Memory

Spit cards represent and elegant solution to multiple problems. Not only do they provide options that more traditional modal spells can't with the ability to be distinct colours and potentially being Instants or Sorceries and not just both at the same time, they can scale well to the needs of a deck when you have a cheap option on one side, and a more expensive one on the other. And with the addition of Aftermaths, you can reuse the spell for a different effect! There's really no downside! Well, aside from opportunity costs, but that affects everything.

Oh, and before we go, one side note. All traditional Split Cards can be read with the word "and" between them, forming a single phrase that is easy to understand. For Aftermaths though, you use the conjunction of "to" when going from one side of the card to the other. Just a bit of consistent flavor across all these years that I enjoy.

Thanks to all of you for reading, and I hope to see you next week when I talk about the first two weeks of my Slow Grow tournament experience - possibly even with a special guest commentator!

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!