Pattern Recognition #334 - A Mistake

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

8 August 2024

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Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!

Mistakes in card design happen. There's no two ways about it. Sometimes, they're silly errors like someone changing a creature's power or toughness by one because hey hit the wrong button. Sometimes, it's Tarmogoyf, whose casting cost went from to because someone misread a comment due to time constraints. Sometimes mistakes happen because what was supposed to be a drawback became a benefit - Skullclamp being an excellent example of this. Or because someone forgot to add or remove a clause in a card, meaning that a card doesn't work exactly the way as intended.

Sometimes, mistakes happen because a card is being pushed, like Oko, Thief of Crowns, or because of an apparent lack of playtesting in the set or of the card.

And sometimes... sometimes a mistake happens because someone misread the assignment and pushed something that they shouldn't have. And today's card - and the followups - are the result of this mistake.

Let's talk Pongify.

Pongify was a mistake. And like with so many others, this one comes to us straight from the best block ever, Time Spiral. Or rather, Planar Chaos. This set was intended to explore new and interesting ways to express each colour of Magic, and this was exemplified in the Color Shifted cards. I've covered them before, but in summary, this set included a subset of cards that were functional reprints of other cards, except now in their 'correct' color. So Pestilence became Pyrohemia. And even in this process, mistakes can be made. Like how Concentrate became Harmonize.

But Pongify wasn't this. It's color shift - Generous Gift was printed afterward as a correction, long after the damage was done.

Rather, Pongify exists because of a misinterpretation or attempt to expand upon or explore one of the concepts and aspects of 's section of the colour pie. You see, is the color of magic itself, and because of this, one of the things it can do is modify spells or permanents. It's the color of Phantasmal Terrain, Unstable Mutation or Witness Protection. It can change the context and abilities of a spell or permanent, but at the same time keeps the original underlying spell or permanent there.

Pongify existed because someone took this idea of changing something, and took it to its most logical extreme. What would happen if you took a creature and replaced it entirely with a new creature? You're changing everything about it, so why not just keep things tidy and replace the creature entirely. Put it in the graveyard. It won't come back. (This was in the old days when the Graveyard wasn't an extension of the hand, and every set needs graveyard hate.) It made sense. It was changing something, which was definitely in 's wheelhouse, but what happened was outside of anyone's expectations.

Pongify was too good. It instant speed, for a single mana, you could destroy any creature and give its controller an Ape. Sure, it was a 3/3, but there were plenty of ways to deal with that. A lot of ways, really. And compare this with this colour's traditional one mana instant speed removal - Unsummon. Hard removal is better in all cases. Yes, a timely bounce spell can do wonders, but the opponent hasn't actually lost anything other than timing or a tempo loss. Yes, you can set that spell up for a future Counterspell, but that's using two spells to remove one problem. It was, by design, a necessary drawback and weakness for the colour. They weren't supposed to have removal as an option. Only delay and reset.

For its cost and for the fact that it is an Instant of all things, not a Sorcery, meant that this spell quickly found its way into darn near every deck that even had a hint of . And in mono-coloured decks, the ability to simply remove a problematic creature without hesitation. Sure, the opponent gets a 3/3, but it won't have any abilities, which is the important part for creature removal.

Pongify turned out to be a mistake because it took what could do, and turned it into what it shouldn't do. And to give you an idea of how powerful this card is, for a card printed in 2007, it is a $5.00+ USD card. At uncommon. The Commanders printings are more reasonable, at $2-3, but that still makes this card more expensive than most rares. This card sells itself on how good it is, and I can't stress this fact enough. The monetary value reflects the desire of people to have this card because of how good it consistently is.

But the biggest problem is that this card was also a solid colour-break against .

You see, like to pretend to be the colour of fair play, and if it removes something from the opponent, it likes to either pay a lot for the pleasure, or it will give you something in exchange. Bovine Intervention gives the controller of the destroyed permanent a 2/2 Ox. Get Lost rewards the target with a couple of Map tokens. And yet, I can already hear you all say that these are new cards. Standard Legal even!

What about Path to Exile, first printed in Conflux, and replaced the destroyed creature with a Basic Land?

What about Swords to Plowshares? Printed in Alpha, and gave the poor creature's controller some life for the cause?

Pongify stepped into 's wheelhouse and stayed there.

Because the mistake of Pongify didn't end there.

Rapid Hybridization from Gatecrash. 2013. Six years later, and the card is given a functional reprint. Sure, it's a 3/3 Frog Lizard and not an Ape, but everything that made Pongify great was just doubled. I remember seeing larger format decks like in Modern that ran four of each. Hell, some decks still do if they can get away with it!

And everything that can be said about Pongify can be said of Rapid Hybridization. Because it's the same card, down to the price - $2-3 USD. It just doesn't have the original printing to be more of a collector's item.

Then there was Polymorph, which lets you destroy a creature to get another one out of your library. An excellent combo card. And before Pongify was Ovinomancer from Visions, a card that required you to bounce three basics to your hand when it entered, and then it had to stick around a whole turn before it could do its thing. It is no where near as good, but I need to include it.

I mentioned Generous Gift earlier, but it is not equivalent at all. Yes, it gives out an Elephant instead of an Ape or a Frog Lizard, but look at the casting cost. It's . That extra two mana required to do this is a massive downgrade in the power. Turn 1 or MV 1 removal is nowhere near as vital or effective as a Turn 3 or MV 3 spell.

Which I suppose is another mark on the tally sheet of 'reasons why Wizards doesn't want to win'. If can't even do it's own thing better than or equal to a colour that shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

But it should have ended there. It should have been a recognized mistake and politely forgotten as much as possible. But it wasn't, because someone didn't get the memo.

Someone printed Oko, Thief of Crowns.

Another massive mistake, the crux of this card was the +1 ability. This is how Pongify should have been printed, but it wasn't. And even then, this card and this effect had its own share of problems as the creature under it wasn't destroyed, nor was there any way to undo the effect once it had taken place short removal of some stripe or another. Don't let the fact that this was the Planeswalker casting Kenrith's Transformation fool you. doesn't really do this sort of effect either, and so this is another color-bend - if not break - to justify the card in question even existing.

And then! AND THEN! SOMEONE WENT AND DID IT AGAIN!

Ravenform!

Look at that! A card that should have been in got put into because apparently that's what the colour needed in Kaldheim was direct removal! It's like someone thought that Pongify could be rehabilitated if it included the set mechanic!

Seriously, STOP.

...

:sigh:

Pongify started a very annoying trend in cards. Yes, used to hate on with Blue Elemental Blast, but that was old-school anti-color. This was just something that this colour shouldn't have been able to do in the first place. And yet it was. And now we have to live with the consequences of that action forever and ever.

Thank you all for reading! Please leave your comments below, and I look forward to talking with you about my subject matter. Join me next week when I talk about something! What? I don't know yet!

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