Pattern Recognition #7 - Tribal

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

10 November 2016

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Hello, and welcome back! For those of you joining me for the first time, my name is berryjon, and I'm the writer of this series of articles, Old Fogey, and general nice guy. Pattern Recognition is a series in which I pick a subject (or have one suggested to me) and talk about it. Usually, but not always, this subject is bounded by a certain theme, or 'Pattern' if you will.

Today's article is perhaps my most audacious yet. Not because I'm going to be writing loads and loads of words about it - I think that particular crown is still held by the last two articles - but because what I plan to cover is so comprehensive, and so much a part of the structure of the game at this point that despite being purely optional from a mechanics point of view, it can't be removed at all. Or ever.

Thankfully, there is one card that perfectly encapsulates everything about this concept. I present to you ...

Mistform Ultimus

(sounds of crickets chirping go here)

So... I take it none of you have heard of this guy before. Weird. The last time there was a serious Mistform Ultimus Update was Theros block, which wasn't that long ago.

Fair enough then. Let me break down the subject matter a little further. What I am going to talk about today is Tribal. For those of you who are new to magic, and don't know many of the causal or non-casual terms and shorthand thrown around by players, Tribal is both a concept and a keyword that is used to describe creatures that share a common creature type.

You see, on every creature there is a line of text between the card art and the text box itself that reads "Creature - something", and that something is the creature's Type or Types.

If the card you have reads "Summon - something", get a card printed in the last decade, please. I don't want to confuse the new people by having to explain to them that the Summon card type was replaced wholesale by Creature as part of the Great Creature Update around the time between 7th and 8th Editions.

New guys? Be glad you live in this enlightened era, and not in the bad old days.

Now, Tribal is also a Keyword, which doesn't exactly mean what I just said. Here, let me cite the rule in question from the 30 September update to the Comprehensive Rules;

308. Tribal
308.1. Each tribal card has another card type. Casting and resolving a tribal card follows the rules for casting and resolving a card of the other card type.
308.2. Tribal subtypes are always a single word and are listed after a long dash: “Tribal Enchantment — Merfolk.” The set of tribal subtypes is the same as the set of creature subtypes; these subtypes are called creature types. Tribals may have multiple subtypes. See rule 205.3m for the complete list of creature types.

In more plain language, the card type "Tribal" is a Supertype along with "Snow" and "World" that indicates that this non-creature card also has a creature type, and counts for such things that look at creatures types - even if they're not on a creature. The first time this happened was in (Drinking Game!) Time Spiral. Or to be more specific, in the Future Sight with Bound in Silence, an enchantment that was also a Rebel, allowing to be participate in the Rebel search mechanic that was also in the block. It returned in Lorwyn, and was last used in Rise of the Eldrazi before being retired for good.

So, what makes a 'Tribe' tribal, beyond sharing what would otherwise be a piece of fluff? Well, the first and most widely accepted criteria is that a Tribe will have a Lord. Now, not all Tribes have one, so it's not an exclusive criteria.

Lord used to be a creature type itself that indicated that the card in question had an ability that affected the whole of a certain Creature type. However, the word was removed between 9th and 10th Editions as part of the effort of Wizards to cut down on the number of creature types that were redundant or just plain useless. And what makes a Lord a Lord? Well, the traditional definition dates back all the way to Alpha with the three Lords in that set - Lord of Atlantis, Goblin King and Zombie Master.

A basic Lord will give all other members of its Tribe a mere +1/+1. Now, if you look at the three Lords above, you can see that even this doesn't apply to the prototypes of the concept - the Zombie Master skips out entirely. And I'm glad for this as it established from the start of the game that this aspect to creatures can and should be more than a minor buff.

Lords are not a concept that has been dropped over time either. In fact, as of this writing, the most recent set included a Lord for an old creature type - Depala, Pilot Exemplar is both a Vehicle Lord for the block, and the Dwarf Lord (whether or not she has a Ring of Power, or a Hall of Stone is up for debate).

Another aspect to consider about Lords is that they aren't Legendary. You would expect the opposite to be true, but given that these creatures aren't powerful in of themselves, but rather make other creatures stronger, Wizards has decided to allow them to have multiple copies in play. Creatures such as Depala, Pilot Exemplar are the exception, while Chief of the Foundry are the rule.

Additionally, you have to remember that the power levels on Lords can vary widely. I cannot say which one or ones would be considered to be the best, but if I had to pick the lowest powered ones, I would have to argue that Chief of the Scale and Chief of the Edge would be the ones that qualify. Which still doesn't make them unplayable at all.

