Responding to Rosewater Making Magic #8

This week mark talked more about the new set. I want to highlight one discussion he touched on right at the end of the article. The discussion is about what can an Enchantment Creature do that a Creature cannot do. I feel this is but a small piece of a broader discussion that is the very lifeblood of Magic.

I've been talking about this for a while; creatures with enter the battlefield (ETB) triggers really bother me. For me, each card type should have a mechanical identity much like the colors. For creatures that is the Power/Toughness split and the combat phase. ETB things are the domain of sorceries. That's the whole point of having different card types (don't get me started on Legions). Creatures are something you have to wait to get the payoff from, but unchecked they will win you the game. Sorceries you get the payoff immediately but it is fleeting.

When you put a rider on a creature like, "return target permanent to its owners hand". You are effectively stapling a spell to a creature. This blend, to me, is on the order of giving Blue direct damage. Now I don't say you should never put ETBs on creatures. Just like with the color pie, everything is in flux, the pendulum swings. But when should you do it?

Recently magic has a made a big push in the direction of resonance and elegance (are they paying Aaron Forsythe enough money?). This shift, best exemplified by the core sets since M10, is why the game is stronger than ever before. So I say a time for creatures to dip their toe into ETBs is for flavor. Take for example:

This card is probably one of my all time top 10 magic cards. I could write for days just about this card. But the point here is it does have an ETB. It does act like a removal spell but that removal is conditional and tied to the vary nature of the card. It says, you're under arrest. But if I can take out the cop, my minion is back on the street. There is just so much win that this design deserves to bleed into the sorcery world. And even then bleed is only slight, this effect on the game only works on other creatures and is tied intrinsically to this creature.

So what's an example of a creature with an inappropriate ETB trigger?

I know it's easy to pick on this guy. But there is a reason for that.

Just compare him to Banisher Priest. What a miss. Why in the world does a Thragtusk give you those effects? It just feels so contrived. 

The counterpoint to my argument is that, "Well flavor is super flexible. I can flavor anything." My rebuttle is simple, "Exactly". Make it work because the design couldn't work without it and I'm on board.

Now let's return to the card from the article:

In this case it has both the type Enchantment and Creature. As Maro points out, "One of the big discussions we had about the global enchantment creatures was that normal creatures can basically have global enchantment effects." Correct!! Ding Ding Ding. That's something creatures shouldn't do. Again I would point out that there are times when it makes sense for the bleed. Take this card for example:

The ability on this guy is totally a global enchantment ability. We could have made a card flavoured about a maze, call it "Maze's Bloodlust" or something. But here we put that ability on a creature. And I am fine with it. When a general enters the battle his troops get a boost, of course he should grant his team a bonus. Again this is done for flavour/resonance reasons. Without the freedom to bleed abilities from one card type to another the designer is too hamstrung. And again this ability is not quite what Global Enchantments are all about.

For me the effect of a global enchantment should be to alter the way in which the game is played. So the Warcaller's ability really isn't a global effect. Sure your minotaurs get bigger, but you're still playing the same way. However this new design ...

Now that changes the game. Take a fundamental rule (or lack of rule) and turn it on it's ear. That's what global enchantments do. What Mark say is ok, "What makes these feel any different? My answer was that there will be ways to take advantage of their enchantment nature. Also, because the creature is vulnerable to both creature destruction and enchantment destruction, the development team felt able to push it a little." He's not wrong but I thing there is a bigger point there. This guy feels like an Enchantment because it messes with the way the game is played.

But it's not like I can take credit for this. If you look at Alpha ("limited edition alpha" if you're on the gatherer). There are only 4 dudes with ETBs and all of them qualify by my criteria. Richard Garfiled had cooked this in originally. I would speculate that creatures became more spelly because that's the easiest way to bring their power level up to that of spells (which is certainly an issue the game had in the early days).

Well that's enough of this for now. Leave some comments below. Also I guess I should finish with my definitions of what each card type does.

Artifact - Exists outside the color pie

Creature - Combat, exemplified by P/T and combat keywords

Enchantment - Change the way in which the game is played, exemplified by altering fundamental rules

Instant - Subset of Sorcery

Land - Provide resources

Planeswalker - This one is tricky and worth an entire article on its own. But first and formost is to put a face on the game. That feature is more important than any individual gameplay mechanic.

Sorcery - Immediate effects, non permanent