Oath of the Gatewatch: WotC's Failure

Spoilers, Rumors, and Speculation forum

Posted on Nov. 18, 2015, 6:09 a.m. by Femme_Fatale

For those of you who don't know, these were just recently spoiled.

If you doubt the legitimacy of this, I would direct you to these to artworks from BFZ, and links number one and number two.

BFZ artworks Show

I'm not here to talk about these as spoilers or as cards themselves, no, there is something I want to say. Something that has been common knowledge among the community set builders of Magic Set Editor. I will however forewarn that there is A LOT of text and A LOT of reading to do, so make sure you got yourself an hour so before reading it all.

There are two types of mechanics on mana/colours that eventually turned out to be pointless creations that don't add anything to the game and pointlessly complicates things. They are frequently used or created by players looking to make brand new sets, but those of us from MSE strongly advise against them.

I am referring to two types of mana symbols.

• One is the colourless mana symbol. You can only use colourless mana to pay for these symbols. Since in OGW this represents the Eldrazi, I'm going to call this "Eldrazi Mana" to prevent confusions.
• The other is the multicoloured mana symbol. You can only use coloured mana to pay for these symbols.

The biggest problem with these is that balancing and applying them to the card pool is so fringe that it makes hybrid mana costs easy to balance in comparison.

As a sort of example, when building a set, balancing comes as an issue for us custom set makers as we don't have the experience that WotC does. In this, hybrid mana frequently makes appearances as just another symbol, even if it isn't a theme of the set. It may be on as little as 10 cards in a 300 card set, but they are there to help balance.

Why does hybrid mana help balance a card? Well, consider the types of cost for a card as a sort of decimal rating determining how much it alters the cost requirements. Colourless costs are at the bottom at around 0.1. Coloured mana is at the top at around 0.8. Depending on the focus of your theme, cards with two colours () or cards with double of one colour () can cost 1.4 or so, but in general two separate colours is lower on average than double of one colour. Hybrid mana functions as single colour, double, and multiple colours all at once. They are easier to cast than just a simple coloured mana, but are harder than colourless. In this, the colourless cost of a card being an inherent reverse exponential graph of the power level of that card (ie, a card is more likely to have a higher colourless cost than a coloured cost, and it is easier to change the numbers of a 8 to an 6 rather than a 3 to a 1.), can be partially applied to hybrid mana. And if you look at the history of hybrid mana, you can certainly see this being applied in the Shadowmoor block. Wrapping this up, Hybrid Mana can help balance a card by lowering the card cost from having to put too much colourless mana in, or increasing a card cost from not having enough coloured mana in. And I'm not saying difficulting in casting but their position on the converted mana cost chart.

So essentially, hybrid mana being easier to cast than a solid colour makes it lower on the scale, at about 0.6. Now if we were to look at this and realize that this is only 2 colours, (the symbols are right inbetween hybrid and solid colour, at 0.7), a mana symbol that can only be paid in coloured mana would be even easier to cast, but just barely harder to cast than a colourless mana. This puts it at 0.2. Note that in comparison with cards that generate coloured mana, there is a scarcity in cards that generate colourless mana, so you really shouldn't have any problems with them.

However ... I finally get to the issue I brought this point up for, colourless mana symbols. Remember when I said that there was a scarcity in cards that generate colourless mana when compared with coloured mana? Well, this basically means that it is harder to cast this symbol. While constructed formats with large card pools may not have difficulties, Limited and perhaps Standard will definitely have problems. In this, it makes the colourless mana symbol much higher than the regular mana symbol, at around 1.2.

Now let's chart these off and compare them. While yes, these symbols are arbitrarily designated by me, I do believe that their essential feel of "difficulty in paying" for them is captured by the point values.

• Colourless X: 0.1
• Multicoloured X: 0.2
• Phyrexian Mana: 0.5
• Hybrid Mana: 0.6
• Colourless Hybrid Mana: 0.7
• Coloured Mana: 0.8
• Eldrazi Mana: 1.0
• Muliple Coloured Mana: 1.3
• Double Coloured Mana: 1.4

What does these findings tell us? First, it tells us that it is easy to add more colourless X cost to a card than it is to add more coloured symbols. Next, it tells us that on a fundamental level, the Multicoloured X cost holds no real mechanical potential value above colourless cost and would then just needlessly complicate a set. New World Order was specifically set in to prevent needless complications.