Now, a full list of Lords would be massive, and actually going in the wrong direction for this article.

Yet, Lords to not end there. Let's take a small detour for a second back into Alpha and examine the two colours that didn't get a Lord - Green and White. White actually did get a Lord, but not in the way you would expect. What White got was Crusade, a enchantment based bonus to a whole colour, rather than creature based for other creatures. Green didn't get anything like that, though going over the card list for that set, I think that Green was given Living Lands instead. Instead of going taller by making creatures larger, Green went wider by making all their Lands into Creatures as well!

Artifacts get in on the act as well. Coat of Arms is my favourite Tribal affecting artifact, though Adaptive Automaton, Brass Herald, Door of Destinies, etc...

So, a Tribe often has a Lord. But the definition does not, and cannot end there. A Tribe also has a degree of synergy among its members. This is more difficult to describe, but the best way to describe it would be to argue that a Lordless Tribe has has similar enough mechanics, or a certain degree of being able to work well together with mutually supportive abilities that they create something better than the individual cards would suggest.

The most recent example of this style of Tribe is the Eldrazi. Vehicles don't count because apparently 'Vehicle' isn't a Creature type, but an Artifact type.

Eldrazi don't have a traditional Lord, though I can see why people can make the argument that Herald of Kozilek or Tide Drifter would count. However, those two examples fail as Eldrazi Lords because they affect Colourless creatures as a whole, and not just the Eldrazi. After all, Artifacts are colourless too (for the the most part). But this doesn't stop the Eldrazi from being a Tribe on more than just paper. Their interactions with cards in Exile is more than enough to justify calling them a proper Tribe.

It was suggested to me by my reviewer / editor Simon_Williamson that Eldrazi Temple can act as a pseudo-Lord by making Eldrazi cards a little easier to cast. I don't agree in this case, but the suggestion does have merit.

Now, Wizards has, in their search for positive interactions rather than negative or destructive ones, has shied away from counter-Tribal cards. This does not mean that they don't exist, but that they are quite old and are out of Modern for the most part. I would like to direct your attention to Harsh Mercy and Engineered Plague. These two cards are dedicated counter-Tribal cards and not the end of it either.

Harsh Mercy plays the Tribal game in the player's favour by excluding your chosen Tribe from being hit by the destruction effect, while Engineered Plague is a consistent drain on a Tribe. Then we get things like Ego Erasure, a temporary means of taking out a Tribe, Consuming Bonfire, a hilarious Red Burn spell that specifically does nothing to its own Tribe, but has an enhanced effect when targeting a different Tribe.

Another thing that Wizards has flirted with in the past is the concept of the 'Tribal Block'. That being a Block where all the sets are built, from the ground up, to incorporate the Tribal concept as the basic starting point for everything.

New Players are probably thinking about Innistrad, with it's strong Tribal theme. Modern Players are thinking about Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. Really old players are shaking their heads at those new sets, and recall Onslaught. No, not Onslaught, as fun as that card is.

Onslaught was the last of the old-school blocks, and the culmination of the plotline that started in Odyssey. The next block was Mirrodin, and start of 'Modern'.

Onslaught was the first tentative steps into Tribal as a focused concept rather than something that 'just happened'. We were given a set where Beasts and Birds and Clerics and Wizards (Oh my!) counted and mattered. A set where Ancestor's Prophet, Aven Brigadier, Foothill Guide, Heedless One and others existed, can you start to see the picture? Onslaught was a creature focused Tribal deck. With only a couple of exceptions, every time a Tribe mattered, it was due to a creature card that was also a member of that same Tribe.

And as a first outing, it wasn't that bad actually. I still enjoy breaking out a Cleric deck on occasion thanks to Starlit Sanctum. Wizards dedicated a block to exploring a design space that players recognized was viable, and it worked. It was a good start. Yes, there were missteps, but that's to be expected when they were testing the waters with regard to what could or could not work when addressing Tribes are more than something incidental.

And it worked.

Wizards returned to the Tribal approach two sets down the line with Kamigawa. And while there was definitely a Tribal theme running through the block, it wasn't as pervasive as Onslaught's was. The entire thing was half-baked the more I look at it. Samurai, Spirits and Ninja all had a unifying ability (Bushido and Ninjitsu respectively) while Spirits existed in a very much "Us vs Them" mentality. Such a mode of thought can be exemplified by cards such as Clash of Realities, Hisoka's Defiance, and especially the paired cards of Rend Flesh and Rend Spirit. Yet there were also the Moonfolk, Demons and Snakes for other colors, Tribes without unification.

