Last week, Mirrodin did a bunch of stuff I didn’t like. A lot
of people took issue with that review, especially since I only talked about one
facet of what makes a block good (its impact on Standard), and narrower still,
one specific deck in that Standard format (Ravager Affinity). This is
justified, because that misery outweighed everything else about the block.
Kamigawa following such a powerful block drew an obvious
comparison: Urza block leading into Masques. The brokenness of Urza was likened
to Mirrodin. I think this is bogus, because there was more than one busted deck
in Urza block. But wronger still is comparing the uninspired, tiring,
attrition-based drudgery of Masques to Kamigawa block in any way. Yes, it was
less powerful than Mirrodin, but that’s… rather necessary, and good.
Is Kamigawa known to be bad because the Standard environment
wasn’t fun? Definitely not, no. Kamigawa-Ravnica is probably my favorite
Standard format that’s ever existed, and the source of half of my favorite
decks. But all those were almost entirely Ravnica-based, right? No. Greater
Gifts, Heartbeat of Spring, and various black and/or white aggro strategies
(and Ghost
Dad) were, at times, the best decks in the format. So was the limited
environment bad? Nope, triple-Champions and CCB were known as some of the deepest and most
replayable limited formats ever made. But those are rather tournament-oriented
things, was it bad for casual players? Oh, definitely
not. Between the legendary Dragons, Kiki-Jiki, and a dozen more fun, splashy
legends, Kamigawa block is what made EDH as we know it possible.[1]
[1] Not that I care.
So why was it badly received? There’s a few reasons. The
biggest of them is probably the setting. It was their first attempt at a
top-down block, with everything in it inspired by Japanese mythology, which
was… rather ambitious. Not because it was necessarily more difficult to do than
a block designed top-down around anything else, but because the game’s core
audience (white Americans) just wasn’t familiar with the source material. I’m
certainly not.[2]
There’s no way for these people to judge whether or not Kamigawa accomplished
its goal of emulating that mythology, unlike with gothic horror or Greek
mythology, things much closer to American cultural canon.
[2] I’d love to read about Kamigawa’s treatment of Japanese mythology from an expert on the subject (mythology).
It’s also rather difficult to appreciate a downturn in power
level in the moment. Yes, people acknowledged that Mirrodin was too powerful,
but when building decks for Mirrodin-Kamigawa, it’s pretty painful to build
around cards almost entirely from the last block (like Tooth and Nail, which
became dominant in the wake of Affinity). The cards that did end up being
powerful from Kamigawa were mostly more subtle than the ones from Mirrodin. It’s
not easy to distinguish, when a set comes out, between none of the cards being
any good, and them just needing exploration and experimentation before finding
out what makes them playable.
The biggest mechanical failing of Kamigawa block was that its
major components were either essentially limited-only (splice onto arcane;
spiritcraft; bushido) or very difficult to build around (Legendary creatures). The
latter, especially, is something that inspires half a dozen different decks,
most of which end up being bad, rather than one linear deck.
Sure, it’s a bit overwhelming to look at a new large set and
not find any obvious constructed mechanics to throw together into a linear deck
(like Threshold, Madness, tribal, Affinity, etc), but having so many different
cards to build around leads to a richer experience overall. This is especially
true for people that like creating new decks, and innovating on previous ones:
there are seemingly endless ways to build around Heartbeat of Spring,
Kiki-Jiki, or Gifts Ungiven.[3]
[3] While my praise is dedicated toward Kamigawa in Standard, Kamigawa block constructed was less about innovation and more about playing Gifts Ungiven mirrors over and over. As Ted Knutson noted, that deck ended up more dominant in its block than pre-ban Affinity was in Mirrodin. Eugh.
Not finding a way to make Splice more relevant for
constructed was, well, bad. It was a marquee mechanic of the block, and
restricting it to only a subset of spells (that were arbitrarily arcane in a
block with both arcane and non-arcane spells, with no mechanical difference
between the two) meant that it was next to useless as something to build
around. And it went on a lot of cards
for how not-good it was. The most splicing I can remember people doing in
constructed was in Mind’s Desire, which would splice Desperate Ritual onto
other copies of Desperate Ritual.
I didn’t draft much of Kamigawa block, so most of my
knowledge about it is second-hand information. I do know, though, that it was
considered to have fairly balanced archetypes, skill-intensive gameplay, and
cards that changed drastically in evaluation from someone’s first draft to
their hundredth. It also revolutionized the way draft environments are made.