It also tells us that Eldrazi Mana are fundamentally more costly than regular coloured mana symbols, which makes them really hard to balance and forces them into a block only mechanic. Except that WotC failed in that regard and made it a SMALL SET ONLY MECHANIC.

In the past, articles hosted by WotC design team touched on the concept of a 6th colour, purple, for Dominaria, and how the biggest difficulty for them was giving it a spot in the colour pie. They ended up constantly taking slices of the pie from existing colours to flesh this out, and it didn't have it's own inherent identity. Does this apply to Eldrazi Mana? ... Not really. The Eldrazi have been around long enough and explored enough that what they do the best has really been solidified into their own portion of the pie. A problem with Eldrazi Mana is that no current land scheme beyond utility lands actually supports Eldrazi Mana. And even utility lands usually have a coloured mana cost to them.

It is not that Eldrazi Mana doesn't have its own portion of the pie, or thematically doesn't have any complications, it's that everything it holds for or does is mechanically already done and solved for by regular colourless mana. Therein lies the biggest problem, a problem similar to the Multicoloured Only Mana. By the principles of New World Order, a mechanic that does the same thing as an already widely accepted and fully fleshed out existing mechanic, but makes it more complicated, is not a mechanic you want to be using. What Eldrazi Mana does is it takes the colourless mana we all know and enjoy in its simplicity, and it complicates it beyond our ability to even play it as all of what made it simple is now gone.

Let's look at the consequences of making it a feature that is only available in ONE SMALL SET. Something as impactful, ambitious and large as Eldrazi Mana is a block defining mechanic, something that makes the entire block be what it is. And for some god knows reason why, WotC decided that it wasn't the main mechanic of the block. In fact, WotC has a recent history with this in the past two blocks. In Theros, they gave the Enchantment matters mechanic the middle finger by making it only appear in the last set, in a block that was supposed to have been an Enchantment matters block. In Tarkir, the Dragons theme was supposed to be the main theme of DTK, but it didn't even show up at common. Instead, WotC decided that they should put common dragons in FRF, a set that wasn't entirely about the dragons but the conflict between the Khans and the Dragons. Both times WotC lamented on their failures. And yet we see that they haven't learned from their failures at all.

Making it the small set of the block means that there is going to be a limited card pool to support that mechanic. Something as large and defining as adding another colour that also uses an existing colour needs a very hefty amount of support in order to be fully fleshed out, appreciated and incorporated into the Limited and Standard environments. But it wasn't. In fact, a previous WotC article clearly stated that they didn't want the Eldrazi to be colourless in a card design standpoint because they needed them to fit into Limited and Standard properly. That's what Devoid was for, to give the Eldrazi a colourless flavour that didn't mess with Limited or Standard by having a plethora of colourless only cards. But now we all of the sudden are getting a football to the face with this Eldrazi Mana which basically says "yeah, you know devoid? Yeah, it completely contradicts this set." In short, the Limited environment was practically screwed over by devoid being in the larger set and Eldrazi Mana being in the smaller set. I feel that the only reason that this got through the design team was because they knew that they had already failed on BFZ because they foolishly brought back old mechanics (which they didn't do for Scars of Mirrodin or RTR, and they were absolutely wonderful blocks) that don't fit with the existing Standard, nor how the plane is at that current time.

In closing, BFZ block looks like to be like the biggest screw up since Kamigawa. I really fear for what will come of SOI. I really do.

TL;DR

Eldrazi Mana fails the principles of New World Order, should have been implemented in BFZ instead of devoid, and because it wasn't, it will never be used in Standard and destroys BFZ Limited.

EDIT, Perrfekt alerted me that Wastes has been in R&D's system since before Legends. Show

Let's go on a little trip back in time. Back to the beginning days of magic.

