#magic thoughts

And I'll share some of my favorite cards from that set (and its ancillary products.)

[there is something about you, merlin,

i can’t quite put my finger on it.]

They're interesting mirrors of each other that as a result, are very different tools in design. Plot has a variable upfront cost, and a fixed casting cost (of zero). Foretell has a fixed upfront cost, and a variable casting cost. This actually ends up shaping most of the differences.

Plot has a variable setup cost, so it needs to be face up, otherwise the opponent could know the card from the cost anyway and it'd be a pain in general. Since it'll be face up anyway, you don't want the opponent to have to play around it too much, because playing around face-up effects is annoying for both players. As a result, it is sorcery-speed only. At its best for proactive play. This also allows the casting cost to be free (since the upfront cost can include color without restricting the mechanic, and the opponent doesn't have to play around free stuff at instant speed which is a pain). This helps significantly with some designs, and also allows things like a trigger when you plot the thing, like Aloe Alchemist up here, which wouldn't be possible with Foretell.

Foretell has a fixed setup cost. This means it is a generic cost and has to be. Which means the variable casting cost will include colors, if the cards are colored, because color pie and all that. Having a generic setup cost does, however, allow you to set it up face-down. This, in turn, means it's hidden information, both a guessing game for opponent, and potentially a bluff for you. Just like cards in hand, except there is a smaller pool of possibilities with just Foretell cards, so it can be easier to guess, and also more rewarding to game knowledge. Because playing around hidden information is much more fun and two-way for both players than playing around revealed information, foretell is at its best with reactive spells. Counters, removals, protection spells and the like. And as such, it is allowed and encouraged to play at instant-speed. But it does mean you can't do anything with the mechanic that'd work while foretold, or foretell opposing or revealed cards. What would be the point without hidden information?

Ok, this first one is very weird and personal. I have actually never played with the card, nor do I own any copy, but I still remember this card quite clearly. At the time, I was already translating cards as they were previewed, see, and this one I remember was previewed in Russian. At the times, magic cards got printed in Russian. Anyway, I don't speak a lick of Russian, but I do speak magic rules pretty well, so for most cards, I can get along translating abilities from something very rough and approximate, which is what machine translations provide. Though I do need to double check finer details against other cards in the language when I do that.

What that doesn't help as much with is flavor stuff. Names and flavor text. Thankfully, while I do not know Russian, I know people. I believe it was @northernweird that contributed time and knowledge to help me for this. Now, for Names, there is some more help: the collector number depends on the English name of the card. So depending on the collector number and other cards already previewed in English around it, one can typically know the first letter of the card name, or have a small range for it. Protean isn't exactly the most common word in English or Russian, so it was a tough one to guess at. "Polymorph" was our first guess with it but it was hard to make it into a good-sounding name. Polymorphic Thaumaturge? And it didn't match other Polymorph cards translated into Russian. Because of the greek nature of Theros, I did have a thought, and the result...

I got it right! With a word like Protean in the English name, it's something I still feel a little proud about whenever I see the card even five years after the fact.

Between Broodmoth, Valkyrie's Call and now Nightmare Shepherd, it's not really a secret that I really like this kind of effect. Nightmare Shepherd was the first, too, coming before the other two, and it was such a cool card at that time.

It's also no secret I like Pod effects, and Enigmatic Incarnation is one of these that mixed card types. It's really cool that years later, thanks to Leyline Binding and Duskmourn's Overlords, it became a competitive deck in Pioneer, but even at the time with Fires of Invention it was a fun deck in Standard. Love me a toolbox.

Soul-Guide Lantern defined the new standard for graveyard hate artifacts, finally a worthy competition to Relic of Progenitus and Tormod's Crypt that had been the go-to options for a decade prior. It's not doing anything particularly new, but it's a good package for a cheap price, and a good enough of one to be brought back in Wilds of Eldraine... And then in Foundations, as one of the fundamental elements of the game.

Elspeth Conquers Death, or ECD as it was known in Standard at the time, is great value if you have the time to wait for it. The exile removal upfront is all you want, but the planeswalker or creature reanimation is a really nice addition that makes it well worth the five mana. It's not the most efficient removal or reanimation, but it's both at once at not an insane rate.

Uro and Phlage did break things a tad (a lot), but the design behind these titans was still really cool, and Kroxa was a potent tool that wasn't as oppressive for a while! It also makes me think of the Theros Beyond Death prerelease. It was the last prerelease in a while, on account of it being 2020. I pulled both an Uro and a Kroxa at that prerelease, sadly I didn't feel like building a deck that could support BR mana into 1UG into BBRR into UUGG at prerelease, so I went the cowards way and only played one of them.

Extra fun fact: Uro was our exclusive preview card for the set! You can still find that article, and I think Seth nailed it, here are a few choice quotes:

I have to admit—when I got my first look at Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, my jaw dropped. The way Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is formatted somewhat obscures how obscenely powerful the card really is.

