Pattern Recognition #346 - Foundational Mechanics

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

14 November 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!

Hello everyone, and welcome back. Today, I will be taking a second look at Magic's most recent set - Foundations - and look at some of the cards and patterns involved to see what it was designed to do and what it may or may not foretell about the next five years of Standard sets. I doubt many of my predictions will be right, but hey, the name of this series is Pattern Recognition, so sometimes I should see patterns, right?

To do this, there are two things I'm going to look at in general and then highlight some specific cards. The first thing is one of the internal measures of how the set was built and designed, and try to extrapolate from there how this could carry forward.

The first subject I'm going to talk about is the returning non-Evergreen Ability Keywords. These are Keywords that represent a shortcut in understanding what they represent. The abilities still have the the full text applied to them, but they make an excellent way to draw attention to the fact that there is this certain ability on this card, and that they all work the same way.

I will cover these in Alphabetical order.

First up, we have Flashback. Found on 8 cards in the set itself, and 6 more in the Jumpstart that goes with it,, this mechanic exists in . By being able to cast cards form the graveyard, the players are taught that just because something goes to that place doesn't mean it's gone forever. You can get another use out of it in the future without doing anything special. Or another way of looking at it is that this mechanic teaches people about the notion of getting 'two for the price of one'. Flashback helps lead into treating the Graveyard as a resource.

It also is limited to Instants and Sorceries, something that ties into how the symbol:RU Signpost plays, allowing the players with this ability in their deck to keep going after they should have run out. In addition, it overlaps with the last mechanic I will look at - Threshold - which means that these colours are encouraged to cast fast and card hard, filing the graveyard for more value.

Kicker appears in 18 cards total, split evenly between Jumpstart and the Set itself. For most cards, if you pay the cost, you get the effect. However, this is the only Alternate Casting cost, or I suppose a better way to put it would be that it is a modified cost. Kicker acts at a fundamental (hah!) teaching tool that not all cards have a simple cause-and-effect to them. That with them, you can do the basics, or you can effectively overcharge them for additional effects. You get things like Overload out of this, as well as any number of alternate or additional costs to casting - and eventually to cost reductions as well.

Curiously, Kicker is the only Ability Keyword to appear in , and it only appears on three cards in the set. Dauntless Unity, Divine Resilience, and Sun-Blessed Healer. Just because this colour lacks a readily appreciable mechanic doesn't mean that it's been short-shafted in the realm of mechanics. It's just that it's got stuff that doesn't have an Ability Keyword associated with it as we will see later. I'm a little sad at this as I like symmetry, but I do understand.

Landfall is the most common mechanic in the set, Felidar Retreat is getting a reprint, meaning that gets a single solitary Landfall card in the core set itself. Landfall is amazing because it ensures that there is no such thing as a dead draw in your deck, that even if you draw an otherwise useless land, the act of playing it will still give you some benefit. And given that the vast majority of cards with this mechanic in the set are - with the only entries being Grappling Kraken and Tatyova, Benthic Druid. And gets Spitfire Lagac while gets Adventuring Gear. Because of this, maintains its presence as the colour that plays lands. Lots of lands. And get the most use out of them.

But on the other hand, such mono-focus is a problem as while this set does work hard to be a teaching tool, more cards that utilize this effect in other colours would help spread out the idea that each colour wants to keep playing lands. A reprint of cards like Emeria Angel would play nice with 's archetype, Tomb Hex would enact enhanced removal if my comments about the next mechanic don't pan out, Mysteries of the Deep or Shoal Serpent for that colour to encourage car draw with the former, or teaching about Defender and gaining and losing Keywords with the latter. And while Spitfire Lagac is a nice reprint, and an up-scaled version of Tunneling Geopede or Cosi's Ravager, there is more that could have been done with it in this color. Perhaps something along the lines of "Landfall - Whenever a land enters under your control, creatures you control gain Haste and +1/+0 until the end of the turn." to step away from direct damage and remind the players that this colour is also the color of charging headlong into the enemy's face.

Morbid is a mechanic that shows up on all of 8 cards total, with three of them being Jumpstart. This mechanic does get a side-step with Slumbering Cerberus, but in practice it sticks to those two colours. And even then, Tragic Slip and Tragic Banshee do effectively the same thing. What I'm seeing here is a small effort to reward players for destroying creatures - either by sacrificing their own for value through another effect like Ravenous Amulet or Vampiric Rites or by destroying an opponent's creature. Severed Strands does both! My issue here is that it is too limited. Morbid focuses on creatures and creatures alone, and while it does reward you for interacting with your opponent's creatures, I honestly think this mechanic should have been Revolt instead.

