Will Adapt and Monstrosity Ever Have Costs Other than Mana Payment?
General forum
Posted on March 19, 2024, 8:16 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
Thus far, every creature that has either monstrous or adapt requires payment of mana to activate those abilities, so I hope that WotC shall eventually print creatures that have costs other than mana to activate those abilities, such as paying life or sacrificing creatures, since life and creatures are resources that be renewed easily.
Also, as a side question, is adapt strictly better than monstrous, or does monstrous have advantages over adapt?
I agree with wallisfsce.
Ask mark on blogatog.
I'm also based considering I believe you're thinking in terms of commander. Mostly because of your comment that life and creatures are easily replenished is debatable, as that's only viable in commander. As such, w0tc could probably make something like this.
I think it would be a cool concept to give a choice of either adapt or monstrous in the testing ground/powercreep of modern horizons.
But as far as giving life or creatures, there's already a host of similiar problematic cards like Kriik and Yawgmoth,so maybe not.
March 20, 2024 5:31 a.m.
FormOverFunction says... #4
Adapt is very susceptible to Experiment Kraj ;p
March 20, 2024 10:24 a.m.
I'm going to make a prediction and say yes for monstrosity and no for adapt.
Adapt values tend to be smaller, giving out one to four +1/+1 counters. The side benefits, if it gets or grants any, are common evergreen abilities like trample, flying, or looting. Thematically, it doesn't represent a dramatic change, so it shouldn't have dramatic costs.
Monstrosity is thematically and usually functionally a much bigger effect. It has a much higher proportion of cards that get three or more +1/+1 counters, and can't get to eight, or ten, or X. There's also a higher ceiling and more variety on the other benefits. It's designed to be a game-changing effect, and could support more dynamic costs.
This is skewed a little bit by their appearance rates. Monstrosity has 33 cards across all colors, including at least one for each green pair and a couple of colorless cards. It also has a good number of incidental appearances outside of Theros, its plane of origin. Adapt has only sixteen cards total, with three cards outside of Ravnica Allegiance (and one of those is a direct callback). So I think monstrosity is more likely to come back in general, and more likely to be expanded and experimented with.
March 20, 2024 7:25 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #6
wallisface, if a monstrous creature has its +1/+1 counters removed, it cannot become monstrous again, which is one advantage that adapt has over it.
cartoonywolf, I was not thinking of any one particular format, but I suppose that your statement does have some merit.
March 20, 2024 8:40 p.m.
wallisface says... #7
DemonDragonJ yes, but as i said in my post, that’s incredibly niche. Generally speaking, Monstrous is the overall stronger ability in most deck builds - the only exceptions being where you’re planing to remove counters, or you’re in a meta where that’s highly likely to happen
March 20, 2024 8:51 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #8
wallisface, if that is the case, why did WotC even print adapt, at all? They printed discover because cascade was too powerful and printed menace because fear and intimidate were too situational, so what niche did adapt fill, or am I mistaken in presuming that those two mechanics have any similarity or connection?
March 21, 2024 8:13 p.m.
wallisface says... #9
DemonDragonJ look at the set where Adapt was introduced - in Ravnica for the simic guild. The word “monstrous” doesn’t thematically make any sense for this guild, and that could have easily been enough reason for them making a new mechanic. Added to this, the set and guild did have some limited ways to move counters around, so the option to Adapt a second time was occasionally relevant in the scope/confines of that set/guild.
March 21, 2024 8:19 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #10
wallisface, that makes sense, to me, but one other thing that bothers me is that numerous creatures with monstrous have secondary abilities that trigger when the creatures become monstrous, but, thus far, no creatures with adapt have secondary abilities that trigger when they adapt, so I hope that WotC rectifies that issue, eventually.
March 21, 2024 8:23 p.m.
wallisface says... #11
DemonDragonJ creatures with Adapt specifically can’t reference that keyword as per the rules Wotc set in place. The closest you’ll ever get is those cards caring about counters put on them as per cards like Growth-Chamber Guardian. The only reason Monstrosity can use that “monstrous” word in other rules-text of the cards is because the explicit rules of activating Monstrosity state that “the creature becomes Monstrous”
March 21, 2024 8:34 p.m.
wallisface says... #12
We also do have cards like Biomancer's Familiar which explicitly calls out the ability.
I think a big part of the reason Wotc won’t make a creature care about when it Adapts, is that you can adapt a creature even if counters are already on it (just that no additional counters are added) - that would lead to some super non-intuative play patterns.
March 21, 2024 8:42 p.m. Edited.
DemonDragonJ says... #14
I just saw this post, which I believe is relevant to this discussion.
wallisface says... #2
“Adapt adds counters to a counter-less creature. Monstrous checks whether a creature is monstrous, and then adds counters and makes the creature monstrous if it isn't“.
You can’t Adapt a creature that’s gotten counters already put on it. This intuitively would make Monstrous better in almost all situations, as it’s not tied to that same restriction (you could remove counters from the Adapt creature to re-Adapt it, but that’s extremely niche).
As far as Wotc will do these cards with alternate casting costs, it’s yet another question which only Wotc can answer - you’re better-off asking Mark Rosewater on Blogatog than bothering here.
Anything guessed here will be no more than that - a complete guess.
March 19, 2024 10:11 p.m.