Pattern Recognition #364 - Hero Time!

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

17 April 2025

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Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!

Hello everyone! Today I'm going to re-cover a subject that I did way back in September 2017, which means that it being seven and a half years later, I can redo it without much issue! I tried writing my Tarkir: Dragonstorm Pre-release for this update, but I just came of Slow grow, and I didn't want to get back into doing another one for just a week. I will tell you that I won, 3-1-0 (and tied with second place there) and an Opponent's Match Win% of 54.2 vs the 52.1 of second place. WOOOOOO!

Where was I? Oh yeah. HERO TIME!

Heroic is an Ability mechanic that was first introduced in Theros, and I am very surprised that when I looked up the wording of the ability that it wasn't a thing beforehand either! Anyway, Heroic is a shorthand word for an ability that says "When this creature is the target of a spell you control...". The results of this can vary, but they range from useful to interesting.

In terms of availability, Heroic definitely is a ability, with 16 creatures with this ability on it (including a and creature each), while is next, oddly enough with 11 examples, then with 9, with 6, and with 4. Also, for those who care, it is also a Sticker Ability Word for people who play with those.

And for the Commander Format, there are only three Legends with this ability, and they are all and/or . In case that is relevant to your interests.

But I would have thought that a mechanic centered around casting spells that target your own creatures would have been in the colours that focus on creatures first, and then at the bottom. Maybe a single instance of for limited purposes. But no, it's not that way.

So out of curiosity, I looked at the number of spells in that block that targeted a creature. Let's see... 94 Instants, Sorceries and Auras. Because Auras trigger Heroic as well! Which makes it a little bit better. But let's remove removal here, which is 42 cards of one stripe or another, which leaves use with 52. Of those, the majority are , the as expected, and in no particular order.

So this is my first confusion. Why ? Well, I suppose there are two copy spells, Polymorphous Rush and Fated Infatuation. These spells work well with Heroic as you get more copies of your Heroic creatures, as well as the trigger off the initial one. But what about the creatures themselves? What happens when they are targeted?

Well, the most common Heroic trigger response is to put (a) +1/+1 counter(s) onto the creature in question, making it bigger even if you're not casting a direct combat trick. In fact, a total of 18 creatures do that out of 41. More than a third! Almost a half!

Actually, I like that. Yes, there are cards that do more than just that in this set, but because of the common theme, it made it far easier for players to recognize what was going on and react accordingly. Good design there! I like it!

Of course, that's not all. Because of this, you can see how the New World Order applies to these creatures as you go from, say, Lagonna-Band Trailblazer at common to Favored Hoplite or Phalanx Leader at Uncommon, then Fabled Hero or Hero of Iroas at Rare. How the power and complexity of the effect scales with rarity. Honestly, the Fabled Hero would probably be an Uncommon in today's Magic.

And gets into the action with a heavy-handed approach as each of those creatures put multiple counters onto them when they get Heroic, not just one! They can get very large, very quickly. Thank goodness none of them have an innate Trample.

...

Hunter's Prowess, Messenger's Speed and Rouse the Mob.

OK, I can live with that. Moving on! Onec you step away from the generic +1/+1 counters, gets the usual control suspects of tapping down opponents creatures, destroying Enchantments (but not artifacts), or gaining life, recurring creatures with a MV of or less, or making token creatures. Nothing out of the ordinary, and all very respectable and reliable.

gets weird though. Sure, there's the traditional Scry 1 and Draw a Card effects, but some of these? Battlefield Thaumaturge is one of the cards meant to syngergize with with the Strive Mechanic (I'll come back to that), and yet all he does is give himself Hexproof. Which may seem a little odd, but I can work with it. It's a nice way to prevent your cost-reducer from being removed.

But Mindreaver? First, you have to cast a spell that targets it, hit a card you would want to counter in the future, then pay to sacrifice the Mindreaver to counter a spell if it was the same as one of the cards exiled with it?

OK, Maybe in Standard? But I don't ever remember seeing it. To be fair though, Theros was kinda stuck between Return to Ravnica and Tarkir, which makes it pretty overshadowed by those sets. It's the Kamigawa problem, really.

Moving on, gets the really cruel Agent of the Fates, which allows you to force your opponents to sacrifice creatures when you trigger Heroic. And there are plenty of cards in and around it that do little things like keep your creature on the battlefield even if it dies. They can also trigger life drain and forced discard, but really, the sacrifice is the huge effect, and it shows in the card prices (which are indicative of demand) for the set.

