Pattern Recognition #349 - The End of the Foundations Signposts

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

5 December 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!

And welcome back! I'm almost done my overview of the Signpost Uncommons from Foundations. There's only two colours left, so let's get to it.

Oh, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, scroll down to the bottom of the article, and there's a link to the previous one and another link at the bottom of that to where it all began. Read! Give the website clicks!

Our first colour pairing today is Selesnya, and they tend to be pretty solid as a colour choice overall. Let's see what we have here! Dryad Militant is a reprint from a Ravnica set, and it is our second card with a Hybrid Mana cost!

Hybrid mana is supposed to be used when the card in question is something that can be be done or used by both relevant colours as a primary effect, and the Militant is right there doing just that. In this case, this card is directed Graveyard hate in the form of preventing Instants and Sorceries from going to the graveyard, instead putting them into Exile, where you nee dto jump through some extreme hoops to get them back.

One of things I've praised this set for doing is encouraging Graveyard use, and so it should come as no surprise that there is something in this deck that is designed to soft-counter that sort of thing. This creature is straight up a hard counter to things like Flashback but at the same time doesn't interact with Morbid or other graveyard interactions. Yes, some colours (cough__cough) might hate what you're doing, but others won't care as much or if at all. The Militant puts a limiter and a throttle on the worst excesses of some deck types, and it isn't some global hater. It also leads into the inevitable reprints of Tormod's Crypt or Rest in Peace.

This creature teaches the players that the Graveyard is a resource, but like all such things, it can be limited, manipulated or denied, and you have to have contingencies to deal with that. Thankfully for them, the Militant only has a toughness of 1, meaning it's very easy to kill in one way or another.

Moving on, we have a reprint from Modern Horizons of all places. Good-Fortune Unicorn was also intended as a Signpost in that set, and it returns to do extra duty here as well. This moderately costed creature only needs an additional on top of the two color pips to cast, and it's a little high for the power and toughness it brings to the table as more established players will recognize. However, the meat of the creature itself lay in the ability it brings. "Whenever another creature you control enters (the battlefield), put a +1/+1 counter on it."

This ability tells me two things. The first is that this creature does its best work when there are plenty of other creatures around to give out counters. The more the merrier as the saying goes. And the longer it sticks around, the larger an effect it will have.

Importantly, this also shows that not only does this colour pairing like having lots of creatures in place, it also likes making them bigger. That these counters stick around even if this creature dies is also good for the new player as it is a permanent effect, and not like Heroic Reinforcements from last week. Counters stick around, and if there's one type, well, there could be others, right?

However, something about this creature's wording bothers me. It's phrased as a triggered ability. That being that this creature puts an ability on the stack in response to another creature entering - and it does so for each creature that enters. This may not seem like much to newer players, but for other players, cards that affect abilities that trigger become more important. For the importance of new players, consider the existence of Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. This creature exists to cause such abilities to trigger an additional time if they're yours and not at all if they are your opponent's abilities. So if you have Norn in play, the Unicorn would trigger twice, and not once!

But you see, there is an alternate way of doing things like this. The phrasing would have been "Other creatures you control enter with an additional +1/+1 counter on them." This is a passive ability that would do the exact came thing as the card as written, but the important part is that this isn't a triggered ability. Rather, it's a modifier to the state in which a creature enters. It doesn't go on the stack, as it just happens. For example, Planeswalkers use this innately to have Loyalty counters when they enter so they don't die to state-based effects, as well as creatures like Heroes' Bane for the same reason.

However, I think this creature is also teaching the importance of watching your cards for automatic responses to things happening, and when these things occur without you needing to do anything special, you can start to build your decks around this idea. And there is a good chunk of +1/+1 counter relevancy in this set, let me tell you.

Lastly, we have Unflinching Courage. Our only Aura in this series of cards, this card helps tell new players that these colours care about adding things to their creatures, much like the Unicorn does. In this case, it's a separate card, but it does a lot. +2/+2, Trample and Lifelink is nothing to sneeze at, though I do acknowledge that this is a functional reprint of Armadillo Cloak with modern wording for the Lifelink.

This card teaches how you can empower your creatures with Auras (and Equipment as other cards will represent) and that empowering can be very important to winning the game. However, by the same token, the player will also be taught the importance of not putting all your eggs in one basket. The infamous Two For One lesson.

The two abilities granted here though are both relevant. Trample is a excellent game-ender as the ability to push damage past blockers cannot be understated. It means that blocking with just any thing no longer works, and you need to actually check the toughness of your blockers. And sacrificing stuff to a massive Trampler to stop it once and for all just means that it's still a losing proposition for the defender.

