Pattern Recognition #128 - Split

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

24 October 2019

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to Pattern Recognition! This is TappedOut.net's longest running article series. In it, I aim to bring to you each week a new article about some piece of Magic, be it a card, a mechanic, a deck, or something more fundamental or abstract. I am something of an Old Fogey and part-time Smart Ass, so I sometimes talk out my ass. Feel free to dissent or just plain old correct me! I also have a Patreon if you feel like helping out.

So, Dual cards. Now, I'm not going to talk about the other CCG with that name, but rather I want to talk a little bit about Throne of Eldraine's barely original mechanic - Adventure - and the history that it has had in the game and why it's actually a good thing to implement. Of course, it's not without its flaws, but nothing is perfect.

First introduced in the Invasion Block, Split Cards were the cause of some player confusion when images were accidentally released of certain print sheets before the actual rules came down. Why were there two cards in the space of one? Was this a placeholder while Wizards tried to figure out what card they wanted to put in that spot?

No. They were exactly what they looked like. Split Cards were two cards printed onto the space of a single card, where a single card for the purposes of deck building, but when you cast them, you could use them as either card.

Let me clarify, despite these being a regular fixture of Magic by now. Let's say that I was playing back in 2000, and my draft cards included Assault / Battery. What as I to do with this card? What could I do with it?

Well, here's the thing, Assault / Battery is exactly what you see. It is a Red Sorcery that for , you could deal 2 damage to any target. It is also at the same time a Green Sorcery that for , you could create a 3/3 Elephant token.

Split Cards, as they were first introduced, were a case of a spell that was Either the first card, Or the second one. You could cast it as Assault or as Battery, but NOT as both. You had to choose when you cast the card.

These cards, printed in Invasion and Apocalypse, represented two sides of the growing alliances between the colours at the time. I have praised these sets before in how they integrated each pair of colours in a way that Ravnica could only build up from. Invasion showed off Allied colours who were willing to share a card, but not go so far as to actually be a multi-coloured or Gold card. They shared space, but not yet fully committed to working together.

In Apocalypse, this moved to the enemy colours, where the difference between what, say and would or could do was as plain as Night / Day.

And so this experiment actually went over pretty well, once the initial confusion was overcome. Players like the options that Split Cards provided, and Wizards added it to their repertoire of options to bring back in the future should the set support it.

The next experiment didn't go over so well.

Kamigawa. Oh, Kamigawa. So many things you did right overshadowed by the colossal missteps that you also had. So let me talk to you all about the Kamigawa Flip Cards. These were a set of cards that first appeared in Betrayers of Kamigawa, and represented how someone who was utterly generic - such as your run of the mill Cunning Bandit  ^Flip - could grow to become someone or something Legendary. Like Azamuki, Treachery Incarnate  ^Flip.

As part of the Legendary theme of the block, showing the creation of a Legend was something I can completely understand Wizards looking into doing. How they did it however, was limited by the technology at the time. I'm just going to skip ahead here and point out that at the time, Wizards couldn't print modern Flip cards, like those found in Innistrad, or Ixalan. They had to make due with the space on the front of the card to try and get the idea across.

So to do that, they literally turned the card upside down. You would cast the card as normal, then when the relevant conditions were met, you would flip the card around so that the Legendary side was upright.

However, this was also the first time that the serious limitations to these sorts of cards became unavoidable, one that I will address later on in the article. At least the artwork on these cards showed (for the most part) one becoming the other.

And naturally, to one up this mechanic, Saviours of Kamigawa introduced a cycle of rare Legendary creatures that were Flip cards as well. Except that when they flipped, they didn't go from Creature to Legendary creature, but from Legendary Ceature to Legendary Enchantment. These cards all worked on the principles of their relevant colour. The one flipped when enough creatures died, the one, Erayo, Soratami Ascendant  ^Flip, is banned in Commander, but my favourite one is Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant  ^Flip that pairs quite nicely with cards like Worship.

If only because I'm a growing Commander player, and I enjoy pulling out the weird and the unusual at my table.

Now we come to where Split cards really start to shine. Like pretty much everything else it touched, from dual lands to Legends, Ravnica: City of Guilds and the two followup sets made everything better. In this case, the Split Cards got an overhaul to match the themes of the set, and to help reinforce the notion that Ravnica was learning from the previous gold block, Invasion.

