Magic the Gathering

Tapestry

Examining Worldwake and the Science of Deduction

By Russell Tassicker ⋅ February 10, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

From the Jour­nal of John Wat­son, M.D.

I have recounted else­where the strange cir­cum­stances that brought 221b Baker St one hun­dred years for­ward in time, so I will spare you the repeated details of those events. Instead I will tell some more tales of the strange game that has so con­sumed the atten­tions of my famous com­pan­ion; Mr. Sher­lock Holmes.

It was a crisp morn­ing in Feb­ru­ary, 2010, when I awoke at my cus­tom­ary early hour. Holmes would reg­u­larly sleep until well after the break­fast table was cleared away, and I intended to take my ease in the sit­ting room and read the morning’s news­pa­per. Instead, this par­tic­u­lar morn­ing I found the disheveled fig­ure of Holmes por­ing over his lat­est card­board acqui­si­tions. I groaned inwardly at the real­iza­tion he had not slept all night, such demands did this game place upon his thoughts. Finally he had found a conun­drum wor­thy of his con­sid­er­able men­tal fac­ul­ties – find­ing the so-called “best deck” and “solv­ing the metagame”, as he put it. Sev­eral times a year new cards would be added to the equa­tion and other cards were removed mean­ing there was a fre­quent need for Holmes to apply himself.

“Another new set I take it, Holmes?” I asked after we had said our good morn­ings and I had set­tled into my arm­chair by the win­dow. He leaned back at the small cof­fee table with a weary smile. “Pre­cisely, Wat­son. World­wake has just been released, and while I have already found the best deck for stan­dard there is much more that can be deduced from the new cards. Have a look at these play sets I have acquired.” Holmes passed across a hand­ful of cards, and I fanned them out before me. “What do you think of these?” he asked. I exam­ined each in turn.

“Eye of Ugin?” I asked, half to myself. “This card is dread­ful – it can search up arti­facts in casual Urza-tron decks, to be sure, but that first abil­ity doesn’t do any­thing!” I raised an eye­brow at Holmes, whose smile had grown wider on hear­ing my ver­dict. I felt a lit­tle hurt that I was being made fun of. “Well then, what is the secret to this card?” I queried. Ever happy to show off his intel­lect, Holmes explained. “My dear Wat­son, it is quite ele­men­tary. The first abil­ity refers to col­or­less Eldrazi spells, of which you quite rightly rec­og­nized that there are none cur­rently extant in stan­dard, or any for­mat for that mat­ter. How­ever you under­es­ti­mate my neme­sis Rose­wa­ter and his cronies. He would not put such a card into a small set as a mere red her­ring. Note also, the set fol­low­ing World­wake will be called ‘Rise of the Eldrazi.’ Armed with this data I am cer­tain you can deduce what I have – that Rise of the Eldrazi will lend pur­pose to the Eye of Ugin.” When he laid it out like so, it cer­tainly appeared quite sim­ple. I moved on, hop­ing I would have bet­ter luck with the next card.

“Lode­stone Golem? I didn’t know you were a vin­tage player,” I announced, look­ing up ques­tion­ingly. He snorted in reply, “Indeed I am not. I solved that stale for­mat with min­i­mal exer­tion. No, it is the con­stant change of stan­dard that so grips me, and it is for that pur­pose I have acquired these Golems.”

“But why?” I asked, “Esper is a ter­ri­ble choice at the moment, I have heard you say so your­self. What use could this serve? You don’t mean that the Eldrazi will be arti­fact spells?” He shook his head, “No, my dear Wat­son, it is not for some months that these will become rel­e­vant. Look through the other cards beneath those, and see what you can work out about October’s ‘Lights’ block.”

A set of foil Nature’s Claim was next. Another vin­tage plant, cer­tainly. What was Holmes play­ing at? Thada Adel, Acquisi­tor. “Mer­folk!” I exclaimed, “You have some rea­son for sus­pect­ing Mer­folk will be a strong choice when ‘Lights’ replaces Shards of Alara.” He nod­ded encour­ag­ingly, and I thought hard before con­tin­u­ing, “With Jund and Cas­cade leav­ing the for­mat, coun­ter­spells will have a chance to shine again… Lull­mage Men­tor! You are plan­ning a Lull­mage Men­tor deck, are you not? Thada Adel’s island­walk is your trump for the mir­ror match.” I pro­claimed tri­umphantly. Holmes burst into laugh­ter at my con­clu­sion. “Wat­son, you are the truest friend a man could wish for but your pow­ers of deduc­tion are in dire need of refine­ment. Please, do not be stung by my teas­ing. I am cer­tain con­sid­er­ing the final two cards there will lead you to my under­stand­ing of ‘Lights’ block.”

