Pattern Recognition #39 - Upkeep

Features Opinion

berryjon

3 August 2017

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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. ;)

Today's article isn't about a card, but rather a phase in the game. Or rather, a step in a phase. You Untap. Then you Upkeep, then you Draw.

Untap. Upkeep. Draw. A mantra that I'm sure every player has used in their career. So let's define something here, which will help understand what I'm talking about.

Upkeep: Noun; the process or activity of providing an establishment, machine, person, etc., with necessary or proper maintenance, repairs, support, or the like.

In the beginning (no link to Nimoy's voice this time, it's a done joke), the Upkeep step was reserved for dealing with the price of summoning cards. For example, Lord of the Pit (as originally printed) or Lord of the Pit for the modern writing.

At this time, the player would pay some form of additional cost for a permanent in play, above and beyond what was needed to cast it in the first place. With Lord of the Pit, this was sacrificing a creature, lest the Lord of the Pit do a lot of damage to you. Another example would be Force of Nature, which simply requires a mana cost to be paid.

And not all cards have some sort of massive punishment for failing to pay their upkeep. Mana Vault, for example, simply doesn't untap. I say this because I want to point out that not all costs are required, some are optional, and the failure to pay doesn't have to be bad.

In fact, when most people think of paying the upkeep on a card, they tend to think of the condition found on cards such as Stasis, where it's pay or lose the card.

So, what is all this about then? Why was this even a thing in the first place?

Well, I've talked before about how Magic is a game of resources, right? And the primary resource you have is your lands - your mana. What Upkeep costs do, in the most basic sense, is put a throttle on that resource. Look at Force of Nature for example. Let's say that all you've been doing is playing basic lands (in a mono green deck? When was the last time they didn't accelerate?) and you've now paid for it on turn 6. On turn 7, before you have a chance to play another land for the turn, you have to decide if you want to pay the upkeep. And you do. Now, you're down to mana available for the turn, plus whatever you can play on this turn.

This is the first and most basic purpose of the Upkeep mechanic. To slow down decks. To force them into making the decision on whether or not this card is worth keeping around for another turn, even if it means hurting themselves on this turn. It slows the game down as a cost to having something on the table ahead of what would normally be an acceptable time for it.

I mean, can you imagine an 8/8 Trample for being printed in the modern sets? I don't really see it, not without Wizards putting a bit ... more onto it in the process.

So, upkeep costs slow the game down, but that's not the end of it. Not by a long shot. I mean, I'm only a third of the way to my self-determined article length!

The Upkeep step comes at an interesting time. Namely, after the Untap, and before the Draw steps. And well before the main phase of the game, where things normally happen. Normally, this wouldn't mean much, but there's a very fine distinction going on here. The Untap step is pretty much sacrosanct. You can't do much in it except untap. There are a couple other things, like Phasing that happen here, but for the most part, this is the point where you refresh your resources. The draw step allows you to do exactly that, take an extra card.

But the Upkeep is a necessary evil. It has to happen, and it happens at the start of the turn, in what turns out to be a fairly precarious position. And not for the Upkeep itself, but for player choices.

Let's take a hypothetical example of an Upkeep that happens at the end of the turn, as part of the End Step, and before the clean up phase. In this hypothetical situation, you have something very similar to how the two main phases interact with the combat phase. Do you commit to using your resources now at the risk of not having enough to do anything when you need to later - or even enough to bluff?

By committing necessary resources early, rather than later, you force a player into being in a better position over all. There's less room for doubt and finicky recounting and players allocate resources needed ahead of time, and hope they don't accidentally overstep their bounds.

I mean, how many times have you guys wound up being one mana short, even without having to account for things much later in the turn?

So the Upkeep comes first, if only to force simplification on the players.

There is also something about the Upkeep that is really important, really subtle, and horribly hard to exploit. You see, the Upkeep step is the weakness in a Control deck.

What am I talking about? Well, let's try to make this clear. Even in my head, the concept is fuzzy. You see, a control deck works mostly on the concept of "Draw, Go", where the player simply refreshes their hand and moves on to the next player's turn. They may choose to spend mana on the main phase to cast Concentrate or the like to draw more cards, but for the most part, they don't act on their turn until they have their win condition and their opponents can't do anything about it.

