Pattern Recognition #28 - In Response, Spin Top

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

11 May 2017

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Hello everyone! Welcome to Pattern Recognition, your regularly scheduled Thursday 10AM article that may or may not elicit reactions of "YOU IDIOT!". I am berryjon, your host and Old Fogey.

What do you mean this goes up at Noon? I'm the one Telling Time here, so I say it's 10 AM!

Today's article is me pretending to be hip and relevant. You see, I got a request from another source that was asked in response to the 23 April 2017 bannings that included Sensei's Divining Top. Whatmesage from Space Battles asked:

berryjon Have any plans to talk about the miracle mechanic? One of my favorite cards is in that. :D

Well, I don't know about favourite cards or whatnot, but I realized that there was an actual card-related article in there that I could look at. And talking about Miracles is just the start of it.

So, let's start there.

But first; a word of warning. I have never played a Miracles Deck. I have a few cards, but they never saw real active play in my decks. I can look at existing deck lists, the meta in which they exist, and the like, but I will be speaking on a more technical and hypothetical level than in previous articles.

Miracles, as a mechanic, appeared in Avacyn Restored as part of the 'last chances' theme of the set. Miracles could be played during the draw step if and only if they were the first card you drew that turn. Not your second card, not your third, or eighth. These cards are always Instants or Sorceries and the Sorceries can be played when they could normally not be.

And without exception, casting a card for its Miracle cost makes it cheaper than casting it normally. From Banishing Stroke to Vanishment, the cost is massively reduced. I've talked about alternate card costs in the past, and this is another example of an alternate cost where the triggering condition being that the card is the first one you drew on the turn, and that you cast it right away.

Now, the Miracles deck, which got massively nerfed by the banning of the Top, was a Legacy level Control deck that utilized the Miracle cost of the cards in question to lock down the opponent, paving the way to victory. Remember that this is the Legacy format, one of the most cut-throat and overpowered formats in the game.

Given that Channel Fireball has been giving me some attention over the past couple of months, I feel it is only fair to return the favour Here is a decent primer for a Miracles Deck.

Once you've read that, come on back so we can go forward.

Back? Cool.

The key card in this deck is Sensei's Divining Top. And to understand that, and why it was the card that got the axe, I need to show you what it does and why. Kamigawa was a block that focused heavily on the theme of the set, and the Top was not a part of that. Rather, it was coming in the shadow of Mirroden, a massive artifact themed set, so I suspect there was a certain effort to keep the power of the artifacts in the set down.

So the Top arrived, and it didn't really have much of an effect. Mostly because there were very few cards that it would synergize with properly at the time. Mostly it was used to set up your future card draws, and cause an extra draw in a pinch at the cost of putting the card on top of your library for your next draw.

No, the ability of a player to manipulate the top of their deck like that was more of a fringe benefit for combo and control players. Aggro had better things to do with their cards and mana.

The first major point where Sensei's Divining Top reached major importance to a deck came with the release of Coldsnap, the throw-back set that worked as both standard legal, as well as being incorporated into the Ice Age block, knocking Homelands loose in the process.

Now, unlike the Miracles Archetype, this is a deck I played and abused. Ladies and gentlemen of TappedOut, I would like to introduce you to the CounterTop deck. Or rather, I will at the end of the article when I pull one out for you.

The CounterTop deck utilized a combination of Sensei's Divining Top and Counterbalance. These two cards allowed the player to say one of the most dreaded four word combinations in Magic. "In response, Spin Top". You see, thanks to the Stack, in response to the casting of a spell, the Control player would "Spin Top", which is a play on the name Sensei's Divining Top and the Top of the deck. This would allow the person to see if they could put a card on top of their library that had the same casting cost, thus countering the spell.

And it was repeatable.

Sensei's Divining Top was banned in Modern long before it got banned in Legacy. It's the linchpin in the ability of multiple decks to utterly control the game, pulling the exact card at the right time, every time.

You see why it had to go?

Well, I'm only half-way done, so now that I've highlighted the problem, it's time to step back and make the problem bigger.

Magic is a game of resources. Lands, cards in hand, life... we as players are asked to balance these to try and take out the balance of the opponent. Why no, it's not like I'm talking about Counterbalance here. What makes you think that?

But as the game has advanced, there has been a slow accumulation of mechanics and abilities that extend this. Lifegain is a known one, of course. You can always draw more cards. Heck, I even did a two-parter about that exact subject!

It's the hand size that I want to address here. And no, I'm not talking about Spellbook, as fun as that card is. Rather, I want to point out that the real problem behind Sensei's Divining Top and the like is that they are part of a greater trend in Magic to expand the 'reach' of the player.

That is, there is a definite motion in the game over the past ten or so years to expand the ability of the player to play cards from different zones. At first, it was only from the hand. No problems there. Then abilities like Dredge started to show up. This enabled players to optimize their graveyard recursion to allow them to treat that zone of the board as an extension of their hand. There's a reason why Golgari Grave-Troll was banned for the longest time. It was too good at putting cards into a place where the player could recur them - or even cast them!

Flashback. I think the mechanic is viable and well designed, but holy does Flashback cause problems when you realize that you're able to cast the same card twice!

Fun fact - in the original printings of Odyssey / Torment / Judgment, Flashback had a special symbol in the title of the card to indicate that it was a card with the ability. Dropped though, as it caused confusion in new players.

The ability to use the graveyard as an active resource got so bad that Wizards had to change the rules regarding it, taking the phrase "Remove from the Game", and turning it into "Exile". This created, in effect, a "super graveyard" that was meant to be the new untouchable.

Then the Eldrazi came along and put-paid to that. Yes, I know that cards with abilities like Suspend still interacted with Exile / Removed from the Game, but those were exceptions, not the norm.

But what does that have to do with the Top?

Well, finish whatever bottle you were drinking, because Future Sight is not only the name of a set, but also of a card! (And Magus of the Future to assure you do finish it.)

This ability to extend the hand into other places can include the top of the deck. Which is where Miracles lay.

And being able to manipulate your hand like that? On the cheap? Well, here I am, Pondering the ramifications of this extension. And I don't like it.

Neither does Wizards if their bannings are anything to go by.

The biggest problem I see here is that there are more and more ways to manipulate your library and even to treat the graveyard and Exile as part of your hand to a limited degree. Sensei's Divining Top only became a larger and larger piece of this problem as other cards came into being. By its self? It's a nice early version of Ponder which came with an Isochron Scepter attached to it.

But that's the nature of Combo. Even the most innocuous of cards taken without any other input, can explode into some uncontrollable Force of Nature due to unforeseen circumstances. And in this case, Sensei's Divining Top was the Eye of the Storm that enabled massively powerful decks to fire off with alarming regularity. Taking it out was the only real choice that Wizards had.

Lessons learned, I suppose. Though I won't be talking about certain other bannings at this point in time.

And here is my demo deck:

CounterTopSpinning

Casual berryjon

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Under ideal circumstances, it will lock down the early game long enough for Ral or the Kraken or the Bonfire to swing for the win. Oh, who am I kidding! Your casual table will stomp you into the ground once they realize that you have unlimited counterspells ready to fire off at a moments notice.

I'll see you all next week, when I talk about one of the most egregious violations of the Color Pie, and why it happened.

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!