Hello, everyone, and welcome back to my miniseries on fungibility and how mythic rares have harmed the fungibility of Magic cards. This is part three; the first two parts can be found here and here. In those articles, I explained the concept, debunked some myths, and proposed a basic trading strategy for those who want to maximize their access to new Standard staples. Today, I'd like to look at what WotC could do to reduce the fungibility problem while still maintaining the appeal of the "mythic lottery" that has driven sales of packs to the casual crowds.

I should begin this article with a caveat. I will not be proposing extreme measures that WotC would be completely unwilling to adopt. So, for example, I won't propose that mythics be abolished (frankly, even I like the thrill of opening a decent mythic). That change would simply be unpalatable for WotC in terms of sales, because it would represent a turning-back of the clock that admits a mistake and implies they don't know what they are doing in design terms. Similarly, you will not see requests that mythic status be limited solely to permanents with outlandish mana costs (e.g., 7-plus), because having all mythics be essentially Standard-unplayable would greatly limit the design space in new sets. Finally, I am also not going to propose the end of Planeswalkers. The card type has been wildly successful from a sales/marketing perspective, and is still too new to have a full grasp on their impact on Standard (this does not mean, however, that I won't suggest modifications to how Planeswalkers are designed).

With that caveat in mind, I would like to present four core principles WotC could follow in order to improve the fungibility of rares and mythic rares, and allow more players access to competitive Magic without bankrupting themselves.

Principle #1: Maintain Relative Power Parity among Mythics

Many people look at the exorbitant prices of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Baneslayer Angel in 2010, Vengevine, and Primeval Titan and assume that their high price tags are a result simply of power creep and scarcity. While this is an understandable assumption, it happens to be false. None of these cards, for example, are off the power curve of Umezawa's Jitte, Arcbound Ravager, Necropotence, Bitterblossom, or Tarmogoyf. In fact, Tarmogoyf is a relatively recent card, under the old rarity system, that commanded a similar price to most upper-level mythics today. Only Jace, the Mind Sculptor is hands-down more valuable.

The problem isn't that cards, in particular mythics, are subject to power creep as a whole. Instead, the problem is that one or two specific mythic rares in each set are on a completely different power level from the rest of the set. M10 had Baneslayer Angel, Worldwake had Jace 2.0, and Rise of the Eldrazi had Vengevine and Gideon Jura. These cards were incomparable to the power level of the rest of the set, in particular the rest of the mythics that surrounded them. As a result, one card becomes valued at $30 or more, while the rest of the set is valued at $2 to $5.

If the rest of the mythic rares in a set are of a reasonable power level, even if a few are slightly more powerful (an unavoidable issue), this vast discrepancy will not be an issue. It is much easier to trade a few mid-level mythics into a high-power mythic (for example a Sun Titan, Inferno Titan, and Grave Titan for a Vengevine) than it is to do the same with low-power mythics (how many Quicksilver Gargantuans would you like for your Vengevine?). By this criterion, M10, Worldwake, and Rise of the Eldrazi would be design failures, but Zendikar and maybe Besieged (too early to tell) would be design successes. M11 is arguably a success as well, since there were four other reasonably powered titans, plus Baneslayer Angel, to trade for Primeval Titan. Obviously, it is important to maintain a reasonable level of parity across sets, as well as within sets, so that the cards needed for Standard remain accessible.

Principle #2: Limit the Number of Mythic Rares a Given Standard Deck Will Want to Play

In addition to maintaining reasonable power parity among mythics, it would also be helpful if Wizards made an effort to limit the number of mythic rares a given Standard deck will want to play. While this is difficult to achieve, as good deck designers will always work to make powerful cards work together, there are two steps that could be taken.

The first step is to place an emphasis on making mythic rares legendary. Simply by adding the legendary type to a permanent, Wizards can effectively ensure that most decks will only want to play three copies of the card, rather than the full four, which increases the available supply of the card in the market (because of diminishing returns, which I discussed in my first article). Glissa, the Traitor, Mox Opal, and Thrun, the Last Troll are excellent examples of this principle.

The second step toward minimizing the number of mythic rares that each Standard deck wants to play is to print tournament staples with wide-range applicability—in other words, cards that are easy to play in a large number of decks—at normal rare. Vengevine and Baneslayer Angel are cards that clearly violate this rule. On the other hand, the tendency to print cycles of lands, and the recent printing of the Zenith cycle (especially Green Sun's Zenith) at normal rare suggest a positive trend in this regard. Inkmoth Nexus is also a positive sign.

Principle #3: Planeswalkers Are Flagships, Not Role-Players

This principle is related to Principle #2, in that many Planeswalkers violate the concept that multi-archetype staples should not be printed at mythic rare. This is the quintessential problem with Jace, the Mind Sculptor. If your deck makes blue mana, and you are playing Standard right now, your test deck list likely starts with four copies (maybe three, if you're lucky) of Big Daddy. To ensure that this problem doesn't happen, Wizards needs to overhaul their design philosophy for Planeswalkers. Given the flavor of the card type—immensely powerful wizard allies, with agendas and personalities, who are helping out us (the other Planeswalker) at our request—I suggest that Wizards limit the printing of Planeswalkers to flagship cards, not just role-players.