What are the most important cards ever printed in Magic?
Cards from Alpha are obvious. There’s Force of Will and Brainstorm, if you’re a
Legacy or control player. Necropotence was the best card for a few years.
Survival of the Fittest and Oath of Druids defined different Standard,
Extended, Legacy, and Vintage archetypes for ages until their rotations or
bannings. The Elder Dragons lent their name to the most popular casual format.
But those are all specific to constructed formats. What are the most important
limited cards?
No, I don’t mean absurd bombs. Important limited cards. People that played back then will see
where I’m going with this: Dampen Thought is one of the most influential Magic
cards ever. The “Dampen Thought deck” became a
phrase associated with a specific kind of drafting.[4]
[4] For that article, keep in mind that Tom Reeve actually can use punctuation, but StarCityGames kindly removes all the commas to make reading it faster.
These decks are more than just taking the best cards in
whatever colors happen to be open. They are about constructing an archetype,
based on what cards you know have to be
in the packs before you even sit down to the table, then drafting around
that. They are about assuming everyone else will take something “normal,” then
veering completely outside of the standard drafting spectrum to the point where
you could sit next to someone in the same colors as you and not even notice.
This changes drafting immensely. It frees us from pick
orders, from traditional signals, from ideas of what a “bomb” is. But even more
than that, it changes how draft environments are created in the first place.
Modern limited formats (the good ones, at least) are as much about these
archetypes as they are about colors’ relative strengths. It started with just
one card, whose inclusion as a build-around uncommon might even have been an
accident,[5]
and after this, build-around cards aren’t just for constructed any more. Beyond
cards like Furnace Celebration, entire environments can be planned around these
archetypes; Rise of the Eldrazi and Innistrad come to mind, and it’s no
coincidence that those are touted as the best draft formats ever made. All of
that can be traced back to Dampen Thought.
Yes, there were predecessors, like Lightning Rift
incentivizing going all-in on cycling cards. But those are rather
straightforward, “draft a lot of this mechanic” type things (and in Rift’s
case, was a constructed build-around as well). Part of Dampen Thought’s
importance was how hidden it was. No one looked at it the day of release and
thought, “yeah, I’ll try this out in a draft.” The fact that it took months before a group of people started
experimenting with the archetype adds new depth to a format that can feel stale
after that long. It’s like finding a hidden track on your favorite album,
except that hidden track happens to be better than any other song on it.
Kamigawa block was full of this diamond-in-the-rough type
discovery. The set’s release led to long debates about how good The
Terrible Trinket would end up being.[6]
Even Umezawa’s Jitte, the card that was seemingly everpresent in Standard for
its entire legality, first entered the Magical conversation not as the next
Constructed pillar, but the dumb rare that everyone was losing to at the
prerelease. It was a while before people thought that if it was so unbeatable
in the creature combat-focused world of limited, maybe it had a place in
Constructed.
[6] After making you all read about Dampen Thought, now you get to read even more about Sensei’s Divining Top.
I’m sure you have a favorite card. My favorite card is Llanowar Elves, because it’s like a Forest, except that it’s an Elf. You might even have a least-favorite card, something you feel is overpowered, unfun, or the Dimir Machinations you lost $20 to despite how bad it is. As you might imagine, since I literally get paid to have opinions about Magic: the Gathering, I have several least-favorite cards. I’m not sure the order of least-favorite cards #s two through 100, but my #1 least-favorite card, without a doubt, is Sensei’s Divining Top.
This piece of shit has eaten up more time spent “playing” Magic than most entire sets added together. You cannot do anything when your opponent has a Top in play. I don’t mean, “nothing you do will be effective,” because it will. It will be exactly the same as it would have been without a Top. The difference is that your opponent has to tank for 30 seconds before telling you that your spell resolves. Then they shuffle their library and activate it again. Another 30 seconds.
Every goddamned turn.
I am fine with library manipulation being good. I like it when highly skilled players get the opportunity to see more cards in their decks, because they get tested on more decisions, and get to plan things several turns in advance. I love that there’s enough play in Brainstorm that AJ Sacher can write an entire article about casting it (and end up with one of the best articles ever written about Magic, and the single article that changed more of my play decisions with than any other). What I cannot stand is this sort of low-impact busywork that will end up irrelevant because they just shuffle their library every turn anyway.
If I am sitting down to play Magic, there is absolutely no reason that a single card should take more time than all of my actions put together, and that this is somehow allowable by both the rules of Magic and the Geneva Conventions.