In this case, our Split cards only came out in Dissension, two cycles at Common and Uncommon where each side represented a Guild and something they did. Each card had a central colour to it - for example, Hide / Seek is centered on while the Rare cycle focused on enemy colours, the Uncommon cycle worked with Allied colours. So Supply / Demand was centered on , and was shared with the allied colours of and , while the rare Hide / Seek used and with the same base.

These cards are interesting from a Vorthos and thematic point of view in that they showed that under the Guild's politics and general not-niceness to each other, there were core things that they could agree on, a thing that was touched on in Return to Ravnica, and again with the Bonds from War of the Spark.

Moving on, we have Planar Chaos! Well, there's nothing new here, but I am including it for the sake of completion. Here, only got in the game, with Boom / Bust, Rough / Tumble and Dead / Gone. One is a reliable option in Land Destruction, another is an asymmetric boardsweeper, and the last allows you to Unsummon a creature.

What, thought can't bounce creatures? Well, it can! But only in Planar Chaos, where everything is the exception and not the rule.

Now we come to the best of this style. The Innistrad Block, among other successes - like not being New Phyrexia - introduced the concept of the Dual Faced Card, or DFC. This is a card that, unlike what happened with Kamigawa's attempt, could have a back printed to it that wasn't the traditional back of every other Magic card in the game. There was a full card on the traditional front, and when the conditions were met, the whole card flipped over, instead of rotating around like in Kamigawa.

Now, this was also the purview of the Werewolves in the block, giving that tribe a unique mechanic to support themselves with. In addition, we were introduced to our first Flip'Walker, Garruk Relentless  ^Flip and his post-Liliana Garruk, the Veil-Cursed  ^Flip state, which has lasted until now.

I will come back later when I explain why Split Cards have problems, and how DFC's fixed that. But for now, we go back to Ravnica.

Return to Ravnica, like pretty much everything else about that block, tried to do what Ravnica did, but better. Results... varied. But when they came to replicating the Split Cards, they kept the same basic theme of each half of the card being from two different Guilds with a common colour between them. But, this time they addressed the single most common source of player confusion, that you can't cast both sides at once.

To whit, Wizards introduced the Fuse Mechanic, whereby you could, for the first time, cast both sides of a Split card - as long as you could pay all the relevant mana costs. So, for example, if you pay for Armed / Dangerous, the target creature gets +1/+1, Double Strike, and a Lure effect for the turn.

But only from the Hand. You can't Fuse if you try to cast the card from your graveyard with Backdraft Hellkite or from exile because of Thief of Sanity. It's a slight limitation, but one that I think doesn't really detract from the utility of the cards.

But the important part of Fuse is that it cemented into the minds of designers and players that Split cards should not be some sort of logically "Exclusive Or". There there could be a way to have both sides of the card, which will take some time to make its way through the development cycle of Wizards.

Until we get to that point, I'm going to jump around a bit and point out that Dual Faced Cards are becoming more and more common as time goes on. We got them in Shadows over Innistrad, and Eldritch Moon, where we finally got the implementation of the B.F.M with the introduction of the Meld mechanic, where Wizards experimented with combining two DFC's into one larger creature. This was an experiment that Wizards felt was a failure because of the necessity of having two specific cards out at once and the general implementation of the mechanic.

They tried again with the Augment mechanic in Unhinged, which worked out much better.

But we also got the Flip'walkers from Origins. Representing the initial states, and first time planeswalking of the then-five core Planeswalkers to the game. Moving from Creature to Planeswalker, they along with the Shadows block, made it perfectly clear that both sides of a DFC didn't have to have the same card type.

This was confirmed when we got to Ixalan, and we had cards that transformed from Artifacts and Enchantments into Lands!

So Dual Faced cards, they could actually be different card types, and it would work.

But right before Ixalan, we had Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation. Here, we get back to the idea of having two distinct cards on a single piece of cardboard. In this case, we get the Aftermath mechanic. In this, you cast the card as per normal for it's non-Aftermath side. Then, once it goes into the graveyard, the other half of the card, the Aftermath itself, becomes castable from the graveyard.

For example, Dusk / Dawn, which did amazing work in my Slow Grow League, is castable from the hand as Dusk / Dawn, and only as Dusk / Dawn. It's a board wipe that hits large creatures, something that White is very good at doing. Once it resolves, the card becomes Dusk / Dawn, which will allow you to return a whole bunch of creatures from your Graveyard to your hand, as long as their power is 2 or less. Hey, you know what has 2 or less power? Wall of Stolen Identity!

