Pattern Recognition #142 - High Tech and High Magic

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

27 February 2020

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to Pattern Recognition! This is TappedOut.net's longest running article series. In it, I aim to bring to you each week a new article about some piece of Magic, be it a card, a mechanic, a deck, or something more fundamental or abstract. I am something of an Old Fogey and part-time Smart Ass, so I sometimes talk out my ass. Feel free to dissent or just plain old correct me! I also have a Patreon if you feel like helping out.

This article was originally supposed to be about Portal: Second Age, allowing me to segue into a topic I really wanted to talk about, but as I plotted it out and started writing, I realized that my actual subject deserved more attention than the lead-in, so I scrapped it and went in with the full thing. Be advised that I am going to lean very heavy on the Opinion tag here, so feel free to make your own opinions known.

So, let's talk Technology in Magic.

This isn't going to be a thing about the real-world technology that goes into Magic's design. No, this is going to be about the dichotomy between magic and science in the flavour of Magic. And to do that, I'll need to step back and talk about Artifacts in Magic.

From the beginning, Magic wore its High Fantasy and Low Fantasy sources on its sleeve. And this wasn't a bad thing as it made early-Magic game recognition... well... recognizable. To someone who had never played Magic before, never seen the game, but knew of the conventions, a Forest made , and Elves required to come into play because in this genre, Elves and Forests were practically synonymous. You couldn't have one without the other.

This is a staple of Magic that has survived throughout the years. It may be played with, it may be deliberately invoked or ignored, but at the heart of the matter, Magic is a game of Fantasy, and this is where it has made its home and where it will continue to thrive in.

But Artifacts are an abnormality in the realm of Magic, and when I finally get to my segment of the colour pie regarding , I will delve into this a bit deeper. Instead, I just want to summarize some facts here.

Artifacts in the beginning of the game came in three broad strokes. The first was cyclical. The five Moxen are perhaps the premiere example, but there was a second cycle that I adore, Wooden Sphere, Throne of Bone, Ivory Cup, Iron Star and Crystal Rod. These artifacts allowed you to gain 1 life whenever a player cast a spell of the relevant colour by paying .

The second theme they had was of support. The classic Ornothopter wasn't... wait. Ornithopter wasn't in Alpha. It was first printed in Revised. OK, close enough for my books. Anyway, it wasn't some grand combo piece as it was later made into thanks to later sets like Time Spiral or Mirrordin. Rather, it was seen as a cheap and quick blocker, something that could go into any deck to buy time against aggro decks while you set up your own board state. These sorts of artifacts, like the creatures, were there to help support a deck pr color that couldn't or didn't have the relevant resources at hand. They also, in their own way, helped smooth out multicoloured decks as they didn't care for the mana used to tap for them.

The third was for odd effects. Like The Rack or the Glasses of Urza. These were cards that didn't really fit into any other colour (though in modern Magic, they would be and respectively). Artifacts were there to do things that just didn't fit the early definitions of the colour pie, or at least allow each of the colours equal opportunity access to that ability or mechanic.

But each of these artifacts were just that, artifacts. They were unique (but not Legendary as that hadn't been invented yet) creations designed or utilized by the player-planeswalkers to augment their libraries and decks to make them better.

Now, with some minor variations, this was the 'role' of the Artifact in the game until 02 October 2003, nearly ten years into the game. This was the date when Mirrordin was released, and this was the date where the lid on what Artifacts could or could not do was broken open forever.

In this set, Artifacts became more than a distant back seat to the other colours but a force to be reckoned with on their own.

And this was, in many, many, MANY ways a mistake. Something that has hounded Wizards for over 16 years now.

While breaking down the Mirrordin block is a task for another day, what I want to pull out of this is that this is the set that finally and truly allowed decks to exist in of themselves, rather than as a gimmick deck.

But I still need to flip this on its side, twist what I'm showing into something that has occurred to, I would think - a lot of people over the years and what they saw, they wanted more of. Mirrordin was a plane of Machines, and machines could now prove that they could do anything that any of the other colours could do. Perhaps even better in some ways.

Now while I say that Mirrordin opened up Pandora's Box on this, the truth is that this was something that had been building for a while now. Starting with the Urza's Block, and flavour text before then, players were introduced to machines that could perform well in any deck, and they were fit into the backstory of the game with the war between Urza, Lord High Artificer and his brother, Mishra, Artificer Prodigy.

