Magic Set Editor Template Update 3.0

Written by cajun

After way too long, Template Pack Update 3.0.0 is here, featuring MSE 2.5.6, Showcase Frames updated through Duskmourn, Stamping Overhaul, Partitions, Magic-Modules, the Room Frame, and even more! So many thanks to GenevensiS, who did a lot to get this update and its craziest features off the ground. See the full changelog and downloads at https://magicseteditor.boards.net/post/54912/thread 

The Inherent Danger of Cheap Cards

Written by Pipsqueak

Lower mana value cards have a large number of structural advantages in Magic: The Gathering. They’re castable during a larger percentage of the game, they make it easier to user your mana every turn, and they have a soft form of card advantage by taking fewer land drops to cast. These aren’t new ideas, and for most of Magic’s history there’s been an interesting tension between favoring cheaper cards that have all of these benefits, or more expensive cards that are individually stronger. Historically, aggro decks have been the ones to leverage this structural advantage best, because the sacrifice of “cheap cards are worse top decks in the super late game” is irrelevant if you don’t intend to go late anyways.

Where we start to go wrong, however, is with the uptick of cheap engine cards in both canon and custom Magic. In this article, I want to outline the reasons why I find this particularly dangerous/distasteful, and implore designers to start to look much more critically at their 1 and 2 mana value engine cards. While this is a problem that custom format management teams are aware of, and looking to address, the best form of change is always going to be the one that comes from the community.

Before we begin, however, we should distinguish between engines and threats. Part of my definition for “engine” is a card where the primary value is accumulated over time, rather than recouped immediately, and whose value is detached from ending the game on its own. Primordial Hydra isn’t an engine, even though it grows into a bigger and bigger creature, because if you kill it you’ve addressed the problem. And while killing a Guttersnipe doesn’t give you your lifepoints back, it can hardly be called an engine. It’s just a threat with a different input.

On the other hand, Young Pyromancer has the same input as Guttersnipe, but the output is very different, and that makes it an engine. If your opponent goes Young Pyromancer into two sorceries, they’ve gotten a raise the alarm in addition to their goblin piker, which is a great deal. Even if you kill the 2/1, there’s two 1/1’s that you have left to address at some point. And if you can’t kill the 2/1, the situation can snowball quickly out of control.

While material bodies on board are an obvious type of advantage, there are of course other forms of it. Luminarch Aspirant looks like it is just a threat, ala Primordial Hydra, but the fact it can spread the counters around makes it behave much more like an engine. If it isn’t putting the counters on itself, you’re put in a spot where you need to both kill the Aspirant to stop the engine, while also killing the other creature that has been turned into a much bigger threat.

There is an element of ambiguity with this definition when it comes to mana engines, unfortunately. I intuitively feel like Carpet of Flowers is clearly an engine of some sort, because the advantage it creates compounds over time while being active. Once it has been used to cast a threat, answering it still leaves you with that threat to deal with. However, the same thing can be said about Sol Ring, Manalith, or basic Forest. The definition of “engine” shouldn’t just be “it has a number that scales”, it should be about actual outcomes in gameplay. Simply put, there’s not a meaningful gameplay difference between Fires of Invention letting your opponent double spell, vs Mana Flare letting them double spell, vs Boundless Realms letting them double spell.

Additionally, before I spend hundreds of words explaining the different ways in which cheap engines can be problematic, I do want it to be clear that this is a philosophy with many exceptions. Young Pyromancer is a beloved card, and one that has rarely been problematic. I think engines that don’t self enable, and that require more varied input than “time” to generate advantage tend to be considerably more safe at lower mana values than their brethren. I’d also point to the fact that there are easily accessible types of answers that can address Pyromancer at the same time as killing the tokens (ie toughness based sweepers, which can cost as little as 1 mana). If the same card generated Curse of the Pierced Hearts on trigger, I think that’d be much less okay.

Now let’s get to talking about the things that can make cheap engines problematic. Because part of the nature of threats is that they accrue more value over time as you have more opportunities to proc them, cheaper engines have an obvious advantage over more expensive ones. Namely, there’s more time for them to create an overwhelming advantage. A Phyrexian Arena played on turn 3 generates a full Night’s Whisper of additional value over one played on turn 5. Additionally, those cards drawn have more opportunities to impact the game, which creates a sort of ripple effect for any engine that generates value in the form of cards.

In addition to this sort of head start, the earlier an engine comes down, the less likely your opponent is to be able to answer it. The Phyrexian Arena that comes down on turn 5 is doing so against an opponent who has gotten a chance to develop their mana, and draw several cards beyond their starting hand to find answers to it. On the other hand, if an engine comes down turn 2 on the play (or god forbid turn 1), your opponent has at most 2 mana to answer it, and access to just their starting hand plus the top 2 cards of their library.

