Pattern Recognition #249 - Specialize

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

28 July 2022

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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 with that regular introduction out of the way, it's time for today's subject. You see, I have no real love for Alchemy, and if it died tomorrow, I wouldn't miss it at all. Historic is something I can live with as it represents a time limitation on the part of the makers of Arena.

But while Arena may have things I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, it still behooves me to at least know and understand the mechanics that they introduce. Even as I deride them. And what I'm going to talk about today is something very recent that I don't actually reject out of hand, as I've seen it done before, in other systems.

Let's talk Spcialization.

This mechanic is unique to Arena, and certain Legendary Creatures therein, found only (so far) in the Historic build of the Commander-centric Baldur's Gate set. Which is a very long winded way of saying these cards are only found on Arena, and are not in your local stores.

These cards were chosen because they were all cards that invoked the "Choose a Background" mechanic from the actual set, but given that there are no Backgrounds in Alchemy Horizons: Baldur's Gate, this was an attempt to mimic the colour-chosing aspect of the Background with a digital only flair. There are also two creatures with Specialize that are unique to this set.

In effect, when you chose one of these cards for your Historic Brawl deck, you have a creature with a single colour. But you are prompted by Arena to choose another colour - or even the same color - that your Commander can Specialize into. This means that you have a one or two-colour deck, with all the advantages and disadvantages of each. From there, you can build your deck as normal.

For example, you can choose to have your commander be Ambergris, Citadel Agent, and when you do, you must choose any colour - including to be your additional color. If you choose to double-down on her colour, she Specializes into Ambergris, Agent of Destruction, while if you wanted in your deck, she would only be able to Specialize into Ambergris, Agent of Balance, and not the Agent of Destruction.

You may then cast your Commander as normal, and it enters the battlefield as normal. Some have EtB effects, some don't, but they all have Specialize as an activated ability. And Specialze [Cost] reads: "Pay [cost], choose a color, discard a card of that color or associated basic land type: This creature perpetually specializes into that color. Activate only as a sorcery."

When you Specialize, your Commander transforms - much like how Werewolves transform in that they don't leave the battlefield - into the Specialized version you chose. Most of these creatures have an effect that reads "When this creature Specializes..." do a thing. They also gain keyword(s), and have their power and toughness changes. Often times, the basic ability on the unspecialized card, and their ability when Specialized synergize, but not always. In addition, the creature's casting cost changes, adding a single pip of the Specialization's color.

However, I did miss something important. Specialization isn't just a Historic Brawl mechanic, it's also a Historic one, meaning you can put them into any of your Historic decks and play then without the color restrictions (unless, again, it's in Brawl, in which case the additional cost to Specialize implicitly require you to Specialize into one of your Commander's colors).

All these transformation effects are Perpetual, which is another electronic-only mechanic that allows for aspects of a card to be permanently changed in all zones, from changed casting costs, to altered power or toughness or changes to the text of a card. This means that if your Specialized creature dies, or goes to the Command Zone, or to your hand, it stays Specialized. That means that its altered casting cost stays the same, the name of the card stays changed, and for all intents and purposes, it is the Specialized card, and will be that way until the end of the game. The exception is Lukamina, Moon Druid, who unspecialzes when she dies.

Now, I'm not gong to go over all of these versions, as there are 19 creatures that can Specialize, each with 5 upgrades. That's too many, even for me. So I suggest that if you're interested, you can click on that link. Then, clicking on each creature will bring you to a new page where you can hover over the alternate prints to see what the various Specializations do.

But now that I've told you what it is, let's talk about what it does.

In its intended use as a Commander in Historic (but not regular) Brawl, Specialization allows for elegant customization of both your colour choice and from there how your Commander works. It's not perfect by any means, and a lot of these Commanders are definitely not powerhouses in any sense of the word. Useful? Sure. Something that you can roll up the ranks in? Not well. But it gets the job done in any colour combination, with some degree of utility somewhere that can help you out.

