Pattern Recognition #220 - The Errors of Logic

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berryjon

2 December 2021

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Hello everyone! This is Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series as written by myself, berryjon. I am something of an Old Fogey who has been around the block quite a few times where Magic is concerned, as as such, I use this series to talk about the various aspects of this game, be it deck design, card construction, mechanics chat, in-universe characters and history. Or whatever happens to cross my mind this week. Please, feel free to dissent in the comments below the article, add suggestions or just plain correct me! I am a Smart Ass, so I can take it.

And hello again everyone! This week's subject came about as the inheritance of a discussion that occurred many, many moons ago. It was a talk about mana acceleration, and multi-coloured decks and Commander / Brawl, because the card in question started out as a Brawl-printing only card, and quickly made such huge waves that it was seen as the third vital card to put into any Commander deck - right behind your Commander, and Sol Ring.

Let's talk about.... Arcane Signet

This card was the real reason why the Brawl decks (for the most part) sold out, and while some of that can be attributed to two of the Brawl Commanders themselves, it was this card that, for the longest time, drove sales. I remember one of the FLGS' offering $5 for one in the weeks after its release. It was just that valued and valuable.

So, what was the reason for this? Well, to put it simply, it was a cheap mana accelerator that wasn't dependent on colour in terms of input or output, so it could literally go into any deck and do work. And given that before this guy came along, you had the Signets, like Boros Signet, which were already considered Commander Staples, being put into the pre-constructed decks, or enters-tapped cards like Coldsteel Heart or Fire Diamond, or a creature like Gold Myr or had the drawback of not knowing what colours you were getting, like Fellwar Stone.

What I'm trying to say is that Arcane Signet hit a very solid space in mana-rock design that hadn't been filled, and did it without any drawbacks whatsoever. It was, to put it kindly, just a little too good. But this card wasn't created in a Void, rather there was some logic behind its creation. And today, I want to go over two aspects to that logic, and how they conjoined into a perfectly reasonable card - on paper - that didn't quite work out as well as it should have. Or worked out too well.

The first comparison I want to make starts with another Commander-only card, Commander's Sphere. For those of you not in the know, or can't properly cursor over the hyperlink as you're on mobile, the Sphere is a cost Artifact that can tap for one mana of any Colour in your Commander's identity. So, Sliver Queen as your Commander would allow you to tap the Sphere for one of any of , but not . Funny thing, anything that references your Commander's colour finds nothing when your Commander is colourless, which was really annoying when I built a Traxos, Scourge of Kroog deck.

Right, with that digression out of the way, the Commander's Sphere can also be sacrificed to draw a card, meaning that even if you draw it late in the game, it's a card draw. Of note, you can still sacrifice it after you have tapped it for mana, something that makes this card pretty good, all things considered.

But with all this in mind, how does this lead to Arcane Signet?

Well, one of the ways that cards get created during design and development is by taking an existing card and adding or removing something that would make the card better, or more focused. Now, while this can create things that are Strictly Better or Strictly Worse - and I wrote an article about that subject a while ago - wherein a card can obsolete another card simply by being better than it, even if the new card is newer than the older one!

But sometimes, a card gets a little tweak to it and the card's cost changes. Compare Thrill of Possibility and Seize the Spoils. One costs more, but also generates a Treasure token in the process. Slightly different effects for a different cost, even if the final amount of mana spend evens out.

Here is where the first mistake for Arcane Signet happened. Take Commander's Sphere and remove the line of text saying "Sacrifice this card: Draw a Card". What you're left with is a card that is strictly worse than the original Sphere, but when you compare this to something like Moss Diamond, this is basically paying to allow for your artifact to enter the battlefield untapped, as well as being relevant to all colours of your Commander, rather than just . At this point, this hypothetical Arcane Signet would be ... Brawl legit, as Brawl was supposed to be Standard Commander, and having something to encourage players to move to Commander wouldn't be out of place.

Instead, the people at Wizards didn't see that, or maybe they did, but they didn't consider the old common mana rocks to be relevant to Commander any more (until they did, and they got a reprint in Commander Legends!) And what they did do was think to themselves, "Hey, we just took an ability off of Commander's Sphere, we had better reduce the cost appropriately. Down to would be too much, so why not instead?"

And people agreed, giving us Arcane Signet.

But there is also another line of logic that converges on this design.

There is a curious line of design that pops up from time to time in Magic, one that had to be pointed out by you, my nice and glorious audience. And that is there seems to be a small theory that anything a land can do, a cost Artifact can as well. The people who revealed this to me showed how Mossfire Valley got rarity-shifted down to Common and printed as Gruul Signet.

And when you look at it in these terms, what is Arcane Signet, but a Command Tower turned into an Artifact?

I thought about that, but I mean, sure, I see the pattern now, I recognize it. But I can't, for the life of me, figure out why. Sure. Copper Myr is a Forest, Fellwar Stone is an Exotic Orchard, Kalideostone is a Crystal Quarry. The Talisman Cycle, with Talisman of Creativity for example, is Shivan Reef.

