April 29th, 2010 
samstod 
Today’s twitter feed has been aflame with discussions about the mythic rarity (probably because of people’s hatred of Vengevine being mythic.) People blame mythics for ruining Magic and making the game too expensive to play. A lot of people are claiming WotC has gone back on their promise of mythics, that they wouldn’t be 4 ofs or tournament staples.
But that isn’t what WotC promised. Here is what MaRo said:
This now leads us to the next question: How are cards split between rare and mythic rare? Or more to the point, what kind of cards are going to become mythic rares? We want the flavor of mythic rare to be something that feels very special and unique. Generally speaking we expect that to mean cards like Planeswalkers, most legends, and epic-feeling creatures and spells. They will not just be a list of each set’s most powerful tournament-level cards.
We’ve also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not want to be mythic rares. The largest category is utility cards, what I’ll define as cards that fill a universal function. Some examples of this category would be cycles of dual lands and cards like Mutavault or Char. That also addresses a long-standing issue that some players have had with certain rares like dual lands. Because we’re making fewer cards per set, in the new world individual rares will be easier to acquire because each rare in a large set now appears 25% more often.
Mythics have, in fact, done a good job of fulfilling this role. It has lead to a few very expensive standard rares (Elspeth, Baneslayer and Jace being the biggest offenders), but it’s not like we haven’t had those before. Back as far as Cursed Scroll we’ve had rares that are leagues beyond the majority of the set in value.
People seem to confuse tournament staples with utility cards. Vengevine is in no way, shape, or form a utility card. In fact, I’d say it’s pretty epic. It does something that other green creatures don’t do.
Where I do think WotC has gone slightly wrong is in putting cards like Baneslayer Angel as a mythic. Admittedly, I wouldn’t want to see it in its current form as a rare either. I’d prefer a 4/3 as a rare, or even a 5/3. Or just take away First Strike or Lifelink. But as a mythic, it doesn’t inspire anyone to build a deck – it’s just very efficient. Epic, for sure, but that’s not because she does something new – she just has better stats by a mile than anything printed before. Jace poses another problem in that he is cheap enough that any deck playing much blue at all can play him, and he is better than just about anything else at that casting cost. There isn’t a way to go wrong with him, and he works well in all strategies. It ends up warping all of the blue decks in the format around Jace. I hope that in the future we end up with more Planeswalkers like Ajani Goldmane who is awesome in the right deck, but not a requirement for all white decks.
In my mind, mythics should be cards that make tournament decks, but not every deck of that color. Vengevine doesn’t go into every green deck. But if you can reliably cast two creatures in a turn, then he is going to be really good (especially if you have a way to get him into your yard without casting him.)
Time Warp is a wonderful mythic. You don’t want it in every blue deck, but you want to build a deck to abuse it. Warp World is a rare, but easily could be mythic. After all, you are playing a spell that has an effect that flips the entire game on it’s head. Vampire Noctornus doesn’t go in most black decks, but when you put it in a deck full of vampires, he becomes a powerhouse. Even Lotus Cobra requires a certain level of work to get his full potential.
Previous tournament staples that would have been perfect as mythics:
Living Death
Recurring Nightmare
Timespiral
Tolarian Academy
Lin Sivvi
Morphling
Yawgmoth’s Will and Bargin
Burning Wish
Mirrari’s Wake
Urborg
Akroma
Goblin Piledriver
Arcbound Ravager
These are all cards that saw massive amounts of play in their respective formats, but they all required decks to be built around them. In Flores’s wording, they are Flagship cards. These are the cards that inspire people to build decks. Mutavault shouldn’t be mythic because it doesn’t inspire someone to build a deck. Bitterblossom could be because it requires your deck to do a specific thing for it to be good.
Now, I do think there has to be a balance with mythics. Artifacts and creatures are hard because you wouldn’t want Jitte or Rishadin Port to end up as mythics. Either one would probably approach the $100 range because almost every deck in the format would be playing them. Mythic lands or artifacts should require work to become good. Otherwise you end up with a card that goes into 2/3rd of decks being opened up twice per case.
As long as mythics need to find a home in the right deck, people will not be scrambling to hoard their playsets. They will be willing to trade them, even if they are at a higher overall value than rares. At some point people will realize this, and the price spike we’ve seen in the last few years will return to a normal level.
