Pattern Recognition #41 - Licids

Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

24 August 2017

2315 views

Hello everyone! My name is berryjon, and I am TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey and part-time Smart Ass! I write Pattern Recognition, a series of articles that talk about Magic's history, its present and its future. I'll even shoehorn in a reference to the Time Spiral block if I can! Because I can. ;)

Sometimes, the inspiration for an article comes from my ever-losing battle against sorting out my cards. I seem to be getting them faster than I can organize them. Ah well. But during another pass, I came across some old cards from an old set that I laughed at, the sheer complications involved making them such that when Wizards had a chance to reprint the relevant cards, they were first on the chopping block for not coming back.

And no, it's not Banding. That's pencilled in for next week. And it shall be glorious!

No, today, it is something that comes to use from the Weatherlight saga, namely Tempest, Exodus and Weatherlight itself. It was something that crossed into all colours - and even an artifact in once case - and at all rarities.

It was a creature type whose mechanics were so complicated, that when Wizards went to designing Tempest Remastered for online use, they were cut almost [i]instantly[/i]. The blurred the line between card types in a way that Wizards wasn't willing to fix at the time, and it took until Theros before it was made to work.

So, today, I would like to talk about Licids.

Now, you may be wondering why I'm talking about these guys when I've already addressed the existence of Equipment in the past. Well, in a way, Licids were the first tentative step towards what Equipment would become.

To start with, all Licids have the same basic ability. For a certain cost, they tap and attach themselves to a creature. They then affect the creature in various ways, from Enraging Licid granting Haste, to Transmogrifying Licid making the creature larger and an Artifact at the same time.

Now, there are a couple of things I want to show off about the Licids. The first is mostly academic in nature. Because the Licids have to tap to activate their ability, they attach as a enchantment to the target creature while they are still tapped! Of course, I also remember when artifacts turned 'off' when tapped.

And this is academic in nature as it's not like the card requires further tapping of the Licid to activate any abilities. It's not like Flowstone Embrace or Second Wind. Time Spiral references! Take a drink!

It is also one of the few cards that can completely change their type while in play, not like the Flipwalkers that exile themselves then return transformed as a different type, or cards like Startled Awake  ^Flip. Creature to Enchantment, and back again.

Now, another thing to note is that this isn't a one-way street. Licids can drop off whatever they are attached to, unlike Equipment and other Auras, and at instant speed too!

I vaguely remember at some point in the distant past, a game where someone used Enraging Licid and some untap mechanism to give unexpected Haste to several creatures that person summoned on that turn. Freed from the Real I think? But this is a trick that would later be repeated with Lightning Greaves. Unexpected Haste for the win!

What makes Licids so interesting though, is their cost. They are over-costed as creatures simply because of their powers, and a straight conversion of the mana cost of the summoning and the ability shows that these tend to be over costed when compared to equivalent Auras.

Except, as I talked about previously, the idea that the cost is flat is incorrect. You're paying something close to an Echo cost, the total is divided between the initial casting and the activation of the ability. And you can pay this acitvation multiple times in order to keep reusing the effect, a sort of amortization on the cost, not just in mana but in opportunity.

Look at Dominating Licid. Seriously. It's a cheaper version of Control Magic that you can reuse. And certainly a lot easier to play that Soul Seizer  ^Flip and its flipside. It's one creature that I didn't remodel the stock Teferi, Temporal Archmage Commander Deck to include (four untap triggers?!?) as I'm not Spike enough for that.

Hrm. That gives me an idea... Later.

I hope you can see how the problems with Enchantments led to the development of Licids, eventually led into the development of equipment. At the time, Artifacts were still in design limbo, needed but their capacity not quite understood. But Enchantments were, and turning a creature into an Enchantment and back, while very complicated given the scope of the rules both then and now, easy to understand.

Of course, as you may have noticed, the experiment was a failure. The publication of Tempest Remastered included nothing of them, even when the Slivers made the cut. They were complicated in a way that couldn't work, bent and broke the rules in so many places (especially when it can flick back and forth between the two types of card at instant speed) and in the end, they were dropped.

Equipment does everything Licids do, but better, and without the flavour issues of having parasites attached to your creatures. Can you imagine something like one of those attached to Emrakul, the Promised End? Yeah, I don't think so either.

But unlike my discussion about Equipment, which evolved out of Enchantments, I want to now look at the followup mechanic, one that came many many years later, and worked a bit better. Enough that I wouldn't mind seeing it come back in some form.

Let's look at Bestow. From the Theros block, these cards represented the ethereal boons from the Gods, their Enchantment Creature typing playing into the flavour of the set. For a cost above the normal cost of the creature, you can instead turn the card into an Aura for another creature, adding its power and toughness and any abilities it may have to that creature. If the enchanted creature later dies, then the Bestowed enchantment 'falls off' and becomes a creature on its own.

At first glance, these two are very much alike. They are both creatures that can enchant another creature to give it some form of boost. Except the differences far outweigh the similarities.

First, Licids don't have the option of going straight onto a creature. This may not seem like much, but remember that Licids don't come with native Haste, and as such are quite vulnerable. Also, by casting Flitterstep Eidolon through its Bestow cost, you actually bypass any restrictions or additional costs incurred by bringing a creature onto the battlefield.

Second, Bestow adds everything from that creature to the target. Their full power and toughness and everything. Licids don't. They can add a single ability, or perhaps a +1/+1, but the difference in what one can do over the other is astounding. Even if the costs are more, the extra effort is well worth it, I would think.

The third thing is that a Bestowed creature automatically survives if the creature under it dies. Licids still need to have mana untapped, and it's still an activated ability more than a passive response.

Fourth ... Well, not really. All these small differences make for huge ones. The Licids were conceived of as parasites, offering small benefits in exchange for being attached to a host. The Bestowed creatures were part of Theros' focus on Enchantments, and creatures that were enchantments for other creatures at the same time was a neat space to explore.

Bestow was a natural, though I suspect unintended consequence of the same design choices that led to Licids. The desire to improve other creatures - though in this case through different thematic means - without resorting to Equipment or cards like Flying Carpet which are pseudo-equipment from before Mirroden.

Where Licids failed was in that they tried to be reusable. This required extra text on the card to describe how to add or remove it from a creature, whereas Bestow is a once-on, then off type deal, simplifying the process immensely, and allowing them to have more of an effect. Bestow also worked because the creatures were viable in of themselves, and not something that needed to go onto something else to be useful.

Both, however, fall prey to equipment, that glorious colourless device that allows any creature to become better. I wouldn't mind seeing more of Bestow, but Equip does the same things while tending towards cheaper, more easily reusable, and with fewer difficulties in understanding.

I hope you enjoyed this little retrospective on something many of you probably never heard of before now. I know I enjoyed it. I wouldn't mind seeing Bestow again in some form, especially with the pretty 'Starfield of Nyx' card frame. In foil.

But I'm not going to hold my breath for it either. It's a concept that can be a hard sell, if my experience in my former LGS was any indication, and in the end it's the players who decide what mechanics survive or not in the game.

Join me next week, when I wish there were more people with a certain mechanic. Then I won't have to attack this subject, or block any repercussions all by myself. ;)

Until then, I'm selling out! Or is that tapping out? Visit my Patreon page, and see if you want to help me out. Basic donors get a preview copy of the final article, while advanced donors get that as well as the opportunity to join me in a podcast version of the series where I talk and you respond.