What is it about that makes it so appealing to this logic? Or rather, why that number?

My first gut reaction is that mana acceleration at is both too good, and when it does happen it is supposed to be in the realm of . Cards like Llanowar Elves for additional mana straight away, or Adventurous Impulse to go grab another land or something else to work with.

Cards like Sol Ring, which costs or the Moxen () or cards like Mana Vault, all of which are the results of early game design lack of experience and the general immaturity of the game as a whole.

But as time went on, it seemed that seemed to be the 'right' cost for mana acceleration. Not to quick to cause explosive growth, growth that was and is well known for. And not so slow that it becomes too useless. seems to be the point where it becomes reliable, with cards like Cultivate.

I want to look back earlier this year to Strixhaven, and the card Environmental Sciences as well. Here, we were given a Sorcery that was also colourless that allowed you to go fetch a basic land from your library to put it into your hand, as well as gain some incidental life. This means that even this year, we see in Standard, a card that only has a cost of that can be used to fetch a land from your deck. Sure, it's not literal acceleration, but it is mana fixing. And that extra two life can really count.

But that doesn't actually answer the question I have. Why Artifacts at ?

Doing some hypothesizing here, but what if there was a thought about tying the cost of the nama rock to the number of colours it could produce? I mean, obviously not, but when I look at Mardu Banner for one, I can't help but feel that might have been a thought at some point before it got dismissed.

Yet while I know it's not right, I feel there is still something there worth looking at.

There is a piece of information about the game that shows up every so often, but never really gets looked at because it's so ubiquitous, and really, it's mostly trivia. Did you know that the most common decks are Two-Color? Followed by a close tie between Mono- and Three- colored decks, with Five Color then Four Colour in last place?

Well, as I said, it's Trivia, but it does cast a side-eye toward how sets are designed. But with the notion that most decks will be dual coloured, wouldn't that mean that dual-coloured sources of mana be more viable?

Or rather, when you only need to worry about two colours, having a mana rock at means that you can fix your mana with just two lands, and it didn't matter what they were because you only needed two colours and even if you were stuck with two lands of the same color, a simple fix keeps you in the game.

And if you're running a tri-colour deck, having Arcane Signet at means that you can have mana sources of A and B in your opening hand, and use the Signet to fill in for C until another source comes along.

Logic. Logical. There are quite a few reasons why you would want that card at that particular mana value, and these are all great reasons. It doesn't help any that this card is still amazingly good. It's a must-include in practically every Commander deck, even mono- as it's still colourless mana acceleration.

But in spite all of this, is the sum of the reasoning more than the sum of the parts? Are all these reasons for Arcane Signet as it is good enough? Or Too Good.

Comment below. And any other cards you think are the result of slight changes that makes then too good or too bad?

Thanks for reading, and comment in the comments below. Join me next week when I talk about something else. What, I don't know yet!

Actually. I do know. And it's December's Video Update! Woo-hoo!

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!

This article is a follow-up to Pattern Recognition #219 - From the Hand The next article in this series is Pattern Recognition #221 - SING!

plakjekaas says... #1

Environmental Sciences, the Studies thing you linked is a pauper green tron deck which does not find you a land and gains you life for ^^'

December 3, 2021 10:26 a.m.

plakjekaas says... #2

And then actually on topic; I dislike cards specifically printed for Commander that are as broadly applicable as Arcane Signet.

I remember when I just started out in the format, and the Commander Guru at my LGS who had over 25 decks, explained that you should build a Commander deck by taking Sol Ring, Sensei's Divining Top, and then pick a legend to build around.

I never followed that advice anyway, but the idea of must-include no-downside staple cards that you'd need a good reason NOT to include and therefor, logically, should play in every deck, goes against the spirit of Commander for me. In 2016 when I built my first deck, the format was explained to me as a format to give your unplayed cards a home after they rotate out of Standard. With the inclusion of more bland one-card-fits-all, Arcane Signet the lead example, but the free spells of Ikoria Commander closely following, less and less slots remain to play the cards that never had a home in other formats, and commander becomes more and more its own rotating format with new sets accompanying every Standard set.

Those cards make it hard to be original, which I think is a detriment to the game, or at least against the spirit of the format.

December 3, 2021 11:09 a.m.

berryjon says... #3

The idea of "Generic Good Cards" is something that hurts the game because it hongeonizes decks. It's why Golo finally got banned for one. But yes, the Signet is firmly in the ranks of 'Generic good card' without any doubt.

December 4, 2021 5:50 p.m.

The great thing about commander is you don't have to play the "must play" cards in the format. In fact, it's often a good idea not to add them, in order to retain the power level that you're after.

If playing jank fresh-out-of-standard cards is your jam, the format hasn't changed one bit in letting you run those.