At the risk of going too far and overhyping the card, I'll say that I think there is a very real chance that it will be the best midrange threat in all of Standard, and could very well end up one of the best cards in Standard period.  The hardest part of Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is figuring out where it's bad.

Sticking with Giants, Tectonic Giant I really like the design of. It lets you pick between what you want to do in a red deck, whether you're being aggressive and need some damage, or you're on the backfoot and need some more cards right now. Its attack trigger that also works when it's being targeted and killed is also a neat way to make sure you get at least one trigger, while making it a bit less oppressive than a Titan ETB or attack that you can't do anything about other than a counterspell. A shame the card didn't end up seeing much play anywhere.

The demigods were neat, and I enjoy this kind of Master Biomancer effects. I've toyed with a few decks playing around with this kind of stuff in commander, and some day I might actually commit to it.

Omen of the Sea is a pretty whatever Cantrip design, but the omens in general were very fun, and this one in particular was very played. You don't overpay much for this considering the extra later value, and being on a permanent opened a lot of synergies that we hadn't seen too much before that. With Yorion, of course, in the next set, but even with Doom Foretold, and other such effects. I think one can draw a line from these to the designs that led to the Pixie/Self-Bounce decks we see in Standard today, and those are very neat and fun decks to exist... When they aren't the best deck in the meta.

I'll only go through new cards in the set to try to keep things short!

Demonic Pact is the standout design of the set, I think, complete with the last clause being left for the very end of the card text. The fact it actually was good enough to see play, AND with ways to twist the downside to your advantage as well, is just the cherry on top of gameplay enhancing the flavor of the card. And that was even a viable strategy in Standard, without breaking anything! Perfect card.

I have a lot of enchantments on my list, I guess we'll start with those? Temporary copies is a part of red's color pie I love (enough to have an entire deck dedicated to it) and Flameshadow Conjuring is from a time when it was a rare treat instead of something WotC made more of every set. It's good for value, it's good for damage, it gives a disposable body to use otherwise... It's a bit clunky as a 4-mana do-nothing, doubly so in red, but I still like it.

Elemental Bond is from Origins? Uh! While it's not the only effect of its kind in green, for a long while it was the only one to key off of 3 power, and that's still rare to this day. Combined with the fact it can trigger off tokens and there's actually quite a few ways to make exactly 3/3 tokens in green, this card has even more potential than most of these kinds of cards in commander! It doesn't just draw from you casting big creatures, but also from activating a Vivien or getting Beast Within'd, and as such makes its way into a lot of my green commander decks, though a bit less now that Tribute to the World Tree exists. Still, as an uncommon it's still cheap and that's great.

Opalescence is weird and old and reserved list and symmetrical. Having a second version of this effect to use in enchantress decks to actually win the game at some point is a blessing, and the bonus enchantment reanimation is nice too. The fact the animation doesn't work until you're set up to probably kill someone is also an upside in disguise, since it avoids you getting blown up by creature removal before you're ready.

I love how adding a very small tweak to a Power 9 card made it fine to print into standard even in 2015, and it's not even a massive downside that makes it unplayable either! I'm glad the card has found homes since it released, although not as glad that it's mostly alongside Narset, Parter of Veils.

Hangarback Walker was a ton of fun to play in Standard, yet a fair card overall. During the three months after Origins and before rotation back then, I had a ton of fun playing the Ensoul Artifact deck turning Darksteel Citadel into an indestructible 5/5, and having this as a solid play all along the game that could either be buffed thanks to being a 0/0 with an ensoul or on one of the conveniently-flying Thopters was pretty nice! But even beyond that deck it was a solid card throughout standard.

While we're on that deck, Whirler Rogue was another card in there and one I still believe is underrated nowadays. Getting 4 power and toughness, half of it flying, across three bodies, including two artifacts, and an extra ability is a lot for 4 mana at uncommon. There is plenty of commander decks even to this day that could make great use of this card. Unblockable Karnstructs, anyone?

Picking what your opponents keep is always a fun way to balance a sweeper, keeping your best stuff and your opponent's worst stuff, and Tragic Arrogance did it great. If there weren't SO MANY options for sweepers in white, I'd recommend more people play it, but there's a bit too much competition that's just as good or better. Still, not a bad card even to this day!

Mana George was from Origins? I love Mana George! What's more to say, a 3-mana 15/15 trample is pretty good, and it reaches that in a turn cycle or two in commander. It's always funny because you can't really play around it, and most people just hope it doesn't come their way... Hope you got removal!

The Primordials have aged so gracefully after commander picked up in popularity, all of them are still good enough to be played as top ends more than a decade later. This was surprisingly forward when commander precons had barely been released two years prior, and the second set of them wasn't even out. A shame they never made a green one, but it'd probably have been broken or something.

