Pattern Recognition #112 - Bicycle! Bicycle!
Features Opinion Pattern Recognition
berryjon
13 June 2019
796 views
13 June 2019
796 views
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Written by myself, berryjon, I aim to bring to my reading audience each week a different look into some aspect of Magic: The Gathering - be it an individual card, a mechanic, a theme, or even just general history. I am something of an Old Fogey and Smart Ass, so please take what I say with a grain of salt. I enjoy a good discussion on the relevant subject matter!
So, for the rest of this article, I would like you all to listen to this piece of music. It's from Queen, so that automatically makes it good.
Introduced in Urza's Saga, Cycling is one of the most reliable and repeatable non-Evergreen Mechanics in the game having shown up in Urza's Block, the Onslaught Block, Time Spiral (because of course), Alara, Amonkhet and finally in Modern Horizons. Despite this, the mechanic is not considered by Wizards to be in the realm of Deciduous. It is a mechanic that they do not consider to be worth bringing back on a regular basis, but rather only if it fits into the set as a supplemental thing.
Mechanically speaking, there are two types of Cycling. The first, and most common one is where you pay a certain cost and discard a card with Cycling from your hand. If this ability resolves and isn't ... say ... hit with [[Stifle] or Disallow, then you draw a card.
Cycling, is at its core, a cantrip effect on the card. That you can pay a cost and replace the card in your hand with something that is hopefully better.
This cost, at least back in Urza's Block was . And as I've long since established and referred to again and again, drawing a single card in addition to other effects at Instant speed has the cost of or . So, effectively, a card with cycling could be a card that reads:
Cycling
Instant
Draw a Card
You may have any number of this card in your deck.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Thankfully, it didn't stay there for very long.
But before I get to how Cycling has improved both internally and through cards that interact with it, I want to break down what makes Cycling work, and one of the reasons why I think that Wizards is unwilling to make this mechanic appear in a set more often.
Your cards in your deck are a limited resource. 60 cards minimum, and for the vast, vast majority of decks, that is how many you're going to have. With the 4 card limit on anything that isn't a Basic Land, the fewer cards in your deck, the more likely you are to draw the cards you want or need to win or at least advance your board state.
But on the other hand, your mana is an infinitely renewable resource. Every time your turn comes around, you can untap all your lands and regain the use of all your mana. What Cycling does is allow you to turn this renewable resource into more access to your limited resource. What Cycling goes is allow you to shrink your deck.
But before I really get into why this is a bad idea, let's talk about the other aspect to Cycling. That being Type Cycling.
You see, when you Type cycle, you don't just draw a card. No, what you do is when you discard the card, instead of drawing, you search for a card of that type, and put it into your hand! And thankfully, Wizards has actually been aware of just how good this is, because our examples are few and relatively far between. We have Vedalken AEthermage and we have Homing Sliver. Now, the first is pretty damned useful, especially in Commander decks that run Azami, Lady of Scrolls as their Commander, as you can get whichever Wizard you want for her ability. And let me tell you, there are a lot of Wizards out there with some pretty amazing effects.
And the less said about being able to discard a Sliver to get any Sliver into your hand, the better. They're bad enough as it is, and the ability to get any Sliver into your hand just adds insult to injury. And even more injury.
But the most common form of Type Cycling is actually Land Cycling. That is, you can pay a cost, discard the cycling card, and go look through your library for a land. Now, some of these specify a land type, like how Elvish Abberation lets you look for any Forest, even non-basic ones, while cards like Grave Upheaval let you look for any land, as long as it's a Basic land.
There is a reason why Fetch Lands are so coveted. A reason why Wizards Design and Development is moving away from tutoring as a mechanic, limiting it to only the top few cards in the deck. That reason is consistency. You see, a deck that can perform the same way, no matter what? That isn't fun to play against because one of the strengths of the game is the chance involved. And decks that perform the same way, the same steps every time, they aren't fun to watch or play against - except perhaps for some people, the first time so they can admire the machinery of it in action. I know I have!
Except what's the point in the second, third or fourth time some deck wins the same way, every way, on turn 4? I'm looking at you, top-tier Commander.
Cycling works best when it's just drawing a card, not when it lets you fetch a card out from your library, except when it doesn't.
Because, starting with Onslaught Block, Wizards started doing more with Cycling. They recognized that simply paying to draw a card wasn't the end of what you could do when Cycling, so they started to add alternate effects to cards. Gempalm Sorcerer is a card with Cycling, that while you could cast it as normal for an overpriced Grizzly Bears, if you chose to Cycle it instead, not only would you draw a card, but all your Wizards would gain flying until the end of the turn! And giving all your creatures Flying until the end of the turn is well worth paying for, and drawing an additional card to replace the one you just used up is always worth !
And it's not just when you Cycle cards as well. Stoic Champion gets bigger when you or your opponent cycles a card.
I suppose now would be a good time to go back and mention something that I haven't actually said yet, though you should know if you went and checked the rules for Cycling before I reached this point. You see, Cycling happens at Instant speed. All of these effects can occur at any time, making inherent combat tricks all the more useful when you cycle Gempalm Strider and thanks to Invigorating Boon, a creature gets even larger!
This also means that when you cycle just to get more cards, you can do it at the end of your opponent's turn. Using the infinitely replenishable mana that you kept available for other purposes, and didn't need. So it's time to toss cards and get new ones!
One of the real strengths to this mechanic is exactly this speed, which allows players to do things like Cycle Nimble Obstructionist to counter a spell! And draw a card, of course. Or make creatures bigger as a combat trick, or sometimes, it's just cycling to draw a card so that you can hopefully draw your solution to keep you in the game.
Now, the Alara block did some interesting things with the mechanic. Well, interesting in the sense that it was Amazing!, but rather in the sense that it played around with how to interpret the card and its Cycling cost.
The first was that the Cycling cost was made a bit more disconnected from the casting colours of the card itself. Esper Sojourners was part of a cycle of creatures from Alara Reborn that had a casting cost of their Shard's colours, but you could cycle it for just the Shard's core colour.
On the flip side, Shards of Alara itself gave us the Resounding cycle - like Resounding Roar where you could get a basic cost for the Shard's core color, but if you had all three colours of mana, you could pay the higher cost for a larger benefit.
Wait a minute... Where have I seen this before? Paying more for a bigger effect?
Oh yeah! Kicker!
Except Cyling isn't Kicking. You see, a hidden advantage to Cycling a card for an effect, rather than casting it outright isn't that you're getting an alternate effect. It's that you're not casting a spell.
Let me repeat that. You're not casing a spell when you Cycle. It's an Activated Ability! And when you're going up against , countering an activated ability is far harder and far rarer than countering a spell. Which is probably why Disallow was in the Kaladesh block. It was preparing for Cycling (and Embalm/Eternalize) in the next block.
So there you have it, a quick overview of Cycling and why it works out as well as it does. I mean, it does so many things, that Wizards has to be careful about when and where it can be put into a set. Too much, and the game becomes too regular, with card draws all over the place, and unanswerable abilities going off on each side of the board. Too little, and no one notices the slightly slower pace of the game.
And because I love you all, here is a deck that I whipped up that tries to Cycle it's way to victory! That said victory includes Jace, Wielder of Mysteries is only a slight dampener on the whole thing, but hey, it's a start! Let's Cycle a deck to Nothing! No, not One with Nothing. That's silly.
So join me next week when I talk about a subject that I find to be completely rage inducing. While I certainly hate Jace, next week? Oh, break out the fire proof clothes, because I'm going to let Wizards have it.
Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!