Pattern Recognition #320 - Bob's Your Uncle

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

18 April 2024

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Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!

And welcome back! Today's article is brought to you by the "Random Card" button on Gatherer, my go-to option for subject matter when I can't focus. And after only a few clicks for luck, well, what do you know...

The Chase Rare of Ravnica!

Or one of them, anyways. Turns out that block was pretty awesome all things considered. Anyway Bob here is called Bob because it was a card submitted to Wizards by Bob Maher, the winner of the 2004 Magic Invitational. And Bob was pretty well sought after when it was released. No, not because he was a 2/1 for .

Dark Confidant was the first highlight card for an interesting trend in Maigc. One that still goes on to this day as a niche part of 's wheelhouse and still overlaps and sometimes even conflicts with another part of that colour's core concepts.

But first, Bob himself. Who is not my Uncle, thank you very much. Bob is a very simple creature with a power and complex-in-utility effect, which means it appeals to my personal sense of good card design. Very simply put, at the beginning of your upkeep, you reveal the top card of your library and put it into your hand, losing live equal to its mana value. This is not a "May" ability, it's required. That's it. It's an additional piece of card draw that can cost you a variable amount of life.

But paying life to draw cards isn't a new thing. Not by a long shot. Everything from Sign in Blood to Phyrexian Arena exist, and from our modern perspective, this isn't something new. It's old and established. But Bob was printed twenty years ago. 2005. I looked at the entire block and you know what I didn't see? Black Card Draw.

Well, yes, there were cards that let you draw in that were not tied to other colours at the same time, but let's have a look at them shall we? Just to give you a sense of what had to work with at the time. We had Brain Pry which was an awkward discard effect that drew you a cad if it whiffed. And trust me, you wanted the discard. Cremate was good with Dredge out there, but again, that card was more a sidebaord tech against that mechanic than there as card draw. Nihilistic Glee... is... I barely recall this card existing and yet it only let you draw a card while you had no cards in hand. And Ragamuffyn was even worse. And Ribbons of Night required that you pay as part of the cost, so really, it's a card draw and doesn't count. Yes, two of them are repeatable, but they're tied to the Hellbent mechanic, which isn't the greatest thing ever, and I really need to add that to my shortlist.

But to put this in perspective, , the colour with the worst card draw, has four mono-colored cards in the same block that draw a card. Yes, they're cantrips, but it's still something. And the numbers weren't that much better in preceding sets. No, what Bob did was give the black player an extra card draw each turn, at the cost of a small amount of life.

Now, this was a good thing for two major reasons. First was that Scry and Topdeck manipulation was becoming a serious thing. In fact, Kamigawa Block was just before it, meaning that Sensei's Divining Top was in the same Standard rotation for a year, which perfectly enabled Bob to select and choose which card was revealed and how much life you were going to pay for it. Among its other sins. In addition, the following block, Time Spiral, introduced Scry as a mechanic meaning that topdeck manipulation became easier and was definitely here to stay.

The other reason was that this effect was each upkeep. Before you actually drew your card for the turn. Now, this may not seem like much, and it wasn't, but having an extra card in your hand during your upkeep did have narrow advantages, from checks about what cards were in your hand during the upkeep to having that extra piece of instant-speed interaction.

Or, you know, it was just having another card drawn each turn for the easily replaced cost of some life.

And again, this was twenty years ago. This sort of card draw was last printed in 8th Edition with that printing of Phyrexian Arena, but reliable and repeatable sources were hard to come by. This card reinvigorated a whole colour because of its ability, and people cracked packs looking for this guy almost as much as they looked for Shock Lands.

Bob was amazing, it was powerful, and it was trimmed back in favor of more reasonable one-shot cards that traded mana and life for draw, like Ambition's Cost and the many, many, many cards like that. Which isn't bad, and I think it's a good thing. 's whole thing is that they will pay life and other resources in order to try and gain an advantage in some way. Which naturally meant that while the cards itself has become ... mediocre in its own way, Wizards has come back to the concept again and again over the years.

There's about nine cards since then that does what Bob does. Sometimes they have little caveats, but for the most part, they all have the same function of adding an extra card to your hand for the cost of life. The most recent version is Caustic Bronco from Outlaws of Thunder Junction doesn't Do his Bob thing on the upkeep and instead when he... she... it... whatever attacks. Still reasonable. The gimmick here is that if this Mount has a rider, then its your opponents who lose the life of the card, and not you.

Duskmantle Seer is a forced Bob for everyone on your upkeep, which can work in your favor and can also shoot yourself in the foot as it was designed before multiplayer was a thing, and giving your opponents effectively free cards for a resource they may be swimming in given 2HG's starting total of 25, or Commander's 40 can be self-defeating. Much better in 1-v-1, I think. Keen Duelist is the same as the Seer, except it's you and target opponent, so you can pick and choose who gets the extra card.

Sorin the Mirthless is a Planeswalker that does this effect as a "May" on the +1 effect. Interestingly, because it's a may, you can just leave it there to draw regularly. There is a small drawback here in that you can't take that card and Surveil or Scry it first, but that is something that is easy to arrange now.

Stronghold Arena lets you pay to gain some life when you cast it through the kicker cost, and it triggers once per combat on combat damage rather than on your upkeep. The option to gain life first though is a nice way to give you a buffer because if you get a bad draw, you can lose a lot of life very quickly.

Dark Tutelage is Bob as an Enchantment, making it much harder to remove, but definitely not impossible. This is especially important for mono- decks that could sacrifice their own Bobs before they got into dangerous levels of life, but as an enchantment, their options became much more limited. Until it wasn't. But even then, most of this colour's Enchantment removal is in the form of causing their opponents to sacrifice things. Removing your own is much harder, unlike sacrificing your own creatures.

Bob and his friends work as a sort of extreme version of this colour's version of paying life for card draw. Yes, there are ways to manipulate it and to make it work to your advantage, from getting a land for free (because they don't have a mana value, you lose nothing to draw them) to picking up that extra card you need to finish your combo. Or if you have the life to spare because you're also in or .

But he was a product of his time, and honestly, the only reason he's been reprinted as a Mythic in various sets like Modern Masters or Ravnica Remastered is because of the lasting legacy of effectiveness that he enabled in the game all those years ago. He's good, but he's not that good. I mean, yes, I'm sure that people in the comments below will tell me of decks he's amazing in, but I will maintain that Bob's time has come and gone. He did something important to the game, but it's not like it's vital to anything anymore. has far more reliable means of card draw in these days than in those days.

So here's to Bob, and the convergence of factors that made him far more that he otherwise would have been. And his inevitable reprint for people who want one without understanding those same factors, and just hear about his storied history and legacy.

Thank you all for reading. I'll see you next week with something else. What? I'm not sure yet. But I'm always willing to lend an ear to suggestions and requests.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! 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!