Which is the point, really. Partner was hideously overpowered, such that Partner With and Background both massively dialed back the effects and potential for breakage, either by limiting who the Partner could be, or by controlling the colours involved. Specialize is limited to 1 or two colours as a Commander, and that's just fine. It works.

Now, I also mentioned that I wasn't completely opposed to this sort of mechanic at the start of the article because I had seen it elsewhere before. So, where you might be wondering? Well, actually in a paper CCG or two of all things!

The first is the game I love despite its horrific and glaring flaws. Namely, the Star Trek Customizable Card Game, published by Decipher. In this game, as it advanced, certain creatures - called Personel in the parlance of the game, got to have newer versions of them printed.

For example, Jean-Luc Picard was later printed in the First Contact expansion as Jean-Luc Picard (FC), or even earlier, in the game's second expansion - The Q Continuum, he received a printing as Galen, from the 7th season episodes Gambit, Part 1 and Gambit, Part 2. Now, despite being all these printings, you, as a player, can still only have one Jean-Luc Picard in play at any time. This may sound familiar to many of you, as it was the previous rule for Legendary Planeswalkers - that you can only have one of any Planeswalker in play at any time, meaning that if you had Gideon of the Trials in play, you could not have Gideon Jura in play at the same time.

What the STCCG did was create the Persona rule. This two part rule first defined what it meant for two cards to be a Persona of one another, and when they were not. The short answer is if they had the same name, or the name in BOLD in the character's flavor text. But they also created Persona Replacement Rule, which allowed you, once per turn and not when you were in the middle of another action like resolving a Dilemma, to switch out any Personas you controlled in play with one in your hand. So you could turn Jean-Luc Picard into Captain Picard and then on a later turn, turn him into Dixon Hill to finish out the game.

So you can see here how Specialization sort of works the same. Sure, it's one way instead of any-which-way-but-clones, but you can upgrade or change a Personel or a Creature into something else with either rule.

The other example, the one I think is more direct, comes from my other favourite card game, the Babylon 5 CCG. This game, representing the show of the same name, also ran into the problem that the STCCG had, where in they had a Character (Personel/Creature) that measurably changed or showed a different side to themselves over the course of the series, and they wanted to represent that on the cards. This was especially important as the B5CCG promoted itself as a form of story-telling game where you and three other players told their own version of events from the the Babylon 5 series (and movies).

How you did this was when you had a certain version of a Character in play, either in your Supporting Row or the Inner Circle, you could, if you met the requirements printed on the card you are about to play, Replace the Character in play as your action.

So, take, for example, the first 'full' Replacement chain I ever had, before Mollari. Susan Ivanova is a fairly typical if lackluster Ambassador's Assistant for the Human Faction. However, Commander Ivanova is her first 'tier' of Replacement. This card has the text "Must Replace Susan Ivanova. Transfer all Aftermaths and Enchantments." What this means is that if you have Susan Ivanova in play, you can, as an action, Replace her with Commander Ivanova, and move all the attached cards onto the new version of her. Now, in this case, you Must Replace Susan Ivanova, which is to say that you cannot sponsor Commander Ivanova directly, you need Susan Ivanova in play first, and then you can upgrade her.

In addition, a card that is Replaced - in this case, Susan Ivanova, is removed from the game, and more importantly for the narratively driven aspects of the game, cannot re-enter play under any means. Which means that if something permanent happens to Commander Ivanova and she leaves play, you can't play another copy of Susan Ivanova. You're fresh out of luck there.

The next upgrade is Captain Ivanova. This Character has the text: "Must either: Replace Susan Ivanova if she has 2 or more Destiny Marks, or replace Commander Ivanova. Transfer all attached cards and Marks." Captain Ivonova, as you can see, can either go from the basic Susan if she has two or more Destiny Marks (think Counters) or as a straight upgrade from Commander Ivanova. Unlike the previous Replacement, this one allows you to move all the Marks (counters) from the old card to the new one.

Lastly, there is General Ivanova, which just Replaces Captain Ivanova, transferring everything over to this, her final form.