But if you're after power, and winning most of your games, then getting mad at generically good cards is odd. After all, most if not all other non-rotating formats--competitive at heart--have must-play cards (although I will say most are colored at least) as well.

December 4, 2021 5:59 p.m.

plakjekaas says... #5

The problem is, if you choose not to play these cards, you fall behind in pace and consistency compared to every deck who does play them. Like playing a Standard deck in a Modern tournament, yes you're allowed to do so, but it's unlikely you're going to have as much fun as everyone else, because you're not playing in the same league. And if you have a playgroup that collectively decides to not play cards like that, that's great, but as soon as you'll play random people at an LGS, you'll find out how far behind you are, because no matter how bland and boring, these cards are powerful. More tutors, more ramp, more bombs played a lot earlier than you're supposed to, and it's impressive how fast you win.

Every once in a while, people in my playgroup find a deck somewhere that they haven't updated since 2017, and think: "hey, let's play this again, this used to be fun" and within 3 turns, we find out how much faster, more consistent and more powerful the decks are that include cards printed for Commander from the last 2-3 years.

And the big issue is, this process is not reversible. The cards are printed, they're out there now, and they're not all getting banned like Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, or Sol Ring would have long be gone. You can either adapt, or be hopelessly outdated and sit there with your turn 10 deck, surrounded by decks that finish the game on turn 6 in random pods at local gamestores and MagicFest side events.

I understand the power creep sells packs, and selling packs keeps the game existing, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it, I'll begrudgingly join the hype train to not fall behind.

December 5, 2021 4:51 a.m.

plakjekaas the thing about commander is you can also show up to the Magic Fest or whatever with a T3 Thoracle-Consultation deck and stomp all the players with such "efficient decks" as you were talking about.

Commander is an inherently broken format, because we pretend that it's not competitive/that decks can only be so strong--because otherwise every deck would be cEDH. I don't think the issue is in the cards; the issue is in the format.

I'm sure you can ask to get casual games in in your LGS with less powerful decks--many people have them--but why would you expect anything less than as much consistency as possible if there are prizes on the line? That's like playing a modern Dryads deck and getting salty that you're being trashed by Hammertime.

December 5, 2021 2:29 p.m.

plakjekaas says... #7

I never mentioned prizes on the line, the trend is there even outside competitive events. When even casual games feel like you brought a Dryad tribal deck to a competitive Modern tournament, a lot of your options for creativity are invalidated because you're not able to play your 6drop on turn 4 and have to dedicate bigger and bigger parts of your deck just to keep up with the pace that hyperefficient cards like Arcane Signet and Jeweled Lotus bring to the table. Commander being the flagship non-competitive format for casual and enjoyable games, but at the same time being homogenized by must-include cards that are only balanced by the ludicrous price tag they come with on the secondary market and therfore not that widespread, feels to me like an unhealthy direction to go, and I would prefer less of those one-card-fits-all-decks developments going forward, than we have seen in the past two years. It's not bothering me enough to stop playing, but it does worry me.

December 5, 2021 3:25 p.m.

miracleHat says... #8

For EDH specifically, 2 mana for artifact ramp is strong for following reasons:
can be cast off turn 1 mana positive mana rocks (Sol Ring etc.)
0 mana rocks (Mana Crypt)
multi mana lands (Gemstone Caverns and Ancient Tomb)
and other general fast mana spells (Dark Ritual / Simian Spirit Guide).

Also inclusionary is their preferred synergy with slower turn 1 ramp (Birds of Paradise/Deathrite Shaman) - both Arcane Signet and Gruul Signet result in (potential for) 2 extra mana to spend, whereas 3 mana only results in 1 extra mana to spend. This assumes turn 1 land/mana and turn 2 mana/spell. This can easily result in a Night's Whisper, Demonic Tutor, or Diabolic Intent (and any other 2 cmc non-black card I cannot recall), 2 lands, and 2 mana spells, all by turn 2.

December 8, 2021 5:43 p.m.

lagotripha says... #9

The decision not to just print 'mana of any colour' baffles me. Its the same effect and would have let it be printed in modern horizons.

Referencing the commander has some really cool posibilities, something that added colourless or any colour to cast your commander or activate its abilities would have been great, but this isn't that.

Referencing the colour wheel without giving effects specific to the colour wheel just doesn't make sense. It exists to create differentiation between decks, but somewhere in the design phase that has been lost here. Mana of any colour is the same effect in the format and would have been useful out of it.

I'm guessing that there was a way cooler card on the design table that they kept tweaking until we got this thing because of time crunch.

December 10, 2021 4 p.m.

plakjekaas says... #10

lagotripha don't forget that, due to inclusion in the Brawl precons, Arcane Signet was Standard legal as long as Throne of Eldraine was. That is most likely the reason it's not worded as a Manalith that's cheaper, because that card would have been too powerful for the Standard format.

December 11, 2021 2:38 a.m.

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