During the early testing days of Magic: the Gathering, Richard Garfield had many people he would go to test the early games of magic. The very first person he went to to play MtG with was also the person to win the very first MtG game. That person was Barry "Bit" Reich.

Once Richard Garfield realized that MtG had a future, he needed more people to create sets for the game. Barry Reich was in charge of the set that came after Mirage and Visions. His set, at the time, was code-named Spectral Chaos.

Now this set had a theme that intrigued Barry. It was a set that was predominately multicoloured. At the time of designing this set, multi-coloured cards hadn't appeared yet, and it was causing Barry problems and giving him a hard time. Eventually, Mirage and Visions were released, and soon, Legends was too. Legends introduced us to multicoloured cards (although it wasn't the set's theme) and this caused Spectral Chaos to be shelved.

Now fast forward to Invasion. The designers for Invasion needed something new and exciting that hadn't been played around with yet. They settled with a multi-coloured themed block. The first one of its kind. The designers remembered Spectral Chaos and thought that it would prove to hold invaluable resources to the production of Invasion. While most of the elements of the set had already been done or went down a different path than what they were thinking, some still held true. The number one element, was Domain.

You might already know where this is going. Domain and Converge are quite similar, hence this story. Anyways. Domain was Barry's creation, and it worked very well in Invasion. However there was one aspect of Domain that didn't get put in. And that was "Barry's Land". What is "Barry's Land" you ask? Well, this is what it is.

• Barry's Land
• Land
• Barry's Land counts as a basic land.
• Add to your mana pool.

And that was it.

What is special about this land? Well, it was designed to give domain 6 possible activations from lands. And it we really well received among the whole design team. Too well. In fact, it was reported that "Barry's Land" made domain too powerful in Invasion, so it was pushed back to the second set, Planeshift.

But Femme! You may exclaim, "Barry's Land never appeared in Planeshift"! And yes, that is true. Thanks to the rules management at the time. Basically, the issue was this, you could not have a land be a basic land and a nonbasic land at the same time. During Invasion, the rules stated that there were only 5 basic land types (that we all know) and that in order to break this rule it would have to be put into the rules text of the card. The card couldn't be basic by default rules, so thus it was nonbasic, but the card text said it was basic to work with domain, and thus it was basic. Beth Moursund, the Rules Manager at the time basically said this "No, not okay. Matter cannot also be antimatter." She shut down Mark Roosewater's and Bill Roose's hopes and dreams to make "Barry's Land" ever come true.

Mark however responded with this: "You're sorry we can't make the card now. Who knows what improvement in rules technology the future holds? One day we'll bring the mechanic back and maybe then, in that far-flung future, there will exist a way to print Barry's Land."

And we are that far-flung future. Mark Roosewater was right in that "Barry's Land" would one day come.

Think about it like this, having the Basic supertype allows anything to become a Basic Land, something the rules book didn't have during Invasion block. Wastes does not have a subtype, just as "Barry's Land" did not have a subtype. Convoke ties in perfectly with Domain. Wastes appears in the second set of BFZ just as it was pushed to Planeshift during Invasion development.

Plenty of evidence to prove that this is real, and I would certainly like to see what articles come out of WotC's motherbase.

EDIT #2: Didgeridooda showed me a recently released video portraying the very first set Wastes was meant to be in way back before Legends!

Lastdaysgunslinger says... #1

On their twitter. Its the one with the headline colorless. Im not linking just look it up.

December 12, 2015 6:31 p.m.

Gidgetimer says... #2

On the official WotC MTG twitter (https://twitter.com/wizards_magic) the word "colorless" has appeared 7 times in the last month here, three times here, here. and twice here. The word "generic" appears not at all.

Please look it up and link it or I am liable to not believe you, and it would be a shame if I didn't believe you because I am bad at searching.

December 12, 2015 9:03 p.m.

Lastdaysgunslinger says... #3

Believe me i would lose zero sleep over someone on this site not not believing something i say. Just trying to pass on the info ive found.In all honesty our previous conversations about colorless an generic truly doesnt matter, some say colorless some say generic but until oath ive always said colorless as the term and still will after because old habits die hard.It just sounds stupid saying im casting lightning strike by paying 1 red and 1 generic mana. But thats just my 2 cents and my choice.

