Pattern Recognition #331 - Exploit

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

18 July 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 everyone! Today has been the result of a massively scorching week of very high temperatures, and I was just about ready to call it quits on this week, but I managed to push through as you can see.

Today, I'm going to talk about a mechanic that had moved into a curious slot in terms of how often mechanics get printed call 'Cameo'. I'll talk about this in more detail at a later date, but for now understand that a Cameo Mechanic is a mechanic that can show up even in a Standard set as that keyworded mechanic as a one-of or even a two-of and not be considered a mechanic for the set. For example, Kellan, Daring Traveler and Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy both had Adventure as a Cameo mechanic in the sets they were printed in. They were the only cards with that mechanic in the set, and they were just their own thing. Storm will receive a Cameo in Bloomburrow thanks to appearing on the new Ral.

Today's mechanic is one that fits now into that mold, and it is Exploit.

Originally printed in Dragons of Tarkir, Exploit was the focal mechanic of the faction led by Dragonlord Silumgar. Appearing on a default of 11 cards across the set and up in rarity, Exploit was something of an odd mechanic in where it was placed.

So Exploit is a keyworded mechanic that states in full "When this creature enters the battlefield, you may sacrifice a creature." That's it. However, every creature with Exploit has a followup ability. "Whenever this creature exploits another creature, do a thing." Because of the way these two effects are stacked, you can have multiple Exploit triggers on a creature, and every time you exploit, you get the effect in question.

Now, if you told me that had an ETB effect that allowed you to sacrifice a creature for value, I would look at you and go "Yes, that's what they do" with the most flat and unimpressed tone of voice I could deliver unless the person saying this was new to the game and had just seen this for themselves. However, if you told me that had an effect like that? Well, that would confuse me a little. You see, it is part and parcel of 's colour identity to sacrifice for power. But for ?

Well, it turns out that it does have a small theme in that colour. Now, most of these cards are cases where you sacrifice itself for some benefit, but there is historical precedent for this colour to give up something that it has for an immediate future benefit, so that's something I'm going to have to remember in the future. I vaguely remembered it as a Tinker type effect, where you would sac an artifact for another Artifact.

Anyway, back to actual-Exploit. The Creature with it enters the battlefield, and you can then sac a creature. Any creature. Including the one that just entered. So the first thing about Exploit that matters is that you don't have to sac another creature to it. You can treat the ability and its followup as a very fancy Evoke ability. And when you sacrifice a creature to itself thanks to the Exploit ability, you don't get the ability because it still needs to be on the battlefield for the ability to trigger. So yeah, that's a drawback.

Exploit returned in Crimson Vow, and was explicitly tied to the Zombies archetype, and included the Signpost Uncommon of Skull Skaab to emphasize this by caring when any creature Exploits, not just itself. Which means that if a creature like Stitched Assistant exploits itself, then the Skaab will still create the token, even if you don't get the Opt effect of the Assistant.

As a mechanic, Exploit also showed up as Cameos in a couple other sets, appearing in Modern Horizons 2 on Loathsome Curator, Horizons 2 with Infernal Captor, Henry Wu, Ingen Geneticist in Jurassic Park, and Fallout with Colonel Autumn.

In terms of output on Exploit, there's nothing really outstanding here. creatures have effects, like how Profaner of the Dead is an asymmetric Bounce effect, Qarsi Sadist Exploits to drain 2 life from an opponent, Loathsome Curator casts Eliminate, and Mindleech Ghoul forces opponents to sacrifice a creature. If anything it's only when you get into the Universes Beyond cards that this mechanic really starts to stretch its legs. Colonel Autumn turns the creature-sacrifice effect into a global boost to your remaining creatures. Sacrificing the chaff for the benefit of the remainder. And Henry Wu (did they not get permission to use the actor's face?) allows for the Exploit to draw cards and create treasures if the creature sacrificed had enough power.

I note that both of these grant Exploit to a limited subset of creatures. In the Colonel's case, it's other Legendary creatures, which keeps the "Legendary Matters" theme of these two colors alive since in started with Arvad the Cursed. And Doctor Wu gives the ability to himself and other humans to represent how the park and his employers were treating their non-Human dinosaurs. These sorts of restrictions help with card and deck design as you have to be more careful about what you put in the deck and in what proportions in order to get the best use out of them, rather than just being yet another slightly cohesive pile of goodstuff.

I'm looking at YOU, .

In practice, Expoit is ... not that interesting. Given how it leans, there are far too may methods to take this mechanic and, well, exploit it for all its worth. Everything from Aristocrats enabling with things like Blood Artist through punishers as with Dictate of Erebos, or just with cards that say "whenever this creature (or another creature) dies. But again, this is all part and parcel of what does just by living and breathing while does it on occasion but for a specific purpose. In this way, this mechanic doesn't really break any new ground or do anything interesting. It took until the second standard set it appeared in to have any sort of internal cohesion with the Signpost Uncommon. Instead, it just seems... empty.

Mark Rosewater puts this mechanic at a 6 on his Storm Scale, which indicates a certain degree of agreement with this feeling that I have. There needs to be something in the set, or with the set that encourages creatures dying like this, and rewards the actions as more than just a glorified Evoke trigger that sends something else away.

And the more I look at it, the less I am impressed by it. I'm sure someone can make something out of it, but I suspect that it's more for smaller formats like Limited or Standard than anything else. Larger formats don't need a keyword to get the benefits of this, and there's little wider support to make an archetype out of Exploit that isn't already covered under Aristocrats.

Sure, it's a nice self-contained effect, but in the end, does it really do anything important or interesting on its own? No, not really. It's there, and it's just another combination piece in a larger puzzle. Not a vital one, but an occasionally fun one.

I wonder if and when Wizards will come back to this, and if they'll try to make it as anything other than a sorcery speed enters the battlefield effect that has an additional cost of sacrificing another creature? They've had two shots at it so far, and that in Standard isn't looking so good. Perhaps in a larger format and a supplementary set for that? Who knows.

But until someone cracks this mechanic wide open, there's nothing in Exploit that would be worth exploiting. Pun intended.

Thank you all for reading! Please leave your comments below, and I look forward to talking with you about my subject matter. I'll see you next week with something. I'm not sure yet, but we'll see.

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!