I pushed aside the blue leg­end and saw two play­sets under­neath – Stone­forge Mys­tic, and Ham­mer of Ruin. A crea­ture that searches up equip­ment, and an equip­ment that destroys other equip­ment? “It is unusual that both of these cards should be printed in such a crowded set, when there are almost no rel­e­vant equip­ment in stan­dard. That is what you wish me to remark upon, is it not?” I asked, and Holmes nod­ded, sin­cerely this time. “Taken with the Golem that affects arti­fact spells, this cheap arti­fact removal spell, and Thada Adel who can steal arti­facts… Of course! You expect ‘Lights’ to be cen­tered around arti­facts,” I declared, and Holmes clapped his hands together. “Well done Wat­son, well done indeed. We shall make an inves­ti­ga­tor of you yet. I must admit there are sev­eral pieces of evi­dence encour­ag­ing me along such a line of rea­son­ing that I have with­held from you. I will present them now, if you are will­ing to listen.”

I acqui­esced enthu­si­as­ti­cally and Holmes began to explain. “As you know, ‘Lights’ will not be the first arti­fact block. Pre­vi­ously there has been Antiq­ui­ties, a set from the ear­li­est days of Magic, and more recently the Mir­rodin block. What you may not know is that Mir­rodin is just about to leave extended, a for­mat that fre­quently employs the pow­er­ful arti­facts of that block. With Chal­ice of the Void, the arti­fact lands, Chrome Mox, Trin­ket Mage and Engi­neered Explo­sives all leav­ing, extended will undergo a great shift. This was sup­posed to occur last year with Zendikar’s rota­tion due to the Onslaught fetch­lands rotat­ing but wiz­ards pre­ferred to main­tain the sta­tus quo.”

“Now, there are two ways that Wiz­ards of the Coast could go with ‘Lights’. Either they reprint the sta­ples of Mir­rodin and main­tain the sta­tus quo again, or they take the oppor­tu­nity to print a vari­ety of new arti­facts that would have been too pow­er­ful in a for­mat with Mir­rodin. I can­not see them reprint­ing the arti­fact lands for one, or any of the affin­ity cards so I think the for­mer choice is unlikely. While they may reprint the util­ity arti­facts like Chal­ice the bulk of Mir­rodin block will cer­tainly dis­ap­pear with the rota­tion. Instead I expect to see a vari­ety of new, pow­er­ful arti­facts that Ham­mer of Ruin, Stone­forge Mys­tic and Thada Adel will inter­act with and I have acquired these play­sets extremely cheaply, well ahead of time.”

I nod­ded, impressed, as Holmes paused. Before I could ask any ques­tions how­ever, he charged onwards. “How­ever the strongest evi­dence I have for the accu­racy of my con­clu­sions is this,” he said, pass­ing me a printed sheet of paper. It was an arti­cle from Man­a­Na­tion, show­ing three new trade­marks from Wiz­ards of the Coast – Scars of Mir­rodin, Mir­rodin Pure, and New Phyrexia. “These sound very much like set names,” I sur­mised. “Pos­si­bly,” replied Holmes, “though whether they are sets, books or other prod­ucts they make me cer­tain that ‘Lights’ will be an arti­fact block when taken with the evi­dence already presented.”

It con­stantly astounded me how sim­ple was my companion’s rea­son­ing when laid out before me, no mat­ter how tan­gled and com­plex it may have seemed pre­vi­ously. I con­grat­u­lated Holmes on his lat­est dis­cov­ery and made my way to the door for my morn­ing walk. Life was cer­tainly a lot qui­eter with our crime-fighting days behind us, but it engaged our minds no less thanks to this dynamic game. One day, I thought. One day Lull­mage Con­trol will be the deck to beat.

Russell is a history student, avid gamer and MTG blogger from Perth, Western Australia who takes every chance he can get to sling some magical cards. Here he shares his occasional insights into the competitive and financial realms of Magic: the Gathering.

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