Pattern Recognition # 288 - Transmute

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

6 July 2023

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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.

And welcome back everyone! Today's subject came up out of a conversation on the Discord about certain cards, and I mentioned that Muddle the Mixture was a surprisingly useful card in that sort of situation. Well, a lot of people agreed with me, so I decided, why not talk about this card, and what it did and why it was so relatively important to the game.

Transmute was a mechanic introduced in the Ravnica: City of Guilds set, and was associated with the Guild, the Dimir. As the guild of spies and (mis)information, the Dimir were masters of Sleight of Hand, and this translated into the Transmute mechanic for the set.

To whit, Transmute was an activated ability of a card that could only be activated from the hand. When you paid a card's Transmute cost, you discard that card, and then search your library for a card with the same Mana Value (not higher or lower, but exactly the same), reveal it and then put it into your hand.

Transmute appeared on varying cards, with the mana value of the card you were searching for ranging from on Dizzy Spell to on Grozoth. Of which the latter could only find Blazing Archon and Nullstone Gargoyle within the same set and block. Not exactly a sterling recommendation there. However, it is interesting to note that the Transmute cost reflects the colour identity of the Transmutor in question. Cards that are have a cost of , while cards that are are and cards that are are . Without exception. This certainly simplifies colour identity, but at the time, Commander didn't exist, and this restriction was more designed with limited in mind, to avoid getting a card you needed to get another colour of mana for to use its ability to the fullest.

In addition, Transmute could only work at Sorcery speed. A necessary drawback, I'm sure you can agree with me, as it prevents you from Transmuting something on the previous player's end step, and then be right and ready to cast a spell on your turn with all your mana refreshed.

But before I get back to that, I want to point out that much like Cycling, Transmute is not a spell. It is not something that is cast and goes onto the stack. You can't Counterspell it. What it is, is an activated ability, which means you need to Disallow it or Stifle it in order to interact with the ability.

All of which is important because this was tutoring. Now, for those of you who are knew to my personal soap box here, I happen to agree with Mark Rosewater that tutors are a bad thing, and they make for bad gameplay. because tutors make the games rapidly become linear. You tutor for your combo pieces, and that was that. You win.

So what was it about Muddle the Mixture that generated so much agreement that it was the best Transmute card by far? Well, look at its colour and its mana value. And think about what other well played cards match those two criteria?

,

Just to name the two off the top of my head. I'm sure you can all name more as well. Now, here's the thing. Transmute also has Tolaria West, a card that can Transmute for 0, and in some formats, being able to go grab a cost card - even as slow as a Sorcery, makes for some very linear plays. Depending on how things, go, there are a lot of 0 cost Artifacts that can explode in effectiveness. Lion's Eye Diamond being one of them, but Mana Crytp through to Walking Ballista are all options.

Transmute, the problem is, is a tutor that you can't interact with. Normally. There are more counterspells than counter-abilities in the game, and traditional tutors have their own downsides, including most importantly, costing far more. Most tutors run you a mana value of , or cheaper with some form of drawback. But Transmute always costs , which puts you ahead of the curve in terms of when your opponents can expect you to start cheating your important cards into hand.

I suppose that another aspect to this is rarity. I've commented before how the rarity of a card is not a proper factor for balance - but rather one of complexity. But most of the tutors printed in modern Magic are Rare simply by dint of how they work are rares. Here though, because of the New World Order, SEVEN of these transmute cards are common. You are very much assured to get these if you got any serious amount of packs in this set, and they hit all the mana values from to . Sure, you could run into problems if you wanted to just have access to one colour or the other and didn't want to roll both, but that was fine. Some options were better than others.

The problem comes with the fact that they were easy to get a hold of, and it wasn't that hard to get yourselves copies of them on the cheap. Well, cheap-ish. For what it's worth, when I was writing this article, Muddle the Mixture itself was worth $4.00 US according to TappedOut's resources. And it is the fourth most expensive Common in Modern. A Common! Worth that much! It's almost ridiculous, if it wasn't so funny.

But price does have some small correlation with power. And powerful it is, as well as all its friends. You have all these tutors in the game, and I'm surprised I don't see them more often!

Well, I have, actually. Back in the days of Commander when ruled all, and well, what do you know, there are those two colours right there, front and center! But not all of them. A lot of the Transmute cards had to be seen as more than just narrow-target Tutors. They also had to have value in of themselves. Tolaria West is still a land that makes - though it enters tapped. Netherborn Phalanx punishes token decks, and is mutually transmutable with Ethereal Usher. Drift of Phantasms occasionally shows up in Defender decks, like Arcades, the Strategist in Commander.

And Muddle the Mixture? It's a counterspell. It takes out opponent's combo pieces or their own tutors when it's not doing that job as well. It is so useful for its casting cost!

Transmute was fun while it lasted, but the ability of a deck to have so many tutors, even when nominally limited to the mana value of the card in question, is too much. It's too easy to plan around, and too easy to exploit. I can understand why MaRo thinks it was a mistake, and it won't see Standard play ever again.

Tutors in general are a problem, and thankfully the game has mostly transitioned away from them, though they do show up from time to time in very limited aspects, such as with tutoring up a basic land thanks to Fabled Passage or Prismatic Vista. But such accessible ways to make most of your deck just filler or more for getting the cards you want? Where's the skill in that? It's just mulligan until you get what you want, even if what you want just gets you what you want later.

I apologize for the brevity of this. I had an idea, and I don't think I stuck the landing. As always, comments are appreciated, and I hope to hear from you in the comments below. Join me next week when I talk about something else. It's almost time to build my yearly Brawl Deck and then upgrade it into a Commander deck, so that's something to look forward to!

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!