From Kaladesh and Aether Revolt, this mechanic enhanced the card that was played if a permanent you controlled entered the graveyard this turn. Fatal Push was an amazing card, and while I wouldn't expect it to get a reprint in this set due to how powerful it could be, I think that a bit more focus on encouraging you to use your own card on the battlefield as a resource would have been a better play for these two colours. And it already has a few fair numbers of cards in the relevant colours! And too!

I can see why they went with the more 'classic' approach to this mechanical choice as putting creatures into the graveyard only means they can come back - something shared with the previously mentioned Flashback, but I think that Revolt would have been a better choice overall.

Hrm, looks like my basic resource for getting this research done isn't being as honest as I would like. Oh well, that's why I double-check things.

Prowess gets all of six cards in this set, one of which is in Jumpstart. C'mon Wizards! Put Monastery Swiftspear into the set! I retroactively dare you! No? Well, that's OK because there are other cards in this set that care about the casting of non-creature spells, like their Signpost Uncommon that helps to encourage the casting of these spells. Balmor, Battlemage Captain is not a creature you underestimate at all. In fact, other creatures like Archmage of Runes, Guttersnipe, Haunting Figment, and Murmuring Mystic are all Prowess-not-Prowess mechanical cards.

If anything, Prowess is a limiter to these creatures and cards. It was designed too narrowly back when it was first introduced in Tarkir, and if there was a time and a place to introduce a revised version of the mechanic into the game without excess baggage, Foundations would have been it - and it may have even been a draw for enfranchised players to pick up a few cards as well. What this would have been, I don't know - I would have suggested Spellsling as the Ability Keyword because that's what the player community has named the style of play that is all about throwing out as many spells as fast as possible for as much value as possible, but that runs right into the possibility of confusion with any potential Spellshapers.

Frak it - that's a great idea. WIZARDS CAN TAKE IT IF THEY WANT! I CLAIM NOTHING!

This is a powerful mechanic when built around as it is - as the recent Red Deck Wins decks in standard can attest to with Slickshot Show-Off, Emberheart Challenger, and Fugitive Codebreaker can all attest. I can sort of understand not wanting to go all-in on it with Foundations, but as a treat, I thing it could have been more.

Moving on, we have Raid. With ten cards in the set and oddly none in Jumpstart, this mostly mechanic does pay homage to the Pirates of Ixaland with two Pirates. Raid is all about attacking. Attack fast, attack hard and keep up the pressure. And in doing so, be rewarded for it.

This mechanic is worth a whole article to itself, and I really should pencil that in for sooner rather than later, but for now, in Foundations, it's an immediate reminder that attacking is a thing, and perhaps most importantly - the second main phase exists. One of the things that a lot of new players skip over is the post-combat main phase, as they will do everything they can in the first main phase, and then go to combat and then end the turn. Because of cards like Goblin Boarders or Gutless Plunderer - creatures that enter with an additional effect or boon if you attacked this turn, Raid helps teach new players that while attacking is good, and should be done, you need to be precise about it, and not just throw everything you have into the fight right away.

And this is a good lesson to learn. Patience and waiting for the right time to strike. That's what Raid teaches. Not just mindless aggression.

Lastly, we have Threshold. With a mere five cards directly to its name, this mechanic is very much like Prowess in nature. It's designed to take advantage of a state of the game, or actions taken rather than by being a source of actions in of itself. Threshold checks the size of your graveyard, and forces the players to be more aware of the resources they have in it.

When combined with Flashback however, this becomes doubly important to watch this part of your board as you could accidentally cast a card from the graveyard and into exile, losing you your threshold marker. It can happen! Not that I've ever done it.... honest.

It also teaches players to watch out for static changes to your creatures, as creatures like Crypt Feaster get bigger as you reach that line.

These mechanics were not chosen in a vacuum. They were picked not only to represent their respective colours, but to teach new players the ins and outs of the game. Kicker checks the player on casting cards, Landfall teaches the important of playing your lands and not just holding onto them. Threshold, Morbid and Flashback teach awareness of the Graveyard. Flashback and Prowess encourage casting your spells.

A lot more care when into this set than most people are going to realize. There is a lot of foundational (hehe) stuff here that we are going to be see used in the few years because, as someone pointed out in the comments to last week's article, this is a CORE SET. And Core Sets provide the baseline utility and functional cards for the format to allow the other expansions to more focus on what they are and what they want to do without needing to backfill in the gaps that are needed to keep the game flowing smoothly.

These mechanics, I will say now, do not imply that they will be printed again in the future of Standard. But they are a taste of what might yet be for sets not yet designed. I will talk more on this next week, I hope.

Because this article is already getting pretty long. I was also going to cover the Signpost Uncommons of this set, but as it turns out, that's a lot of stuff to cover as well. So, join me next week when I continue to pick this set apart for its secrets and what it may yet reveal to us about our future. Because there's a lot to unpack there, let me tell you.

Thank you all for reading! Please leave your comments below, and I look forward to talking with you about my subject matter.

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