December 13, 2015 11:12 p.m.

JakeHarlow says... #4

The arguments I find on here sometimes amaze me.

December 14, 2015 12:37 a.m.

ZombieswithJetpacks says... #5

So I don't know if anyone has brought this up, as I have not read the entire forum due to, well life, so if i'm repeating a tired argument forgive me. Two new expeditions have been spoiled, Forbidden Orchard and Ancient Tomb. What interests me here is Ancient Tomb. The text on the Ancient Tomb expedition reads:

Tap: Add <><> to your mana pool. Ancient Tomb deals 2 damage to you.

Every other print of Ancient Tomb reads:

Tap: Add 2 to your mana pool. Ancient Tomb deals 2 damage to you.

This undoubtedly confirms <> is exactly the same as 1 colorless. This also pretty much proves <> just means it has to be colorless. If anything it just feels like an alternate casting cost on cards like Kozilek.

So while there is now a new basic, it's nothing that ground breaking nor a failure. If anything it really just helps EDH players who want to build a colorless EDH deck. Versatility is great, and WOTC has said in the past they for now on want to support all color combinations, so supporting colorless also makes sense design wise. Barry's land has been attempted for years, the fact that it's finally designed well seems like an accomplishment.

Now all we need is a Waste modified with the Reliquary Tower art.

December 14, 2015 2:42 a.m. Edited.

TheFoilAjani says... #6

ZombieswithJetpacks That is the entire point of the <>. I think you are a tiny bit behind the times. All of the current spoilers are confirmed to be real. It's a shit done of them.

December 14, 2015 9:57 a.m.

Lastdaysgunslinger says... #7

ZombieswithJetpacks They basically just gave true colorless a symbol now, meaning you can only use non colored mana to pay it. Like the kozilek spoiler the two waste symbols can only be paid by non color mana such as sol ring, wasteland , waste or anything that generates a non colored mana.The other 8 can be paid with any mana available.And yes they are confirmed finally.

December 14, 2015 11:21 a.m.

Lastdaysgunslinger says... #8

I seen strip mine is coming back. Glad i never sold my set.

December 14, 2015 11:23 a.m.

CuteSnail says... #9

Not to standard. It's an expedition so its playable in limited but not standard.

December 14, 2015 11:44 a.m.

MindAblaze says... #10

As far as we know it's not coming back to standard...

December 14, 2015 1:04 p.m.

Argy says... #11

If I cracked Strip Mine in Limited I would lock it away to keep it as Mint as possible.

December 14, 2015 1:06 p.m.

ThisIsBullshit says... #12

"I seen"

Credibility lost

December 14, 2015 1:48 p.m.

Lastdaysgunslinger says... #13

Yeah its expidition. Still cool new look.

December 14, 2015 2:24 p.m.

DrFistington says... #14

I've noticed since the release of origins and throughout the new blocks that there just seems to be a lot of half-baked mechanics being released, that kind of make you think that something is going to be making a comeback, but then when newer blocks are released the mechanics just seem to kind of fade away.

When origins was released it seemed like Elf and Artifacts\Colorless\Thopter decks would be making a comeback, but they seem to have abandoned elf\artifact based decks, and I have yet to see more than 1 or 2 standard thopter decks that have any real teeth.

I was thinking at first that maybe the emphasis would be going towards colorless\artifact decks, but then they started to heavily favor the Eldrazi mechanics in BFZ and OGW, so now it seems like artifact decks are even less viable in standard, unless there ends up being a good colorless/eldrazi/artifact combination. Of course with the addition of the several other mechanics that they've introduced/re-introduced, its hard to try and figure out exactly what this block is going for and how its going to fit into the larger pictures of modern/legacy play.

January 31, 2016 3:55 p.m.

Argy says... #15

There is actually a lot of support for Artifact Equipment in the new set.

I agree about the Elves.

You can still play Thopters but they are nowhere near as strong since the last rotation.

January 31, 2016 8:54 p.m. Edited.