I am glad it is banned in Modern, and I was overjoyed it was banned in old Extended, one of my all-time favorite formats. However, this does not go far enough. It should be banned from Legacy, Vintage, EDH, grab bag draft, pack wars, and people literally playing no format whatsoever. It is a card so offensively boring it needs to be removed from Magic.
Due to my personality and style of writing, I have often been accused of hating many things I do not, such as Wizards of the Coast, fun, and having sex. Those things can be alright. What I do genuinely, physically, brutally hate is Sensei’s Divining Top. May it burn in hell.
A Rosewater axiom is that if your theme isn’t at common, it
isn’t your theme. He uses Kamigawa as an example of a block that did this
wrong: Kamigawa’s theme was ‘legendary,’ and there were no common legends.
Therefore, Kamigawa did it badly. This is based on a flawed premise with regard
to the block. Kamigawa’s theme was Japanese mythology, just like Theros’s was
Greek; its push for legends was no more mistaken than Theros’s emphasis on the
gods. That every single rare creature was a legend was just a way of making the
world of Kamigawa seem inhabited, and an excuse to make every rare unique and
capable of standing on its own. There are definitely some micro-level things to
find fault with, but the overall coolness of the legendary creatures is not one
of them. Was it wrong to push legends as an aspect of the block, and then
support this with other cards that reference the supertype? No, absolutely not. Memorable legends were a key
part of pushing the feeling of Japanese mythology.
The previous discussions haven’t divided up the block too
much. Partly, this is because as far as the legendary creatures, they’re almost
all interchangeable. With the exception of a couple mechanics, any legend in
one set could go in one of the other two. Betrayers, as a whole, acted as a
Champions expansion pack rather than pushing it in new directions. The one
exception, ninjas and their ninjitsu mechanic, were something obviously sandbagged
from Champions to give the second set something to do. This mechanic is small
and extremely narrowly defined, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It gave
ninjas a unique flavor identity, and it plays out well. Getting to reuse
comes-into-play creatures was especially cool. I can only remember ever putting
into play Ninja of the Deep Hours, but the others seem reasonable.
So that’s my Betrayers review: it was more Champions, with
one cool new thing, and Champions was pretty cool. Breathtaking journalism
right here. Then there was Saviors.
I’m not sure where I rank Saviors: is it the worst-designed
set with a modern frame, or is Avacyn Restored worse? It’s very close. Saviors
probably has a worse mechanical identity, overall. Because Betrayers had already
done the “more of the same” bit, Saviors had to do something unique in the
block. It chose… a “hand size matters” theme! Why? Who knows!
This is the one comparison to Masques block that I feel is
appropriate. Emphasizing having more cards in hand than an opponent is
reminiscent of Prophecy’s decision to focus on whether lands are tapped, and
the card quality wasn’t all that far off, either. Basically, it wanted you to
play one card, then not any others, so that your one card in play would be
better. If you play too much stuff, you can return it to your hand. When both
players are using cards from Saviors (which seems like a rather obvious thing
to happen), half of the cards are going to be wildly ineffective because that
player does not have more cards in
hand.
I connect it to Masques block because this, too, puts an
emphasis on not playing one’s spells. Yes, players like drawing cards. I like
drawing cards. Why? Because I get to play the cards I draw, therefore doing
more stuff. Putting the emphasis on having
the cards, rather than playing them, misses the point entirely. It’s like
assuming the good part of being rich is being able to swim around in your money
like Scrooge McDuck, not because it lets you buy more things.
One of the ability words in Saviors,[7]
‘Sweep,’ emphasizes this theme. It lets you return lands to your hand for some
effect, and then your cards that care about hand size turn on. However, when
you return lands to your hand, you… can’t tap them for mana to play spells. The
only positive aspects of Sweep: it appeared on only four cards; the game usually
ended immediately when someone used it; and it seems to be flavorfully inspired
by the action of scooping up all one’s lands to concede. Epic, a mechanic
created for use only on one cycle, takes the “not casting spells” idea a bit
further: you are literally not allowed to play more spells. Fun games.[8]
[7] Saviors was the set that introduced ability words: italicized text with no rules meaning, intended to let people more easily group cards together with the same mechanic. I’m certainly in favor of it; I’m sure that I’ve unintentionally forgotten to cover certain non-keyworded pre-ability word mechanics in these reviews because I forgot the mechanic was in the set. (Retroactively, Threshold was made into an ability word, but it did have rules meaning at the time.)