Also, in this game, some Replacements require external help. The two biggest examples of this additional cost in the game are the cases of Delenn (or more likely, her variation of Delenn (Transformer)), and if you have the Triluminary (an Aura, effectively) attached to Delenn, you may play the Event (a Sorcery) Chrysalis, and replace Delenn with Delenn Transformed, a potentially very powerful Ambassador.

Look, I never said it was easy.

The other example is G'Kar. Now, he has a version that you can also the start the game with, G'Kar (5 Card), which has the text "To Replace G'Kar, you must discard 4 cards from your hand in addition to any other costs." This should be easy to understand.

But G'Kar has two exclusive upgrade paths, and the second one is less complicated. Reflecting the "What Could Have Been" of the Severed Dreams Set (much like Planar Chaos), we have G'Kar Forsaken, who can Replace normal G'Kar if that G'Kar has a Shadow Mark. Note that neither base verison of G'Kar has a Shadow Mark inherently, so you need to give him one from some source, like Contact with Shadows, a fairly basic play.

And because of the way the game is set up, you can do this on the First Turn, and still have actions left over.

The other option for G'Kar is to follow the path he took in the TV series. You see, G'Kar is a Narn, and the Narn have no Telepaths, which is represented by no Narn ever having a Psi score. You can see it on Commander and Captain Ivanova, the P:1 symbol on the left of the character picture. And one of the base rules of the game is that you can only improve a character's Psi score if they have a printed Psi value to begin with. So you can't use Psi Academy to raise a Narn's Psi value as they have none to begin with - and none are Telepaths.

But true to the show, there is one exception. The Event Dust is a one-turn only boost of 6 Psi to any Character, even if they don't have a Psi Score to begin you. And if you do this to G'Kar, you have that one turn window to Replace G'Kar with G'Kar Enlightened, his paragon self. Less complicated, no less hard to pull off, let me tell you from experience.

So with these examples in mind, I want to turn my attention back to Specialize and ask myself: "Can this be done in Paper?"

The answer is Yes. Yes it can. However, you have to accept certain drawbacks. Well, first is that this can be mechanically done. Because this is a Transform effect, much like how Werewolves transform, you can apply the same basic rules to Specialize creatures. But this runs into the first drawback. Namely, the back of the card. Unlike the Digital format, which can just change the card, in the real world, you are limited to physical affects.

Which is to say, the first problem in Specializing is that you would have to print a different version of the card for each colour. Can you imagine a set with five different copies of the same front-facing Legendary Creature, but with different coloured backs to them? It would eat up collossal chunks of the set, and given that Meld only took 6 cards total and look what happened to that, I doubt Wizards would commit to such a thing.

Even then, you could do it as a pseudo Monstrous/Transform mechanic where you accept that your chosen Legendary might only have one option on the backside, or possibly two. Consider that the Rares are printed twice on the Rare sheet, so you could, say, have two versions of Ajani, the Planeswalker at Rare. They both have the same face to them, being , but the two different printings could have two different coloured backs to them, one , representing his Angry Phase, while the other printing could be for his Bro Phase. No other options, just those two.

I can just hear the Collectors screaming now, and it's music to my ears.

The other option is to have two separate cards, one for the normal version, then a second card that exists in your Command Zone (and doesn't count for the 99) that you can permanently upgrade to as you Specialize. This of course means printing even more cards, a lot of which will only have narrow applications and even narrower windows of opportunity to print in a realistic manner. It could be done, but it would require a pretty large commitment from Wizards to design and playtest these things, in addition to finding a way to get them into the hands of the players without glutting the market with them.

Hrm... Commander Precon with a Specialize Creature as a (Potential) Commander, but one of the Tokens are two different Specializations that you can reveal before the game begins, with the other option effectively not existing? That might work....

Anyway, thank you all for reading. What do you think of this mechanic, assuming you've even ever encountered it? Comment in the section below.

Join me next week as I get closer to the big 2-5-0, and all that entails.

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!