And if your opponent is unable to answer the engine the turn it comes down, the amount they are behind will compound with every passing turn. As we discussed, the nature of engines is that they create more problems to solve than just themselves. If your opponent finds an answer to Phyrexian Arena after you’ve had it for two turns, they effectively have spent mana and discarded a card to downgrade your engine into Night’s Whisper. Clearly, not a great deal. This gets even worse when you consider that Phyrexian Arena might’ve drawn you another copy of itself (or some equivalent engine), putting your opponent back in the same terrible situation that they were just in before (but now with one fewer answer at their disposal).

Separately from the previous point, cheaper engines are also easier to protect via other disruptive cards. Not in the early game if you play them on curve (although they are functionally protected then as well, by your opponent’s mana being undeveloped) but in later stages of the game, when you can sequence them alongside discard spells or countermagic. A turn 4 Sylvan Library is less backbreaking than a turn 2 one, sure, but that turn 4 Sylvan Library can be cast while letting you hold up Mana Leak to protect it. This gives it another advantage when compared to a 4 mana engine, which would require you tap out to cast it.

This advantage is hard to account for when it comes to balancing cheap engines, since it is kinda just a manifestation of the mana system. However, it has more overtly negative secondary effects on designing and balancing other cards. Namely, it pushes for those more expensive engines to come with inbuilt protection, immediate payoff, or wildly increased upside if they are successfully untapped with. After all, if a more expensive engine is worse in the early game (when it can’t be cast), and engines are all about compounding advantage (further incentivizing cheaper engines), it needs to be pushed heavily to ensure that it has an edge come the midgame. This overall has risks of creating negative gameplay outcomes/power creep, depending on how alarmist you want to go.

The final issue with cheap engine cards comes in the form of Risk vs Reward. If someone plays a 6 mana card, and is cleanly answered by a 2 mana card, that 4 mana of advantage creates a huge weakness that the other player can exploit. Often, analysis of this skews in the direction of how we can make 6 drops better to use, since they require more investment to cast. However, I think it is worth flipping that script, and looking at how this same dynamic plays out with cheaper cards.

Let’s say that we’re in the ideal scenario here. Your opponent casts a 2 mana engine, but has no ability to protect it. You have an answer in hand, and the mana to cast it, and kill the engine before they get the chance to get any value out of it. Emotionally, this might feel like you’re ahead, but this is where we stop and look at the card you actually used to answer the engine. If it was a Doomblade for their Young Pyromancer, you’re actually even; both of you spent 2 mana and 1 card. But if it was a Doomblade for their Ragavan, you’re actually down 1 mana.

Even in the most extreme example, if you have access to 1 mana removal spells, you can’t actually create mana advantage while answering a 1 drop. At best, you achieve parity. And if you don’t have 1 mana answers, and your opponent has access to 1 mana engines, then every engine they cast puts you further behind, even if you did manage to answer it on the spot. This creates a metagame that incentivizes players to just jam, and punishes interaction. Generally, I think we can agree that those sorts of metagames are bad.

The core of the issue here, for people who didn’t put it into words, is that 1 drops functionally cannot die to removal. And 2 drops barely can. Which means that if you’re designing a 1 drop engine, you have to do so with the knowledge that it is not something an opponent can exploit; at best, they can keep up. And the fact that there’s nearly 0 risk here means that the reward needs to be proportionally very low. If it isn’t, then the power level of card is going to be out of wack.

And beyond the balance issues, it’s also just boring. Magic as a game is at its most fun when there’s moments of tension, where you’re making your opponent have an answer, and hoping that they don’t. When you need to commit to make a play, and see if that was the right decision in hindsight. When cards don’t have this tension, when there’s never a risk to casting a threat, it loses the skill expression opportunity and the excitement associated with making the right call.

There’s an easily drawn through line between all of these points: cheaper cards are harder to punish. And while getting blown out or punished might feel bad, those moments are essential to have for the overall health of Magic as a game. When cards don’t have that style of weakness, Magic becomes a game biased towards proactive plays, made as early and as often as possible.

Of course, this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t print 1 and 2 mana cards. After all, cheap threats do a lot to add tension and variety in deck building and gameplay when contrasted with more expensive ones. What it does mean, however, is that cheap engine style cards need to be handled carefully, and care needs to be taken to give them some form of opportunity cost. Your 1 drop shouldn’t have a titan trigger that meaningfully impacts the game. Your 1 drop engine shouldn’t self enable (even inefficiently). If your incremental value enchantment costs 1 mana, it does not need to cantrip when it enters.

Cards need to have circumstances where they’re bad. Expensive cards have that built into their design, where there’s a portion of the game you can’t cast them, and hoops you need to jump through to get them in play in the first place. Cheap cards, in that case, should be bad top decks, or not useful while you’re behind, or bad at extending a lead. But that weakness needs to come from the design, because it certainly isn’t going to come from their casting cost.