Yet, despite this, Kamigawa wasn't really a 'Tribal' block. It had themes, but it wasn't deep enough to really count.

Now we come to Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. The undisputed champion in Tribal mechanics and integration, these four sets were designed from the ground up to incorporate the various Tribes and their mechanics (in no particular order - Merfolk, Fairies, Kithkin, Giants, Goblins, Elementals, Treefolk, Scarecrows, Dwarves, Elves and Shapeshifters) into each individual set. Each tribe was given something unique to work with, and it wasn't a Keyworded mechanic, but rather something that each member of the tribe could do or synergized with.

Lorwyn Shadowmoor worked as a Tribal block because it knew what it wanted out of the mechanics and Tribes and worked toward it. The Tribes were unique as more than just a name on the card, and had flavour and play styles that mattered to each other as more than just a bit here and there like Odyssey. It's woven so finely into the fabric of those four sets that you can't remove it and still have Lorwyn/Shadowmoor.

Looking at Zendikar, it is a weird case where Tribal is concerned. It has the Ally creature type running through it, with cards that checked for that Tribe when a creature came into play, but little was done to make it a more cohesive whole. Instead, focus was placed on the Lands, with Allies being relegated to second-string status.

Then along came Rise of the Eldrazi, and the eponymous creatures. And with them, Wizards tried to cram an entire Unique tribe into a set, upsetting the balance they were developing. Looking at some of the old Development Blogs from afterwards, Wizards has since admitted that it was like trying to develop two separate blocks and cram them into one, which didn't work out. Designed top-down to be different, Eldrazi were the first colourless creatures that weren't also Artifacts, and they were huge! The actual Eldrazi that weren't also Drones or Spawn bottomed out at 7/7. The Tribe was meant to end games, and do so with overwhelming force.

MaRo has since agreed that the Annihilator mechanic was a mistake, and it will rightly never be reprinted.

The next block I view as Tribal would be Innistrad. Now, in retrospect, Innistrad is more like Odyssey or Kamigawa in terms of how it handled Tribes. Zombies and Vampires and Werewolves, oh ... wait. I already did that joke. Darn. Anyway, Tribes ran deep in that block, but it didn't carry forward the mechanic of Tribal itself - Rise of the Eldrazi was the last time that was printed, and MaRo has since stated that the concept is redundant, and just added text for no reasonable gain. I can understand that decision.

But Innistrad, in a way, was the thematic opposite of how Zendikar handled Tribes. Whereas in the prior set, Tribes were almost casual then the Eldrazi showed up and made everything about them, in Innistrad, the definitions were clearly marked, even when the Tribes hated each other on cards such as Spare from Evil and Zombie Apocalypse. And when the Angels showed up in force for Avacyn Restored, they fit into the paradigm already established, rather than overturning it as the Eldrazi did. Is it any wonder then, that these two merged in Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon? They were two sides of the Tribal coin, and I'm probably reading too much into this. Oh well - onward!

After that, the idea of the the Tribal set or Block lay fallow. The most recent example is Kaladesh - but Vehicles aren't a creature type, they're an Artifact type, like Contraptions.

So, what's the difference between a Tribal Set or Block and a Non-Tribal one?

Well, I would have to draw the line at how much intentional synergy there is. A set can be Tribal simply by having creatures in it, and by making sure that those creature types have existed before. But what makes something Tribal lies in how well they work together.

Now, some of you have been wondering. I've managed to go ... over 2500 words and not once have I mentioned the ultimate expression of what it means to be a Tribe. Not once have I said that Tribe's name. I've only mentioned a block they appeared in once. And for very good reason. I wanted to talk about all the lesser Tribes first before coming to them.

For all you new players, you may have heard hushed whispers from your elders of a certain Creature type to be feared and respected above all others. Whose name sparks dread and horror in those who have survived this Tribe at its worst.

I am talking about Slivers.

Just... just read the cards that are there. Then come back.

So Slivers. The Tribe of Tribes. It is my opinion that Slivers are the single most disliked Tribe in the game - beyond even Elves - while in the same breath I will defend them as legitimate and viable. Slivers exemplify everything that is right and wrong with the Tribal, and the problem is that every one of them (except for the M14 and M15 ones) is a Sliver Lord. Remember how I defined a Lord as granting something to the other creatures of that Tribe? Well, because that's the Sliver's entire mechanic, I knew I was going to have to eat my words here.

Though the other conditional I pointed out comes into play here. There are four Legendary Slivers, the Sliver Hivelord, Sliver Legion, Sliver Overlord and Sliver Queen. They are considered the Lords of the tribe. Those of you considering a Sliver Commander deck, get Sliver Overlord for the tutor effect.