Thespian's Stage is not only a generally useful cards in formats with powerful lands, I like it found competitive homes in different packages across formats. In pioneer, it's a Lotus Field. But of course its most fun interaction happens in eternal formats.

The flavor of actors on stage depicting an eldritch entity so well it actually ends up summoning it and destroying the very stage that brought it about is funny, and I could see that being the plot of a book somewhere. Dark Depths+Thespian Stage is the whole 1+1=20 they warn you about in math class.

Cipher is a cool mechanic and Stolen Identity does it really well, in part because you can encode it onto the same creature it makes, or something you already had that can get in for damage to get another copy immediately! I do agree the design space for it is very small, it's a mechanic that gets busted easily if you aren't very careful with it. But I still like what few Cipher cards we already have.

Evolve was an interesting mechanic for the Simic, and it gave us what still is some of the best +1/+1 counter support in the game! An excellent job after Graft's... Less excellent... First showing for the Simic. It becoming harder to do as the game goes on but still synergizing with counters makes it a pretty good mechanic at self-balancing.

These two get a mention even if they break everything. Despite it not being as much of a puzzle as it once were, they do demonstrate pretty well how deep a game Magic can be. If you're not familiar with them, you're probably only seeing the draft chaff they were intended to be.

These guys are the linchpin of the current strongest deck in legacy, the most broken of the relatively supported competitive formats. A deck that has been making waves since they were printed a decade ago. How? Well, you see, you mill cards from a player until you find a land in their deck. If they happen to not have a land in their deck, you finish their deck off, of course, but that'll basically never happen unless they're almost dead, right? Every magic deck has lands in it! But what if a deck had zero lands in it from the start? That'd be ridiculous, there's no way that'd work! Even if somehow they could make milling their entire deck an advantage, it'd never-

Ah.

It turns out getting all your cards exactly where you want them is pretty good, and it doesn't matter much if that's your hand, your graveyard, your battlefield, or, as Thassa's Oracle has demonstrated many times, even exile.

The deck was a pretty fun and quirky thing to exist for years, and competitive enough to not be a joke, using free artifacts and spells that make mana to set up their win as early as turn one. After all, they only need four mana to do it. Now, it has lost a lot of its magic, because the deck without lands can and do play lands. Thanks to MDFC lands that don't count as lands while in the deck, the deck is much less spicy now. A bit sad, but still a neat thing to note.

When the card starts with "Draw your entire deck", you know you're in for a ride. Turns out all that fuss with getting your deck in your graveyard? Well, what about putting it all in your hand instead! You just need to get to cast a 12-mana spell, that's it!

It's an iconic card, and for a good reason!

As I've said before, I love activated abilities on creatures. What about that, but again! Sadly, it's becoming a bit clunky to use as even commander gets more efficient, 5 mana is a lot to invest before seeing any return, but it's still good for combos, and I sure am still riding that train in my Bracket 4 dedicated combo deck.

I've mentioned before I like Master Biomancer effects, and that extends to Master Biomancer itself! A fun card with amazing art, I love the gameplay of it being open to buffing the Biomancer themself.

I wasn't playing Standard at the time, but Nightveil Specter was a big player there, particularly once Devotion became relevant and it contributed three to both mono blue and mono black devotion decks. I include it here because Nightveil Specter was the one that really kicked off the ability to steal stuff from opposing decks and cast it later. There's a few prior cards doing it, like Shared Fate, but Nightveil Specter seeing play really started the ball rolling on it being a normal ability, and one in black. I love playing with my opponents card with this kind of ability, because it ensures every game is different and I get to play with different cards every time. I owe Nightveil Specter thanks for that, and it gets a place here.

Aetherize leads to a lot of fun moments. When it isn't expected and catches someone off-guard, it's pretty great! When it is expected, people might try to play around it... Whether you have it in hand or you're just bluffing it. Settle the Wreckage before Settle the Wreckage, I'm glad Aetherize made its way into Foundations.

Soul Ransom is a fun variation on a control magic. Usually not worth playing because it gives opponents the option of what's least bad for them, and they can wrest control of the thing from you at instant-speed. Still, going up 4 cards in advantage is pretty great.

Gideon is only here because I make custom cards sometimes. He's great because I can use him as an excuse that all that text I'm cramming on a planeswalker is fine because Gideon did it worse. Seriously, a single ability taking 7 lines of text on a planeswalker?! Nobody else has done it that way since, particularly not as one of three different loyalty abilities.

Unexpected Results is a fun card. A bad one, for sure, but who doesn't love a little blind gambling? And if you miss completely, well, it offers you a double-or-nothing, how kind of it, you can spend more mana gambling!

A lot of blue cards in this post, uh. Well, I pick what I pick and some other sets have been unbalanced towards other colors.