What I mean by flagship is exactly what Mike Flores means by flagship, as he first presented in his Ravnica block set reviews. For reference, the Guildpact review in which he defines the concepts can be found here. Flores defines "flagship cards" as follows:

Playable—Flagship: This card has a powerful or unique effect, so much so that we build decks around it rather than fitting it into existing ones. Quite often the presence of this card allows for new archetypes to be explored. In some cases, those archetypes are not very good (but without their flagships, we would never even ask the question). Example: Mind's Desire, Upheaval, Balancing Act, Replenish

The idea of a flagship card is that in order to make use of the card's unique and extremely potent abilities, a deck needs to be built around it. This can be contrasted with role-player cards and with format staples, which fulfill a specific but widely applicable function. Examples of role-players/staples would be cards like Lightning Bolt, Birds of Paradise, Brainstorm, Mana Leak, and Path to Exile.

Under Flores's definition, there are a number of Planeswalkers that fill the role of flagship; that is, they need an entire deck around them to function, but when they function, they are extremely powerful. Elspeth Tirel, Venser, Koth, and both Tezzerets are examples of Planeswalkers that fill the flagship role. Elspeth Tirel, for example, is only worth deck space in a token strategy, while Venser is best in a U/W rock/Proliferate deck with a lot of 187 abilities, and Koth is excellent as a finisher in aggressive Red decks. Both versions of Tezzeret require a deck to be filled with artifacts in order to be effective. These Planeswalkers are very well-designed. They have a specific purpose, insert design tension into a format, and are only applicable to their own specialized archetype. Flavor-wise, they are good for specific types of "missions," which is probably the only time one Planeswalker would really want to seek out another.

On the other hand, there are also a number of Planeswalkers that are design failures. In particular, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Gideon Jura, and Ajani Vengeant all fit into the role-player mold rather than the flagship mold. Each Planeswalker has applicability across a number of archetypes, and neither one requires much deck-building support in order to be an effective threat. The clearest indication of this fact is the existence of U/W/r Super Friends during the Shards-Zendikar Standard season. Super Friends was a quintessential "good stuff" deck that relied on Planeswalkers to accomplish any task it needed done. Want to draw cards? Here's Jace. Need something to attack? Here's Elspeth and Gideon. Need a board-control engine? Gideon, Ajani, and Jace all bring relevant abilities to the table. The sheer flexibility and broad range of abilities allowed these cards to simply be jammed into a deck with some removal and counter-magic support, and then proceed to dominate at tournaments. While many may disagree with me on this point, I believe that regardless of how much fun they are to play with, none of these four Planeswalkers should have been printed.

From the perspective of fungibility, printing a number of cards with broad-range applicability at mythic rare and then making them difficult to interact with and appealing to casual collectors is a recipe for disaster. By limiting Planeswalker design to flagship cards, Wizards can still appeal to the casual crowd, maintain the flavor of Planeswalker design, and allow for interesting tournament decks—but without introducing immense price disparities into the secondary market.

Principle #4: Maximize the Positive Role of Commander in Trade Fungibility

The final principle is not a principle of designing mythics as cards, but rather a way of opening design space and propping up the value of mythics that aren't always playable in sixty-card formats. Commander is an excellent vehicle for accomplishing this goal, as it provides a structured format for casual players, which can help value cards and cards with powerful effects to maintain their value, even if most constructed formats are inhospitable to their effect. Glissa, the Traitor and Praetor's Counsel are excellent examples of cards that have powerful abilities but are ineffective in Standard due to vulnerability or cost. Commander, on the other hand, is a slow enough format that Praetor's Counsel can be cast, and to devastating effects. Similarly, Glissa is much more likely to be able to recur valuable artifacts when there are three other people presenting targets for whatever removal is in people's hands.

The design space that Commander provides is one of the main attractions of MtG to the casual crowd, and promoting the format will help to bolster this kind of demand, helping to minimize inequality of value between different mythics. The fact that Commander is a singleton format is also relevant for ensuring that a wide variety of cards find a home in hundred-card decks. The growing popularity of the format makes Commander generals (as well as other cards with casual relevance) excellent options for mythic rares.

Nevertheless, the casual market will only be vibrant if Wizards makes an attempt to promote it. The recent change of name from EDH to Commander, work toward standardizing banned/restricted (i.e. banned as Commanders) cards, and announcement of new Commander-focused products this summer all suggest that Wizards is committed to promoting the format. Still, perhaps the single largest way of promoting Commander would be to sanction tournaments and encourage prize support at the FNM level. While Commander is unlikely to make a good competitive professional or PTQ format due to the inherent variance of singleton, it is still a lot of fun and has potential to be semicompetitive. Granted, given the multiplayer nature of the format, tournament organization would require some creativity. One possibility that has been explored at stores in my area is the "Commander kill-zone," where points are awarded to multiplayer pods on the basis of both players killed and overall victory. Regardless of the format, however, I believe the payoff for such creativity is well worth the effort. Providing a prize incentive at the local level would encourage more players to build and maintain Commander decks, which has the effect of propping up demand for cards that are irrelevant in sixty-card formats. This simple change would greatly improve the fungibility of most players' collections (not to mention boosting card sales at local stores and for WotC).

Conclusion

Despite our recent experience with the vast discrepancy in the prices of mythic rares, I am optimistic that it is possible to accommodate the "gambling" appeal of the mythic lottery while at the same time enabling newer players to access the cards they need to compete in higher-level tournaments. The above principles provide a starting point for that effort, and although they require design teams to account for the secondary market more than they have in the past, I believe that by introducing mythics, Wizards needs to accept that they gave themselves that burden. Mythics, despite not changing the overall pricing of tournament decks, have skewed the price distribution within the decks to present a sizeable barrier for new players entering the game. Wizards should do its best to minimize that barrier.