Because Slivers are all 'lords' to some degree, the problem arises when you start to get multiple different slivers in play. I once ran a UG Mill deck (yes, really) that ran 4 Manaweft Sliver and 4 Screeching Sliver. I didn't run any more, as the deck didn't need more Slivers to do the job. And because of that, my opponents didn't see it as a Sliver deck, just a deck that had Slivers.

Yet when a deck is all Slivers? That becomes a problem. Each Sliver is an exponential increase in the capabilities of all Slivers, and failure to control them from an early start can see you lose very quickly. So much so, that I actually built a very old deck designed to deal with Slivers in a multiplayer format.

Slivers in moderation? Good! Great for limited formats, and even in constructed when the available pool os Sliver types is limited. Slivers in excess? It can be meta-warping. That's the problem with Tribal. Too much of a good thing is bad.

This is getting long, so I should wrap things up. I think that Wizards has done a good job of balancing tribal interactions and synergy over the years, enough that running a Tribal deck isn't seen as a positive or a negative, simply another way to play the game. Which is great! It means that Wizards can add to existing Tribes, and add new ones (hopefully) without upsetting anything.

And the best thing is that Tribes aren't required. They just are. They exist, and you can ignore them all you want.

Oh, and to answer a question unasked - Kavu. They have a special place in my heart for they were the first Tribal deck I deliberately built as a tribe.

For those of you wondering, here is the current (30 September 2016) list of Creature Types. Remember, each of these is a tribe until itself, and a creature can be members of multiple tribes at the same time!

Advisor, Aetherborn, Ally, Angel, Antelope, Ape, Archer, Archon, Artificer, Assassin, Assembly-Worker, Atog, Aurochs, Avatar, Badger, Barbarian, Basilisk, Bat, Bear, Beast, Beeble, Berserker, Bird, Blinkmoth, Boar, Bringer, Brushwagg, Camarid, Camel, Caribou, Carrier, Cat, Centaur, Cephalid, Chimera, Citizen, Cleric, Cockatrice, Construct, Coward, Crab, Crocodile, Cyclops, Dauthi, Demon, Deserter, Devil, Djinn, Dragon, Drake, Dreadnought, Drone, Druid, Dryad, Dwarf, Efreet, Elder, Eldrazi, Elemental, Elephant, Elf, Elk, Eye, Faerie, Ferret, Fish, Flagbearer, Fox, Frog, Fungus, Gargoyle, Germ, Giant, Gnome, Goat, Goblin, God, Golem, Gorgon, Graveborn, Gremlin, Griffin, Hag, Harpy, Hellion, Hippo, Hippogriff, Homarid, Homunculus, Horror, Horse, Hound, Human, Hydra, Hyena, Illusion, Imp, Incarnation, Insect, Jellyfish, Juggernaut, Kavu, Kirin, Kithkin, Knight, Kobold, Kor, Kraken, Lamia, Lammasu, Leech, Leviathan, Lhurgoyf, Licid, Lizard, Manticore, Masticore, Mercenary, Merfolk, Metathran, Minion, Minotaur, Mole, Monger, Mongoose, Monk, Monkey, Moonfolk, Mutant, Myr, Mystic, Naga, Nautilus, Nephilim, Nightmare, Nightstalker, Ninja, Noggle, Nomad, Nymph, Octopus, Ogre, Ooze, Orb, Orc, Orgg, Ouphe, Ox, Oyster, Pegasus, Pentavite, Pest, Phelddagrif, Phoenix, Pilot, Pincher, Pirate, Plant, Praetor, Prism, Processor, Rabbit, Rat, Rebel, Reflection, Rhino, Rigger, Rogue, Sable, Salamander, Samurai, Sand, Saproling, Satyr, Scarecrow, Scion, Scorpion, Scout, Serf, Serpent, Servo, Shade, Shaman, Shapeshifter, Sheep, Siren, Skeleton, Slith, Sliver, Slug, Snake, Soldier, Soltari, Spawn, Specter, Spellshaper, Sphinx, Spider, Spike, Spirit, Splinter, Sponge, Squid, Squirrel, Starfish, Surrakar, Survivor, Tetravite, Thalakos, Thopter, Thrull, Treefolk, Triskelavite, Troll, Turtle, Unicorn, Vampire, Vedalken, Viashino, Volver, Wall, Warrior, Weird, Werewolf, Whale, Wizard, Wolf, Wolverine, Wombat, Worm, Wraith, Wurm, Yeti, Zombie, and Zubera.

And Mistform Ultimus is all of them.