The Upkeep step is a weakness for them because it is the small frame of time where they have mana, but limited cards (hopefully). I've mentioned before that I managed to short circuit a combo deck trying to Dragonstorm out by taking out a mana rock during their upkeep. This is the same concept. You can hit a control player when they have the mana to act, but no cards to act with, but only during their upkeep

It's thin, it's a stretch, but it's still there.

There are, of course, other things to do during the Upkeep. It's not all slowing and punishing for failure. Like, for example, Abzan Beastmaster. This guy is part of everything else that happens during the upkeep, and it's expanded purpose.

You see, as the game evolved, there came to be more and more cards that had to trigger each turn, not because they had to of course, but because they were designed that way. And the Upkeep step was the natural place to put them. By forcing these things to occur at the start of the upkeep, you keep them all in once place during the turn, give the player an opportunity to deal with them all at their pace and to make the necessary decisions all in one go.

It's actually elegant that way. Can you imagine trying to do all that during the main phase, or during the end step?

And that is where the Upkeep is now. With the move away from slowing the game, it has become the place where 'this happens during the turn, no exceptions' goes. It's neat and it's useful.

Well, I still have some wordage to go, so let's talk a bit about some of the variations on the Upkeep mechanic itself.

The first is Cumulative Upkeep. Aaaaaand I just heard people start swearing all the way over here. And days before this article gets published. Normally, Upkeep is a flat cost. You may it and its always the same. But when the Upkeep is Cumulative? That's when things get interesting. Let's look at ... Illusionary Forces as our example. Great example on a bad card.

With this mechanic, every time you pay the cost, the cost increases. On the first turn, it's paid once. On the second, it's paid twice.

If a normal, single upkeep cost is designed to slow your growth down, what does it mean when the cost is always increasing?

Well, for Illusionary Forces, the answer is simple. It stops your mana growth. You play it, and you have capped where your mana is at, negating, of course, acceleration and other ways go get more mana into play than one land a turn.

Multiple Cumulative Upkeep cards? And you're looking at a definite case of shrinking mana base leading to being unable to pay for something sooner rather than later.

That's the beauty of the mechanic. It has a built in obsolescence preventing you from abusing the power of the card forever!

Unless of course, you skip your Upkeep. You would have to be in the middle of a Gibbering Descent into madness to try that!

Now, one of the sets I love, simply for its honorary membership in Time Spiral, is Coldsnap. This is the only set in Modern that you'll get to see cards with this mechanic. Here is the list of all the cards, with a few Slowtrips mixed in.

And one of the reasons for that is because of what it did with the concept of the Cumulative Upkeep. There was now more reasons to pay it than 'I want this card for another turn'. Arctic Nishoba is a little behind efficient curve as a 5/6 Trample for 6, but it also acts as a life battery, so when it dies, you get a nice shot in the arm.

Braid of Fire was a lot more double-edged back in the day when Mana burn was a thing, but what you could do with instant speed spells with in the cost? Or use it to pay for other cards with cumulative upkeep.

Alas, Cumulative Upkeep is dead. It breaks the New World Order something fierce, and I for one, do not miss it with more than nostalgia. Some things are best left in history's wake.

But one more mechanic for you all! Echo!

Echo was a form of limited Upkeep. You pay a generally lesser cost for a card - like say Albino Troll is a 3/3 for that can also regenerate, which is well ahead of the mana curve. But the cost comes in its Echo. The turn after this comes into play on your side - be is you casting it, or given as a "Harmless" Gift, you pay the Echo cost, or you discard it.

It's simple, really, and it helps break up the mana cost of the card into more manageable chunks. Much like how Figure of Destiny does. It's also a complexity thing, running right into the problems that Slowtrips do regarding memory.

I like Echo, but then again, I am an Old Fogey (and read the card carefully), and even then I can understand why it would want to be removed. It is sort of an upkeep cost, but not really. And while you can do some fun things with the Echo cost, like Shah of Naar Isle's ability to force the opponents to draw cards. Which can cause all sorts of fun!

Well, this article feels a little thin on the content, but that's alright. I wanted to talk about the importance of the upkeep, and there's not really much there, so talking about the mechanics, and blowing the dust off of them helped put some context into it.

So remember, "Untap, Upkeep, Draw", isn't just a mantra for players new and old to recall the order of things, it's a reminder that the order exists for a reason.

Anyone want to share stories about the time they exploited the Upkeep to their benefit? I promise not to hit you with a Paradox Haze in response!

Join me next week when I talk about a truism in the game, why it's real, why it's correct, and why it's false.

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.