Add into that Lifelink, and even a single solid hit and turn the tables on the relevant life totals in a game. Even a simple hit of four damage to someone's face is an EIGHT point life total swing as you are +4 and they are -4. Really, I can write a whole article about Lifelink....

These cards really work well with the Rares in this set. Anthem of Champions and Wilt-Leaf Liege are both anthem effects, giving all your creatures a boost to power and toughness. You want lots of creatures, and they will all be big. Go wide. Go tall and slam home for the win.

Tatyova, Benthic Druid. And with that card, so many players started drooling in excitement and anticipation that this card was not only coming back to Standard, but was going to be around for five years. I've praised Landfall every time I've talked about it for a variety of reasons, and the least of which for new players is the knowledge that with this ability, no card that they draw will be a 'dead' draw.

Tatyova is too much. It was when it was first printed, and it still is. The drawing of a card when you play your land for the turn means that you're effectively not reducing your hand size at all when otherwise you would. The gaining of the life is almost immaterial. It's the card draw that matters. And something that players will learn quite quickly no matter what colour they play - the more cards the better.

And if you can get multiple land drops in a turn, you're net positive on cards. Fetch lands of all stripes, Cultivate and the like can all generate more and more value. This creature works so well in so many value engines that I'm honestly afraid of what it means for the future. Foundations has a limited pool of cards to draw from to exploit this, but that's the whole point behind Foundations. You build up from it.

I'm afraid of where this person can be built up to, as I've seen him in action with solid support structure and it ain't pretty.

Moving on to other cards, we have Trygon Predator. This is Naturalize on a body, one that can trigger each time that the creature connects with combat damage. And because brings the effect, it is that brings the Flying to enable this creature to try and get through.

It's nothing spectacular. The card effect is quite normal, and Naturalize has been included in several Core Sets in the past - including most recently in Core 19. Which was a while ago as it was phased out in favor of Return to Nature.

The creature is still a 2/3 Flyer with an MV of 3. It's nothing spectacular, but I'm worried that it's a little slow in terms of effect as you're most likely swinging with this on turn 4, and your opponent has had all of their Turn 3 or 4 to prepare a defense or just remove the creature entirely. Or not have anything worth hitting because there are decks that don't run Artifacts or Enchantments. Or just not have anything at that point.

It's still an effective ability if it hits. But there's no guarantee about that at all. It's something of a gamble.

OK. So. Summary time.

The ideas behind Signpost Uncommons are still good. They serve as guideposts for newer players as well as unifying anchors for more experienced players to design decks around and to improve from or toward. Foundations' existence as a larger Core Set, one that is going to be around the an Extended period of time means that these cards will have an out-sized effect on 60 card formats going forward. This means that each set for the next five years is going to have these cards sitting in their back pocket to help shore up an existing archetype, or to pivot away from.

The choices of mechanics do not mean that they will show up over the next few years, as they can just be limited to this set, and I have to keep that in mind. But the cards? Yeah, they will keep coming back.

Having looked over all of these, I think the best designs come out of and . The Selesnya get a solid and dependable source of creature buffing, as well as graveyard hate and a good threat-into-finisher, and I'm glad that we're given such a useful set of tools to work with.

On the other side, Rakdos pulls out the stops with solid tempo enablers and aggression facets to their cards that encourages swinging fast and swinging hard and not stopping. If I ever get out of my RDW rut on Arena, I may just move over to that for a while, or build a new Brawl deck around it next summer.

And yet there are losers as well. First and most hurtful to me is , who doesn't get a creature and is instead given a couple tokens and a temporary boosts. Yes, I will gladly cheer on Boros Charm, but it's not enough, it's not a Signpost Uncommon. What we get here is a couple tokens and... that's it? That's where they want to take this colour pairing over the next few years? Not artifacts, like Strixhaven, but to tokens? Where held sway?

I'm not sure, and I don't know if I like it or not.

The other biggest loser in my opinion is . Why? Tatyova. That's it. That's enough reason for me, and I don't want another generation of players to grow into the game thinking that Simic Generic Good Stuff is in any way viable. We already had years of that. Let it die already! I don't want this back! Go away!

Oh and I have no idea what the cards were. Cards? I think they only got one? Meh. So meh.

If this feels a bit burny-outy, it's because I am. Christmas is stressful enough as it is, and I've had real life issues as well. I'll see what I can do for the rest of the month, but no promises.

Anyway, what are your guys' feelings and thoughts regarding these cards? Any considerations I may have missed in my poor finish? Let me know in the comments below!

Thank you all for reading! Please leave your comments below, and I look forward to discussing my subject matter in more detail!

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! 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!