Pattern Recognition #66 - Combo Creatures

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

3 May 2018

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Hello everyone! I am berryjon, your resident Old Fogey. Welcome back to Pattern Recognition, Tappedout.net's most regular article series - barring the occasional week off for work or just because I'm out of energy. I endeavor to provide insightful, thought provoking and educational material for you all. Or at least a convenient target for all of you to aim your Mizzium Mortars at.

I'm sorry, but there are to be no pictures today. My chosen subject this week just kept putting my brain into a Deep Freeze, and enough puttering around was done that I couldn't make any real progress or headway. So, this article is a little bit of desperation as I run myself into the clock.

And that meant going to the Gatherer, and hitting the almighty and Omniscient "Random Card" button. I mean, it can't be that bad, right? Last time I did so for you guys, it got me Arena Athlete and I think I did fine enough by that.

So, let's see what Wizards wants me to talk about this week:

Voracious Cobra.

Oh.

Well, this is certainly something I don't think I would have come up with by myself. And in all honestly, this is actually a pretty nifty card when you break it down. So let's do just exactly that! And I do apologize in advance. Looking back over this, I badly meander a lot, so I do a poor job in a few places. I tried to fix them, but once again, time was running out on me.

Voracious Cobra is an Uncommon card from the Invasion Block. Now, I've talked a bit about how highly I think of that block in general, and its multi-coloured aspects in specific. And here, we see one of the basic ways in which Wizards went about this back in 1999/2000. Ah, for those younger days.

At its core, Voracious Cobra is the combination of two mechanics, one from each relevant colour on the same card. Yet it was also given a casting cost that was literally those two put onto each other. Imagine a hypothetical creature in Green that costs that is a 2/2 with the ability "Whenever this Creature deals combat damage to another Creature, destroy that creature."

Doesn't exist, sadly. I checked. At the time, I mean. Daggerback Basilisk meets these criteria, but was printed years later in Rise of the Eldrazi.

But still, take Daggerback Basilisk and cast Reflexes on it. You now have, effectively, a Voracious Cobra.

This is what Wizards did at the time with Invasion. Two-for-one cards, and in allied colours. got Raging Kavu for example, or Yavimaya Kavu. gave us Charging Troll and Horned Cheetah.

Although I have no idea how you get a Bear with Lifelink costing more than its component parts at the time. Grizzly Bears plus Spirit Link? I think someone dropped the ball, as that one should be then as now.

Of course, my favourite example of this combination style came from Apocalypse, in which Mystic Snake was printed. Counterspell plus Grizzly Bears (with Flash to make it work)? All for the combined cost? Sign me up! Sure, enemy colours, but what can you do about that?

But back to Voracious Snake. I go to say, the combination of the Basilik-Touch with First Stike is pretty potent. Sure, it's still a card with a converted mana cost of four, but having a 2/2 that can reliably kill other creatures like that is something to be respected. Sure, it's horribly overcosted in general for the current meta and power level, but I'm also alright with that. It's two cards stapled together as an experiment, and it worked.

So let's work with that. I looked at all the non-Legendary creatures in the Invasion Block, and there's ... huh. Only 52? Weird. I could have sworn there were more, but then I must be thinking about cards like Ana Disciple that are a single colour, but have off-colour activation abilities.

You know, looking at that list in more detail, I'm beginning to think I am wrong on some points here. Yes, we see combination creatures that are effectively a creature plus an Aura, but they are in a distinct minority.

Instead, I see cards like Razorfin Hunter, the bridge creature between Prodigal Sorcerer and Prodigal Pyromancer.

I see Gaea's Skyfolk, which combines the cost of a Grizzly Bear with the acceptance that for , Flying is so cheap that you can roll it into the cost of the creature like this without a problem.

I see Goblin Legionnaire, which is a creature that can Shock you, or turn into a low-powered Healing Salve]].

I see an allied colour cycle of creautres with Protection from their mutual enemy - such as with Shivan Zombie.

I see the Karoo Creatures, like Sawtooth Loon that bounced other creatures back into their owner's hands.

But the idea of combining two cards into one is something I honestly thought was more common than what I'm seeing. Now, I can't exactly turn around and say that any creature with in the cost is a combo-card with Reflexes any more than I can say that any card with and First Strike has an inbuilt Lance.

You know, just for giggles, let me search for something.... Red and White Creatures with Double Strike, and a cost of .

And what do we get, but Boros Swiftblade. I... uh.... Well, that's a thing. Certainly doubling down on First Strike there. Or is it now the Doubling Season for such things? Sorry. Rambling here. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Trying to get this article back on track for cards that are "This Card" plus "That Card" equals "Interesting Card".

Combo-cards, as I seem to have started calling them, form an interesting base concept in Magic. Multi-coloured cards are here to stay, and unless we get a set that is aggressively mono-coloured in a way not seen since the days before multi-coloured cards, we will keep getting them in each new set.

Hrm, that makes me wonder what those cards are going to be for Core 2019 in a few months. But that's getting ahead of myself.

The thing about multi-coloured cards is that they exist not at their own thing, but rather as the point where the two meet in concept and execution. Or three colours, but let's not go overboard here. When I talked everyone to death when I went over all the Keywords, I pointed out some patterns involved. That being, where colours met, those creatures tended to have the relevant Keywords to help act as the glue between those two colours.

Pardon me while I glare at Boros Swiftblade for the purity of its design in this regard.

And yet, these types of cards, thanks to the colour wheel, can rarely be anything other than two colours. For example, the Voracious Cobra is not something you can actually do without combining the two colors. This card cannot be done in mono green or mono red. This is not something that either of the two colors can access on their own, only together.

On the other hand, Alara Reborn did interesting things with the combination of Hybrid Mana and regular mana. Take, for example, Messenger Falcons. will do Bird creatures with Flying forever, thanks to the colour wheel and tribal measures. But the in the mana cost brings to mind the creature Wistful Selkie, which is in of itself, the point where Green and Blue meet to draw a card - Wirewood Savage and Merchant of Secrets.

Or perhaps Marisi's Twinclaws? Green provides the creature type and the power/toughness, but the brings to the table Double-strike (I'm still glaring at you, Boros Swiftblade), something not fond in Green, but is in either or .

Now, just to be clear, the idea behind Hybrid Mana is that these cards exist where the two colours overlap. has Flying for example. can have Protection from Blue on Mudbrawler Raiders or the more subtle but no less powerful Vexing Shusher. You know, I think is getting the short end fo the stick here.

But the idea of just slapping two cards together and calling it a day? It just seems so lackluster. I mean, sure, when they were first experimenting back in Invasion, it made sense. You're not trying to make things so foreign that the players can't understand them. And combining two different cards onto a single creature that is both, you can help new players bridge the concept gap as to what multi-coloured really means.

Yeah, even I can tell I'm talking out of my ass at this point, so I'll try to open up the door to further discussion; When you see a card that is "X + Y", what do you think of it?

Until next time, 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!