Oh hey, gets a creature with Intimidate when it gets Heroic! Oh wow, I haven't thought about that in an age. For those of you who don't know, Intimidate is a Keyword that says that the creature with it can't be blocked except by creatures that share a color with it, or Artifact creatures. It replaced Fear and was itself replaced by Menace. They also get token creation at Common, being able to prevent blocks, and an Act of Treason effect. Not bad.

gets... Oh hey, they get something that doesn't give out +1/+1 counters! Instead, Anthousa, Setessan Hero animates your lands, three at a time! Neat! I think there are better options now, but then again, this was from 12 years ago.

And then there's Anax and Cymede, who make stomp more stompy. They lead by example, and everyone become far more lethal for it. As a Boros Man at heart, I can respect that. Others can't, and that's there problem.

So looking back at this, I think the Heroic creatures were intended to support more aggressive cross-color casting of spells. Encouraging multi-colored decks with Battlewise Hoplite as a signpost Uncommon to direct it. Remember, colour identity only matters for Brawl and Commander, so casting spells on your creatures is perfectly legit.

If I'm right, it's a piece of design that's brilliant because it encourages deck design without strapping you into a limited schema, locked into a certain play pattern. This allows for any color to work with any color at any time in the same fundamental manner.

But Theros isn't the only place this got printed.

Rosnakht, Heir of Rohgahh, from Dominaria United's Commander set. With Battle Cry and a Heroic trigger to make more tokens, he's a funny little guy. I would love to build a deck around him but... nah.

But then we got Foundations Jumpstart. Cleon, Merry Champion occurs in all four Stoked Common decks, and she basically acts as a means to Impulse draw when she becomes Heroic. I would say, for those who play Commander/Brawl, she's better for that format as your Commander than the Kobold above as she really sets the Spellslinger in motion.

edit: So, I went and I actually built this deck for Arena Brawl, and well, here it is! Can kill a player on turn 5, and each turn afterward!

Cleon, Merry Brawler

Commander / EDH berryjon

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Yet to me, the real prize is Brigone, Soldier of Meletis, who is the headline card in both Heroes deck packs, and she brings with her the actual mechanic back to Standard(ish) as the Jumpstart packs aren't actually Standard Legal. BOOOOO. This Creature brings repeatable and reliable card draw to mono- as long as you can keep the Heroic Triggers flowing. And the cards to cause her to untap as well.

For what it's worth, I've asked Mark Rosewater on the Blogatog if this is an indication that Heroic might make a return to Standard, but no response (yet). It's still a 5 on the Storm Scale. I hope it'll be more likely, but I also recognize that it's not like it can anchor a set by itself.

Mechanically speaking, the downside to Heroic is the weakness of the creatures themselves. They all are, well, creatures, which means that they are easy enough to remove, meaning that while you can still get the Heroic Trigger, committing to casting a spell opens up a two-for-one removal of the creature in question, meaning you either need to act to prevent the loss, or accept it and lose on on the effect of the spell you actually cast when it fizzles.

And good luck getting five +1/+1 counters on Sage of Hours with the Heroic triggers. I've only seen it happen in Simic +1/+1 counter decks when those were a thing.

If you build a Heroic Deck, you need to either accept that you're either going all-in on it, and making it the focus of your deck, or you're using it as an extra layer atop your intended design. Either way, I find that Heroic decks lean towards the Spellslinger paradigm. That being casting spells as fast and as often as possible, slowing only to restock the cards in your hand. Getting as many Heroic Triggers as you can in as short a time as possible to get as much value out of them as possible.

Which means that Spellslinging is the way to go, really. And why I like the two new Heroic Legends, as they help you refill your hand(ish) to keep the spells going and going and going!

In terms of flavor though, I find Heroic to be on point as well. Stepping back for a moment, Theros wears its Grecian roots on its togas with ease, and their classic definition of a Hero is NOT the modern one. To the Greeks who inspired this setting, a Hero wasn't the modern champion as we take it. Rather, they were a force for cultural stability. Their actions didn't really matter in so much as their results. And most importantly, they were all blessed by the Gods to perform these actions. Divine Intervention was a fact of life for the stories of these Heroes, and one of the great sources of Hubris in the plays and stories of the time came from thinking you were better than the Gods, or could be a Hero without their help.

How did that work out for you, Kytheon, Hero of Akros  ^Flip, when you thought you could turn back Erebos with just your Tragic Arrogance? Everyone you knew? Dead! And in self-imposed exile thanks to being a Planeswalker? You got off lucky!

Heroic is the physical representation of that. That these creatures have received a boon, a blessing from the next best thing to a God - you and they are even greater for it. That you bless them with your spells, and they reward you with better results.

I like this mechanic. I really do. It encourages a different way of approaching deck building, with a balance between Heroic Creatures, and spells to target them with. It makes me feel a little more creative.

That and I would totally be an all-powerful god, meddling in the lives of the little ants. Totally.

Thank you all for reading! I'll see you next week when I talk about something. Maybe I should get back to Solle?

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! 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!