War Machines raged across Argoth and adjacent realms, and for this vital moment the players were introduced to the concept of Science Fantasy. Urza's Tower, Urza's Mine and Urza's Factory were implements of Industry, just as he built warmachines like Urza's Engine and built armies using Urza's Incubator and the Thran Factory. His pride and joy, the Skyship Weatherlight was equipped with a staple of Atompunk and Raygun Gothic - Heat Ray.

The Phyrexian invasion was an extension of this mechanical warfare, a point that I think is best put across by the Urza's Destiny card Extruder. It explicitly pointed out that the weapons of warfare between a slightly-unhinged Planeswalker and Phyrexia were converging in design and purpose.

And so, when Karn, Silver Golem, the ultimate expression of Artifice that Urza could create, took it upon himself to be a creator too, these lessons carried forward into his creation of Argentum.

Machines were the equal of Magic.

And if Magic could advance, why not the cause of Machines? Why could a March of the Multitudes not be a March of the Machines?

To that end, I really think that it was that finally stepped over the line. You see, up until 9th edition, the core set after Mirrordin, Artifacts were still... let's go with exceptional.

But 9th edition brought to us Crossbow Infantry and Ballista Squad. Now I have talked about these cards before in different contexts, namely Rebels and Range Strike. But now I want to ignore the mechanics and look at the flavour of the cards.

The important part of these cards for the purposes of this discussion are their names. To whit, Crossbow and Ballista.

It's hard to describe here, and perhaps I've simply learned enough about history to see the distinction, but these are the sorts of weapons that come not from artistry, but from reliable industry. They are repeatable designs, crafted through precision and understanding.

There's a quote from the Darksword Trilogy by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman that I cannot find in those books at this time, but can still paraphrase. One of the characters, a priest, having studied science and technology, makes the comment that "With magic, I can move the moon. I can calculate how much energy is required and apply it correctly. With science and technology, I can do no such thing. I could instead make a thousand chairs exactly alike for less effort than magic would take to make one. Magic is artistry and grand works, technology is efficiency."

The idea behind magic in Magic is that it is a work of art, that you are crafting your actions as you go along. Science and Artifice aren't that. They are reliable and repeatable and can be done by anyone at any time. You don't need to be Urza or da Vinci to build an Ornithopter, though it helps.

Outside of these hand-crafted artefacts though, machines and mechanization represents a loss of the ... soul of magic. And I just summarized in one sentence a thesis that would get be a Literature Degree from Oxford if I put the effort into it, but on the same side there is a lot to unpack from that statement. The more artifice you have, the more machines you create, the less magic there is to put it into words that get the point across. I mean, breaking it down, in Tolkien's seminal works - the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit and the Silmarillion - artistry is magic and that is the source of all that is good in the world. Eä was created through Song, and the great evil in this mythos is an Industrialist.

Magic can't be Magic if Artifice takes over. This was the great sin of Mirrordin, one that echoed and reverberated throughout the game for years.

But there is a segment of the player base - and I must include myself in this - that actually likes the idea of machines of various sorts in this game. We like the ideas of science and magic working together, we adore Clarke's Third Law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

We don't think that high technology is the end of Magic. We think it's the beginning.

Wizards disagrees, and I choose to accept and respect their disagreement, even as I see where they push the limits of what they can or cannot do ever outwards.

So, let's talk about a few examples, one of the flavour pushes that was a step too far in the minds at Wizards, and the initial source of this article. Portal Second Age, and the faction of Alaborn.

What makes this a problem? Well, look at the art on Alaborn Musketeer, on Alaborn Zealot, on Alaborn Cavalier and on Alaborn Grenadier. See the issue?

The issue is guns.

Firearms as a serious thing in Magic is a step too far, and to tie back into the earlier comment about Crossbow Infantry, Crossbows are a half-step away from firearms in terms of historical development. This is the breakpoint that Wizards thinks is too much, even as their trailer for Manastrike shows off a werewolf using a repeating crossbow against zombies. Exceptions, not the rule.

Of course, there is always and the Goblins.

You see, Wizards does incorporate these sorts of things. As jokes by applying them to Goblins. Goblin Bangchuckers throws grenades. Also Goblin Grenade itself. Gobin Boomkeg. Goblin Cannon. Goblins make things explode and they use tech to do it. And in doing so, they make us laugh at them.

But I have better examples, many from the past few years to work with.

