By Jeremy Rose
Magic: the Gathering is an old game by most standards, and it has gone through many changes and evolutions over its 27-year life span. These changes have involved introducing new card types or mechanics through its many expansions to keep the game fresh and interesting and to keep its players coming back for more.
Along with the exciting new products over the years, the game has seen a significant scaling up in the strength and complexity of the cards. Often referred to as power creep, this scaling up has been known to cause some balancing issues in various formats and has ensured that today’s cards look and play far differently than the cards from the early days of Magic.
To get a better idea of what these differences look like and how the game has evolved, I sat down with a Magic player from the earliest days of the game. Andrew Pilch is a martial arts instructor in Tucson, Arizona and was in high school when Magic came out. He played regularly until about 1995 and enjoyed countless game with his buddies wherein they tapped an unsleeved Black Lotus on concrete and traded their Moxen for Shivan Dragons.
These days, Andrew is a busy guy and much of his time is taken up with his business and his wonderful family. He does play with my playgroup a couple times a year but doesn’t get too much exposure to Magic as a whole. He does not keep up with new sets or cards and so he does not know any of the cards I’ve shown him for this article.
Before we get into it, I want to give a little background on how Andrew and I went about this. All of the cards I presented to him were cards he has never seen before, so I made sure to give some explanation of their use and general play patterns without giving him too much so that he would be more able to form his own opinions about the cards.
This type of thing seemed to be pretty well received last time, and if you want to check out the first part of this series, you can see it here. I hope you all enjoy this one just as much!
Aetherflux Reservoir
One of the more requested things from the last article was to show Andrew cards that have powerful, huge effects. This card fits that standard pretty well.
Andrew: This seems like it would be most beneficial in a blue deck where they cast a ton of small spells. I would want to hold up some sort of destroy spell for this, but I guess they could just kill me with it if I tried. This has to be an almost insta-kill in Commander decks, right? This card would make me consider playing a blue deck for once.
Force of Will
A specific request from a Reddit user, Force is a great card from which to get a reaction. It’s a card that has a well-known play pattern for veteran players and one that newer players may not be ready for.
A: Just one life and literally any blue card doesn’t seem like that hard of a condition to meet. This is a card I would hope to play in a lot of games just to see the immense disappointment on my opponent’s face every time I got to cast it.
True-Name Nemesis
Sometimes, cards that have really unique effects are just the most fun to talk about. Protection is a crazy mechanic already and a creature having protection from an entire player has always struck me as wild way to apply the mechanic and I wanted to see what Andrew thought about it.
A: One-on-one, I bet this thing sucks to play against. It’s such a quick death with not a whole lot that can stop it. And it can block forever if you need it too! I would hate to play against this, and it would have really pissed me off back in the day.
Bolas’s Citadel
This is one of my personal favorite cards to play with, so I wanted to see how he sees it. His reaction was not as strong as I expected, but he ain’t wrong.
A: Ah black cards…my arch nemesis. Thank goodness the mana cost is crazy because this card seems really good. You have to keep your eye on the player with this and probably try to kill them as soon as you can.
Gigantosaurus
There are big creatures, and then there are BIG creatures. This card was another request for me to show to Andrew and I definitely think it’s a good one.
A: A 10/10 for five mana?! Holy hell. At least it doesn’t have trample or something stupid like that. Damn, that thing’s big.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Eldrazi were one of the more requested types of cards the last time we did this, and I wanted to make sure I had at least one on here. And there’s no better inclusion than the queen spaghetti monster herself.
A: 15 mana. That means you have to be doing something stupid to cheat it out, right? Can’t be countered is ridiculous. Extra turn? Lots of unfairness here. This makes me think they just kind of went, “How much can we break the game? Sure, let’s go with this.”
Scorned Villager // Moonscarred Werewolf
The last ones for this edition are going to be some flip cards. I started Andrew off with a simple version of these cards and then we leveled up to a couple of angel creatures with the meld ability.
A: I already don’t like the complexity involved in this. The early mana seems okay, but it seems pretty irrelevant later in the game. On top of that, paying attention to when it needs to flip back and forth could get annoying and it seems easy to shut down this type of thing.
Brisela, Voice of Nightmares (Bruna, the Fading Light + Gisela, the Broken Blade)
This card is a sort of “achievement unlocked” kind of thing for a lot of Magic players in that they want to make it happen just once in their Magic careers. It’s complicated and hard to pull off, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have it on a Magic bucket list.
A: Wow, this is definitely powerful. It does seem slow and like it only would happen pretty late in the game. I like how one half can reanimate the other to make it happen, that’s pretty cool. Cheap removal spells are the best, unless they’re against this thing. As cool as this is, it seems like just enough of a pain in the butt to pull off that I don’t think I’d try to play it.
Taking a look back at where Magic has come from to where it is now, there is no denying that the design principles have certainly changed. Five mana goes a heck of a lot further than a Serra Angel these days and getting a look into the Magic days of yore has been an interesting and eye-opening experience.
Thanks for reading! Andrew is a good friend of mine and I’ve wanted to have this conversation with him for a while now. We had a blast talking about it and I hope you enjoyed the read as well! If this is something you’d be interested in seeing more of, make sure to let us know what other cards we should introduce Andrew to, and we’ll have him check them out! Additionally, if you haven’t read the first installment in this series, check it out HERE!
If you're looking for some sweet proxies or just some cool tokens check out our shop HERE
Andrew Pilch began playing Magic in 1993 and has played a handful of Commander games with our playgroup since then. His favorite card is Serra Angel and he enjoys crushing opponents with combat heavy white decks. Andrew is also a lifelong martial artist and owns and operates an American Kenpo school in Tucson, Arizona.
For more info about Andrew's martial arts school, visit www.americaninstituteofkenpo.com!
Jeremy Rose is a relatively new Magic player, having only started in Battle for Zendikar. When he's not being a filthy, filthy blue player, he enjoys jamming fun games with his friends. He's also a lifelong martial artist and a professionally employed teacher. He sometimes paints minis adequately. Find out more about him on his Twitter @jermytrose.
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