Aftermaths were, and are, an excellent card, as the two halves of the card were thematically linked, often showing the same subject in a sort of 'before and after' situation. I would love to see them again in a set that supports the theme.

And now, almost at the end, we come to Return to Return to Ravnica. No, you read that right. For our third outing on the Ecumenopolis Plane, we once again got Split Cards. However, instead of representing points where two Guild could overlap in their own way, each Split card represented a single Guild. The first half was a card that cost Hybrid Mana, representing something that either colour of the Guild could do by itself, while the second half showed off what the two colours could do in conjunction with each other. Now, while not the best of examples, Warrant / Warden has small side that allows you to bounce a creature, while putting them together allows you to create a fairly powerful creature token.

It's back, it's not Fuse, but it has its place to work, and it's easier on Commander Players with their deck building. Oh, and I suppose Brawl players for the next year or so.

But that now leaves us with the latest round of Split Cards. ADVENTURE!

This for of Split Card has two aspects to it. First is a Creature, which can be cast as normal like it was any other creature on any other day. Alternatively, you can cast the spell as a Sorcery - Adventure, which allows you to get a mostly synergistic Sorcery effect, but when the card resolves, it doesn't go into your graveyard, but rather into Exile. From there, you can then cast the creature half, but not the Adventure half and put it into play as normal.

Adventures are something different, but as you may have already had your eyes glaze over by now, not exactly new. They're like reverse Aftermaths in their own way, going in one direction instead of the other, and I think it works!

Of course, I feel pity for all the people who play Adventures, and then get the attention of all the players from Time Spiral and Battle for Zendikar who see cards in Exile and perk right up, because that's a resource they can exploit for their own gain. Like Pull from Eternity! or Oracle of Dust!

So, let me run down the benefits of Split Cards of (most) stripes. First, and foremost is that you are getting two cards for the value of one. You might not be able to get full use out of the card, but much Modal Spells, what you're paying for is the options and not the whole totality of the card. Now, some cards do allow you to play both sides, but then that becomes an opportunity cost, one that may or may not require spreading the casting of the two sides of the cards over different turns.

Split Cards also work out in Limited formats by enabling wider colour options, pulling out cards that can be used in a wide variety of colours and decks without acting as a limiter in the same thing.

But Split cards are not without their problems. The first is perhaps the single biggest issue, and that is one of space. Simply put, a Split Card has less than half the space for text than a single card does, and that severely restricts what it can or cannot do. The Adventure cards from Throne of Eldraine, I find to be particularly heinous in that regard, with the Adventure itself being limited to only the most simple and basic of effects, while the creature is also sorely limited.

Aftermaths, while fun, have to work around the back half being cast from the graveyard, as well as the odd choice to spin the Aftermath side 90 degrees clockwise, instead of counterclockwise on traditional Split cards.

Kamigawa? Oh, don't even get me started! That they've been replaced with Dual Faced Cards in the totality, I would actually love to see a return to Kamigawa with that new technology. Having a full body for a card on each side of said card maximizes their utility. Of course, this does raise the issue of drafting or playing with a card when you don't have opaque sleeves, but that's a solvable issue thanks to the inclusion of the check-cars that can be put in place of a dual faced card in the deck in order to avoid the revealing of information you don't want.

Meld was a failure, but the concept is sound. I think it might actually be something worth including in a precontstructed deck, like Commander, where the inclusion of the relevant cards becomes something that can be accounted for in the deck building process. Give it a try, Wizards! I promise I'll play it in the Slow Grow League for that year!

Speaking of Commander and Brawl, Split Cards are considered to be in all colours on a card for the purposes of colour identity. Thus, Refuse / Cooperate is , while Beck / Call is . Which is why when I sort out my cards, they go into the larger colour selection - Beck / Call into my slice of Bant cards, rather than Simic or Azorious.

Dual Faced Cards and Split Cards are both considered to be Deciduous by Wizards, in that they are mechanics and card abilities that can and will come back when the set is right for it, but not forced into every set. And I'm alright with this, despite the drawbacks. They provide utility and options without compromising the overall value of the card, which is something that I personally enjoy.

I look forward to the next printing of this mechanic, whatever it may be.

So, what's your favorite version of Split Cards? Regular? Fuse? Aftermath? Adventure? DFCs?

Join me next week when I enjoy the hell out of the joke that Bake into a Pie gives me.

Until then, 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!