[8] Okay, Enduring Ideal was a cool deck, at least in theory.
Saviors, as with so many other third sets, is a victim of
not having any space left to play around in without doing something completely
different. In this way, it’s more a victim of the block format, rather than
anything truly bad on its own. Its decision to focus on hand size, though, in a block that was previously united only by
Spirits, Legends, and Japanese influence… there’s no letting it off the hook
for that. Even for a third set forced to do its own thing, this was a terrible
thing to do.
One thing that doesn’t get as much appreciation as it should
is the outright weirdness of some parts of Kamigawa block. Namely: the appearance
of the Spirits. These guys are almost all terrifyingly freaky, and I love it.
They have the uniting feature of being semi-ethereal, with floating things all
around them, but the artists really seem allowed to go nuts with making them
seem otherworldly. This was back when Rebecca Guay was allowed to make Magic
art, and Hana Kami is a perfect marriage of her watercolor style with material
that’s actually a bit disturbing upon closer inspection. Look at the pretty
face in the flower that’s vomiting petals while it’s surrounded by
flower-jellyfish. That’s an uncommon 1/1 for 1, and an important Constructed
card in the block’s best deck.
Much like early-to-mid 70s musicians without much sonically
uniting them got lumped under “proto-punk” once punk had entered the critical
lexicon, Kamigawa was disliked at the time, but important in the lens of what
it influenced. It was a top-down block, emphasizing big cool legends and
resonant cards, years before Magic would make these things common. It
revolutionized what draft archetypes were, years before sets dedicated their
limited play to that. It told artists to get as weird and out-there as
possible, before… okay, this was something that hasn’t stuck with us at all.
Sure, Saviors was awful, but the rest of Kamigawa block
deserves your respect, through a historical lens if nothing else. Next week,
Ravnica brings us into the greatest creative era in Magic’s history.
Oh, but one final note: the most important thing Kamigawa
did was making a ton of cards that sounded
like euphemisms for jerking off.[9]
[9] How about that Dampen Thought now? Hand of Cruelty. Pain’s Reward. Yeah, go unleash that Captive Flame.
Fiddlehead Kami.
…
Floodbringer.
I found the "Finding the Dampen Deck" featuring commas!
ReplyDeletehttps://web.archive.org/web/20101030030159/http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/scarslimited/20343_SCG_Talent_Search_Finding_the_Dampen_Deck.html
"It’s like finding a hidden track on your favorite album, except that hidden track happens to be better than any other song on it."
ReplyDeleteSo then Broken by Nine Inch Nails?
I don't think you quite appreciate how bad Champions was for casual play. All of the mechanics in Champions were parasitic (barring Legendary "tribal", which wasn't much of a mechanic if you only opened a couple of packs), so you can't just take some Champions cards, put them in your existing casual decks, and have them do something. The soulshift mechanic led to a lot of horrible-looking creatures (i.e. why does my 4/4 cost 7?) that, again, didn't do much unless you had a bunch of Kamigawa cards. Couple those problems with the bizarre flavor and wordy rules text, and you have yourself a bad set.
ReplyDeleteVital Surge. Unchecked Growth. Hand of Cruelty. Stir the Graves. Sowing Salt. Rushing-Tide Zubera. Pithing Needle. Rend Flesh. Blood Rites. Hanabi Blast. Time of Need.
ReplyDelete...
Joyous Respite.
This is too easy.
From what I understand, it's not that Rebecca Guay has been banished from doing art for Magic, it's just that she's way too busy with her successful fine art gallery career.
ReplyDeleteGive Saviours hand size mechanic some credit. In a set full of Legends you are going to be stuck with cards you cannot cast because you already have one in play. (not that it wasn't terrible)
ReplyDeleteFor a block with kind of a confused story, Kamigawa has some little flavor design notes that I like. For instance, Kumano and his crew are said to have the secret to defeating the kami. That secret? When they deal damage to things, they exile them. You know, so they can't soulshift back in. It's cute.
ReplyDeletethorn: Saviors hand-size matters cards were only played in limited, as far as I can recall. It was pretty rare even to have two copies of a single legend in limited.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis Ben guy sure does make an interesting claim about the Kami of the Crescent Moon not mattering, given he's literally the actual villain of the entire block plotwise. But I'll forgive him, since he clearly just wants to make a big deal about how bad the sets are by putting other people's words on the table the moment anyone disagrees with the Opinion As It Stands and acting as though it counts as meaningful criticism.
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