Pattern Recognition #35 - Core Sets

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

6 July 2017

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Good afternoon everyone! My name is berryjon, and I am TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey and part-time Smart Ass. Today, my credentials as a player who has been around the block and through the alleys for twenty years or so is about to come to the fore. Again.

I mentioned last week that this week I was going to talk about a set that is coming back. I also explicitly denied that it was Unstable, the third in the Unsets. And here, I reaffirm that denial. Rather, today, I am going to talk about what was, for a good 15 years or so, the backbone of the game.

Sit down, pull up a drink (because I won't be talking about Time Spiral, so here's my obligatory mention) and let me tell you why I am happy that Core Sets are coming back.

In the beginning, there was Alpha. And then Beta. Then Revised. Then Unlimited. These were all effectively reprints of the same cards, so we can probably round them all up as a single set. Then came Arabian Nights. Now, here's the thing about Arabian Nights that forms the core of what would later become the Core Sets.

You see, every expansion was meant to be a standalone product. This is true today, but back in the mid-90's, every set was intended to be played by itself or in conjunction with other sets. And this was held true for the next set - Antiquities. And The Dark. And you get the point, I hope.

But if you don't, let me lay this out for you. Limited is the format that allows players to play with only a single set of cards. But the limited format is just that - limited in nature. Small, and (hopefully) quite cohesive. And you were expected to be able to make constructed decks out of each individual set. This was before the Block format existed, mind you.

And then it did! Ice Age introduced the system of Blocks that exists (in one form or another) to this day, and with it, the idea that each set had to have everything needed to play the game began to fade out. Instead, each set took place in a larger whole, where cards could be found to work with cards in other sets because they were designed to do so, and not because of happy circumstance.

So we come to our first problem. One that would later be given a chilling reprise by the villain of The Incredibles. Allow me to paraphrase: "When every set is special, none of them will be."

Allow me to elaborate. When every set has something amazing going on with it, a grand theme or jaw dropping mechanics, you run into the problem of alienation.

I've mentioned before - and I'll keep saying it as many times as I have to - new players are the lifeblood of the game. But when you create sets that are designed to be more and more amazing, you run into the problem of not been able to draw in the new people you need.

Thus the idea of the Core Set was born, though it would be a while before it was identified as such. The Core Sets would be those sets where complexity and theme would be stepped back, stepped down in favour of approachability and accessibility in order to be a stepping stone for new players.

How many of you remember a time when sets and boxes were labelled either "Beginner", "Advanced" and "Expert"? No? Yes? Well, they were. Core Sets - and the preconstructed decks that came with them were considered Beginner. Normal expansion sets were Advanced, and specialty sets were Expert.

I ... may have Advanced and Expert reversed, but oh well. As long as I'm consistent. Right?

Now, as a man who has worked selling Magic Cards in a store, this is something I wholeheartedly approve of. A set that helps me sell new players on the game by pointing at a box and saying "This is for new players. Low investment in time and money, and can teach you the basics" is a good thing.

And then I can upsell them on other products. Because I work retail. It's what I do. ;)

Core Sets, retroactively assigned to Fourth Edition and every numbered edition forward, served then at the gateway into the game. And major rules changes tended to coincide with the release of a Core Set. 5th Edition and 10th Edition are the major milestones in my memory.

But there is more to rules changes here. 7th Edition was a massive standout in my mind. Mostly because of the artwork found in that set that was never reused. 8th Edition marks the start of Modern. M10 was named that because Wizards moved to 'publication year' for the sets, rather than edition number (I'll explain why in a moment). And Origins, because it tried to have its cake and eat it too.

So, M10. Back in 2009, Wizards had published 10th Edition, and was prepping for the next Core Set. And because the publication years didn't match up, they decided, thanks to Marketing and feedback from the customer base, to switch to marking Core Sets by the year of publication. And they held a contest to design the new set logo!

My preference lost. :(

But more importantly than a history lesson is how Core Sets interacted with Standard from 7th Edition (maybe Sixth?) up to the 10th/M10 divide. During that era, each Core Set came out at two-year intervals. That meant that there was only one Core Set in Standard at a time, as the cycle meant that one Core Set would kick out the previous Core Set. It was an elegant solution to making sure that newbie players had something they could depend on when they stepped into the Standard format, or Extended if they were feeling brave.