Let's first talk about the most subtle one. Ixalan. This block had as one of its tribes, Pirates! And as everyone knows, Pirates are awesome when done properly. But Pirates have Pirate ships, like a Sleek Schooner. Yet what don't you see on all the art regarding these ships, with one really notable exception?

You don't see their cannons.

With the exception of Vance's Blasting Cannons  ^Flip, you don't see the weapons on the Pirate ships, despite being in flavour and quite understandable for the audience to acknowledge as not being wrong. It wouldn't have broken the flavour of the setting to include them in the art and I doubt people would have noticed them anyway as long as you didn't draw attention to their presence or their absence. But the line against firearms and technology is still there, just hidden from view.

My next two examples both have equal weight in my book, so I had to flip a coin to figure out which to write about first and the result was...

Kaladesh!

Kaladesh was another Artifact heavy set that fell flat on its face for a multitude of reasons. One of the more minor ones was that it was touted as a sort of Indian Steampunk-ish world that introduced the amazing Vehicles and was set during a festival where inventors from around the plane would showcase their amazing inventions.

Cool! Amazing! We can even accept the change of Steam into Aether to keep with the themes of Magic! That's not a problem at all!

But they missed the point. The artifice of Kaladesh was explicitly artistry. Every last depiction of it showed each work as a craft. Even the mass production used by the consulate as shown by Foundry Inspector's flavour text or Foundry of the Consuls implies a certain degree of art involved - even as it's the villains of the piece that use such methods, whereas heroes like Pia Nalaar hand craft their works.

Kaladesh was a step in the direction of integrating machines and higher technology into Magic, but Wizards stumbled at the last couple of steps and failed to reach this goal in the name of keeping Magic magic. I find it disappointing, but in the end quite understandable. The idea presented here is that we aren't supposed to be focusing on the background operations of the world, instead focusing on the titular Aether Revolt.

On the other hand, Ravnica has no such defense, especially when one of the guilds' job description is machinery! The Izzet guild is Ravnica's resident Mad Scientists, always pushing the boundaries of the known and unknown, ever advancing the cause of their great leader!

They're also the plumbers of the City-Plane.

You see, the Izzet are the maintenance engineers of Ravnica, it's part of their Guild description - albeit one that tends to be buried in the lore under all the more spectacular explosive stuff. The Izzet are responsible for the basic infrastructure of the city, making sure that the buildings don't collapse, that the aqueducts are working and all the jazz. Even their Shockland - Steam Vents is in recognition of this implicit job.

Instead, Wizards chooses to focus on the more visually spectacular and ... let's call them the top 1% of the guild instead of those who do the more grunt-work of the Guild, the fancy mad scientists like Ral Zarek.

I can understand the desire to focus on the more visually impressive works in order to generate interest. The Glamor of the Elite, if I must borrow a phrase, is something where by advertising the best of the best and imply that new recruits can get there if they only work hard enough is a tried, tested and true tactic in many areas. And the Izzet can be no different. Ignore all the hard working requirements for knowledge of mechanical, electrical and hydraulic engineering in favour of the people who throw lightning around like it was going out of style.

Wizards chose to ignore the fact that the Izzet Guild are the most pro-Artifact guild on Ravnica in order to focus more on what seems to be desperation sometimes in making that the colour combination of playing Instants and Sorceries to the exclusion of most other things. Not embracing the idea that Artifacts are a part of the game and that they should be integrated rather than rejected or held at arms length.

High technology, firearms, machines. These are all things that Wizards wants to avoid as they feel, rightly or wrongly, would make the game less than what it is, would take attention away from the Magic of Magic.

But there are still ways to push the limits, to use what is familiar and incorporate them into the wider world of Magic.

A plane inspired by the Weird West can use wands like a Rod of Ruin to replace firearms, with Vehicles in the game as well as natural vistas already part of the setting. It has various factions that can be associated with those lands, and plenty of inbuilt conflict to drive the plot.

That's just one example, and I'm sure that others can think of things as well.

I mean, we don't have to go all the way with Space: The Convergence, a hypothetical alternate to Magic that was posited during the release of Planar Chaos (original article here. There is still plenty of space in which to look at the advantages of technology and slide them into Magic. They don't have to be at loggerheads to each other.

But I don't see Wizards making this choice. It's against the grain that they've chosen. And while I disagree with them, I will respect it.

So, join me next week when I talk about something. I don't know what yet, but it will be a thing!

So, until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. 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!