One thing I thought about while reading that series was how long it took for the creators to start thinking clearly about...
One thing I thought about while reading that series was how long it took for the creators to start thinking clearly about design, even on a very basic level.
There’s a clear pattern across many of the early sets where it looks like the designers only thought about a card in some hypothetical context they had in mind for it, and ignored how likely that context was. An ability that only functions in a rare situation is, obviously (I would think?), much less valuable than the same ability without the restriction. But the designers didn’t seem to realize this, and would print cards that did mediocre things in rare situations while appearing to believe they were printing mediocre cards, not bad ones.
The post on Ice Age block begins with a discussion of the card Balduvian Shaman, which I actually assumed was a parody until I read the accompanying blog text. Balduvian Shaman is a blue 1/1 for U with the following rules text:
Permanently change the text of target white enchantment you control that does not have cumulative upkeep by replacing all instances of one color word with another. For example, you may change “Counters black spells” to “Counters blue spells.” Balduvian Shaman cannot change mana symbols. That enchantment now has Cumulative Upkeep: (1).
“Wasn’t Magic founded by a bunch of math Ph.Ds?” I thought. “How could they have not thought about probability?“ Which made it especially strange to read, in the very next paragraph:
What sort of designer would think that such fiddly, bean-counting cards would be fun? If you guessed college guys studying math and physics, you’d be right! Skaff Elias’s feature article is pretty essential background material here, so go read that instead if you were looking for actual history.
Some versions of this problem was around at least as late as Weatherlight, which was supposed to be a graveyard-seemed set, but which didn’t appreciate that players would only treat their graveyards differently if the graveyard-related abilities were sufficiently powerful (creating an incentive to shift other behavior to accommodate them).
Balduvian Shaman is better than it sounds because of white’s ten-ubiquitous Circle of Protection : [color] enchantments, you can maindeck Circles of Protection and then change them to the colors your opponent has
I mean it isn’t GOOD, but it’s not quite as much an edge case as you think
Oh! That’s cool, the card makes some sense to me now
Even as I was writing, I realized Balduvian Shaman wasn’t an ideal example of the phenomenon I meant, because the necessary conditions are all things you can control. The really bad cases are ones that only work if your opponent does something, especially something easily avoidable.
The clearest cases are where they introduced a mechanic on a few not-great cards and then added hosers for that mechanic (bands with other, snow-covered lands). The mechanic never takes off because cards with the mechanic are always “maybes” for inclusion and the hosers mean they’re slightly worse than the alternative “maybes,” and then since no one uses the mechanic cards, the hosers become totally useless, so no one uses them either.
and the Ward enchantments, a cycle of one white mana “protection from X” creature enchants
I think I might have been at this even earlier than you guys, I remember the changes when the ideas of “card advantage” and “the mana curve” were first popularized