Pattern Recognition #345 - The Foundation of Foundations

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

7 November 2024

192 views

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! With the impending release of Foundations, I feel it is time to come back and talk about a subject that I first touched upon over seven years ago and it has been something that has been on the fringes of my mind ever since. That being the subject of the Core Set.

So, to re-summarize what they are, the Core Set is a set that was in Magic until about 2015 with the release of M15, and then once more a couple of years later with Magic Origins. Core Sets existed as part of the regular rotation of sets through the year - and I should have picked my words more carefully, as rotation means different things to different people in different contexts. So way back when, in the old days of Magic, we were in what was called a "Three-And-One" cycle of sets in a year. That being three Standard Sets in a unified and cohesive block, the Fall, Winter and Spring sets, while the Summer set was the 'One'. That 'One' was the Core Set.

Core Sets didn't move Magic forward. Rather, they were designed and intended not to be something for enfranchised players, but rather as a yearly on-boarding set for new players to come into the game. And because of that, Core Sets were designed with different expectations in mind.

When introducing new players to the game, you don't want to put your more complicated cards forward, you want something that can be simple and easy to understand for a player who has just opened up their first pack. Take for example, my favourite go-to showcase. Naturalize and Return to Nature.

The former is a simple card. You destroy a target Enchantment or Artifact. You can see those card types on other cards in your pack, and you can understand that you use this card to blow something up as long as it's one of those things. The latter however, has an additional aspect to it. You can Exile a card form a graveyard? What is Exile? What does that have to do with the rest of the card? Why are they written differently, with this one being bullet points and not the other?

The Core Set was intended for the former card, while the latter would be included in the other three sets in the year. You would start with the simpler, more easy to understand cards. Creatures that have only a couple lines of text, or no text on them at all (remember Vanilla Creatures? I do!) in order to ease players into the game.

This was their intent, and it worked! However, in a way, it worked too well.

You see, Core Sets had problems. First was that they came out every year. This was a good tool for a while as Magic was still in its relative infancy, and that each year there were new players coming into the game. However, as time went on and the game matured, this started to not be the case.

First was that the names of the Core Sets became confusing. Fifth Edition through Tenth Edition had the trouble of implying that this was a new ruleset each time, as players of Wizards other game, Dungeons and Dragons can attest to. Wizards wanted to stop calling their Core Sets 'Editions' to avoid this problem - something that a lot of people understood and agreed made sense. So did I! And there was a contest at the time about how to rename their Core Sets. My choice didn't win, I remember. but what it was, I don't recall. This was a minor problem, easily fixed.

What also happened was that Wizards moved to make Core Sets every two years. The problem, as they laid it out, was that by having a new Core Set each year, there were two Core sets in Standard rotation unless they did weird things with the timing. They tried, but no one liked it. Not Wizards, not the Players. So, with the new Magic (Number) Sets, they would be released every two years to 'anchor' Standard.

But behind the scenes, we would later find out, there were some other issues. You see, Magic was ... plateauing. There were about the same people entering the game as there were leaving it, and the Core Sets were starting to not be as popular because the influx of new players each year was slowly going down. And these new players didn't see the Core Sets as a good point to get into the game, they liked the 'Three' sets in the 'Three and one' more and more, quickly becoming what Wizards calls 'Enfranchised Players', who didn't buy Core Sets.

Yes, people who were already invested didn't buy Core Sets. And a full set designed to bring in new players - which was a shrinking percentage of their total players - and didn't attract older players was a poor financial decision.

It's not a coincidence that as Core Sets were phased out, the Masters Sets came into being. Sets aimed at older players.

Core Sets hobbled along like this for a while until M15, where Wizards announced that enough was enough and that they were canceling Core Sets. With this change, they were going to move to the 'Two and Two' format for sets, where instead of one larger block over the year, there would be two smaller blocks each year instead. The Core Set cards, the basics that would be included in the Core to anchor the coming year and help act as a stabilizer would be distributed across the whole of the year instead, assuming they were printed at all.

However, there was still some desire for a Core-like set, which came with the existence of Magic Origins, a way to sort of 'clear the board' of previous Core Sets while at the same time being dressed up as a regular set. Themed around the five Planeswalkers of the Gatewatch, it told their history while trying to provide the basic things that a Core Set provided.

Then Core Sets came back. M19, M20, M21.

You see, Wizards, having given up on the Block format, realized that their experiment of distributing core Set cards didn't work. That they diluted the sets they were in by not actually providing what they should have, and by taking cards away from themes of the set directly. The Core Sets, they realized, needed to be more than just a way for players to get into the game, but to also help stabilize the Standard format by providing a solid anchor for it as they kept switching around what was in Standard or not.

This is the logic and history that has lead us to our next Core Set. Like Origins, this is a set that his headlined by five Planeswalkers, of which two are returning characters (but not cards), and three new Planeswalkers to represent their colours. And it is designed to act as an on-ramp for new players.

However, Wizards has made a couple of interesting choices with this set.

First, and most important, is that Foundations isn't just a Core Set. It's not intended to be just a gap-filler and a 'buy in, move on' set. It is intended to be accessable to new players and old through careful application of the New World Order - that the more common a card is, the less complex it is. But at the higher rarities, the gloves come off, and while I am going to eye-roll forever at how Sire of Seven Deaths is just so... gorgeously stupid, it gets the point across. It's complex, but at the same time, understandable. That's one of the purposes of this set, and looking over it all ... I can see that it's working well toward that end.

But the real piece that people should be talking about is that it is a Five Year Set.

You see, Wizards has problems with Standard, and this isn't the place to talk about that right now. And Foundations is one of the ways they're trying to fix it. By making this set a five-year 'anchor' to the format, with the other blocks rotating in and out around it, Foundations becomes a literal 'Core' set for the first time in a very long time. Sets can be built for the next five years knowing that no matter what, these cards will be right there with them. They don't have to guess about interactions with sets that haven't been built yet, they have signposts right there.

In this way, Wizards creates a solid Core set that doesn't rotate. It's stable and predictable. One of the biggest things about rotating formats that people hate is the requirements to build new decks and buy new cards. With Foundations, that goes out the window as it will stick around for long enough to be a relevant long term purchase.

It's an experiment that I hope is going to work. I'm probably not going to buy into the set, but rather use it for my FNM prizes for a while. I don't need the cards, but the new ones do have some interest for me. But not enough to buy a box. Sorry Wizards!

But this notion about Five Years is familiar to me. Where have I seen it before...?

Oh yeah!

WELCOME BACK, EXTENDED! I missed you!

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!

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!