I'm sure you see the problem now. Moving Core Sets to one a year meant that the typical "sets for the past two years" definition of Standard had to get amended to "past two years of expansions, and the latest Core set", which was far more awkward to explain to people.

It also tied into the way Wizards printed sets. There are four 'slots' in a year for a set of cards. Let's call them "Fall", "Winter", "Spring" and "Summer". At the time, each block consisted of three sets, which would take up three of the four publishing slots in a year. Before the change, a Core set would take up the fourth slot on alternating years, forcing Wizards to find something to put into that fourth spot. It became enough of a hassle, that they decided to just publish a Core Set and a full Block each year.

Here's where we run into another, related problem.

Core Sets are designed for new players, and while that's a good thing, there is something about this requirement that you should all know.

Core Sets are also reprint sets. I recall (but please don't quote me on this), that each Core Set had to have a certain percentage of cards in it that were not new in order to keep a level degree of consistency between the Cores. I want to say 75% or so.

You, uh, may have noticed when I talked about Functional Reprints and the Reserved List, how, by their very nature, reprints tend to be on the boring side of things. And hey, guess what, that's what the Core Sets are! Boring!

... oh

Yeah, that's the problem. They're the same cards, year after year, and players didn't like that. Wizards can't work on an economic model that can't accept that a full quarter of their work will receive a sharp drop in sales when returning players turn their nose up at a set that is mostly cards they already have, and can turn to the secondary market to get the individual cards they want.

After, I want so say ... M11, it was obvious that the days of the Core Set was over. It was only a matter of time.

This came to a head with Magic Origins. The (formerly) last of the Core Sets.

Origins was an experiment, a last-ditch effort to salvage the concept of the Core. And it did this by trying to be both a stand-alone expansion in telling the story of the origins of the five members of the soon-to-be Jacetus League, and by having all the basic utility cards of a Core Set.

It didn't work.

Origins was plagued by trying to be both things at once, and the set suffered. The idea of flipping Legendary Creatures into Planeswalkers was neat, but suffered from being a very complicated mechanic (as in, they were the only flipcards in the set) in a set meant to introduce new players to the game. It also printed only half of the Pain Lands, the Invasion set, rather than the Ice Age set. And ... OK, I could go on, but this isn't the place to talk about all of Origin's failings.

The end result was the final nail on the coffin. Core Sets were out, and as a result, Wizards announced that they were moving from a three-set Block format to a Two-set Block format in order to better tighten design and to allow for faster cycling of sets through Standard.

One of these days, I'm going to go over Standard in detail, and really show off the evidence that Wizards has no clue what they're doing with the format. I'll scribble that in for ... later.

But what changed? Why are we getting a Core 2019 set?

Well, let's look at some of the reasons why Wizards killed it in the first place. Reprinted cards kept getting put in, but it's been, what, almost three years since Origins? There have been scant few reprints since then, so the market for them has improved with the dearth of sources recently. Yes, cards do get reprinted even now, but they are in the minority, not the majority.

Heck, when the announcement came down, you know what I heard most from TappedOut and other places? People wanted Core Sets for the Reprints. They wanted a set that would provide all the basic cards they want for Standard/Modern/Commander/Frontier (if it's still a thing by then), without having to jump through the hoops of dealing with the flavour of whatever set the card is in making a mess of things. Sometimes, a player wants the simplicity of a Lightning Bolt and not Fiery Impulse.

Another reason is the change in the way sets and blocks are being done.

Now, Core Sets are returning, starting in 2018/2019, taking up the "Summer" slot. The other three sets in the year will no longer be forced into a strict paradigm of how many sets are in a block, but can be flexible in nature. Three independently themes sets? Sure! A massive, year-long block with a cohesive theme? Sure! Something in-between? Why not?

Core Sets are just that. They are the core of the game, and the game is built around them. Imagine if you will, a spiral staircase. The Core sets are the inner pole, while the expansion sets are the steps. Sure, the steps and landings get the most attention, but the core holds everything together. It doesn't have to be splashy or amazing. It has to be reliable.

And let me tell you, being reliable is far more important any any degree of amazing.

Join me next week when I split hairs, and why a certain rule almost got tossed out before Planeswalkers made it important again.

Until then, I'm selling out! Or is that tapping 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.