With the exception of a few cards, mythics are not a problem. The cost of mythics right now is related more to Tarmogoyf Syndrome and people’s need to get playsets of hot cards before they hit the big values, and hold on because ‘they only go up.’ If people were more willing to trade or sell their mythics (instead of hoarding), then the price overall would drop. The Zendikar fetches took a long time to settle down to a reasonable price because people were obsessively trying to fill their playsets. Once people began to accumulate 5ths or 6ths, the prices found what seems like a more reasonable level – $10.
Despite any slight issues that I have, I respect WotC’s decision in making the mythic rarity. They have clearly put a lot of work into making the decision, and overpowered cards have always existed. While it is frustrating to have to pay $200 for a playset of an in-print rare, over ten years ago, we were paying $100 for a playset of Ports, and Tarmogoyf playsets hit around $200 at their standard height. There is a fine line between cards that are powerful and exciting, and overpowered and frustrating. Mistakes are going to happen, and I’d rather have WotC take risks then let Magic become stale.
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Great article. I agree with what you wrote. Here’s my rant that’s only loosely related to your article.
I don’t think the mythics are the current issue. I think the amount of bad rares in the last two sets might be a larger issue. Mythics don’t seem like an issue if you can open a traditional rare and it’s not bulkish. This wasn’t an issue in M2010 or Zendicar. However it seems for the most part that Worldwake and RoE have no legitimate money rares.
Magics biggest issue is the health of Legacy. I don’t think Legacy is salvageable with the reserved list. Super Extended is the best option but they must reprint cards. Best solution in my opinion is to replace the token spot with a “Past-Shifted” card that is only legal in the format that the sets it was in is legal. In limited it’s treated like a token, you would simply set it aside for deck reg or booster drafts.
The only other solution is real life Masters Edition. Either way this is necessary to stop cards like Port from being the next $100+ card.
This is a much more important issue then Mythics. I think Mythics overall is fine.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jonathan Richmond, samstod. samstod said: A little over 1,000 hastily written words on my thoughts on mythics are now up on my new webpage http://incontentionmagic.com/?p=111 [...]
@ SAM, GREAT ARTICLE. MAGIC PLAERS ARE BAD AT SCREAMING ” THE SKY IS FALLING” ALL TO OFTEN. I ALSO AGREE WITH YOU ON THE GOYF SYNDROME. IT IS THE REASON CARDS ARE GETTING SO HIH. ALSO, I’D LIKE TO NO THE PRICES ON EBAY OF MYTHICS RIGHT AFTER THEY COME OUT AND WHAT THEY ARE MONTHS LATER. A TON OF MYTHICS HAVE DROPPED. ONE LAST NOTE; BANESLAYER WAS CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP WHEN IT CAME OUT AND ITS AN ANGEL THAT IS ACTUALLY GOOD( DEALER STANDPOINT: ANGELS AND DRAGONS SELL REGARDLESS OF THEIR STATS$$)
@DAVID
PRICES FOR LEGACY ARE GOING UP ( GOOD FOR ME) SO ARE IN PRINT TYPE 2 CARDS. COULD THIS HELP THE ISSUE?? I LIKE YOU IDEA OF SHIFTED CARDS BUT i AM AGAINST A REAL LIFE MASTERS ADDITION.
People always cite the wrong article on Mythics. Forget MaRo, his words are pretty much chosen to carefully avoid precise interpretation. Bill Stark, on the other hand…
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/6
“The directive for [Mythics] had been clear: they were to be powerful, important story tellers but not necessarily Constructed auto-includes.”
Jace and Baneslayer Angel are necessary Contructed auto-includes. There is no argument here. Yes, R&D has gone back on a promise, yes, that promise was obvious, and yes, their violation of it was entirely predictable.
Bill Stark runs his own web site about Magic: the Gathering, and the article was identified as a guest article. However, I see that at the time of the article you quoted, “Developing Shards of Alara”, he was indeed working for Wizards of the Coast.
Even so, he was someone who worked on developing a new set, not someone in their public communications department. Thus, it is possible he misunderstood the policy on the Mythic Rare rarity level, and Mark Rosewater’s article, given that he holds a higher-ranking position within Wizards, should be understood to be more likely to be close to the official position on this matter.
Also, “not necessarily Constructed auto-includes” simply means that not every Mythic Rare needs to be a Constructed auto-include; it does not mean “not ever a Constructed auto-include”.
Nor does it mean “not ever a necessary Constructed auto-include”: the word necessary means necessary for the player, the way you used it in talking about Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Baneslayer Angel. In the article by Bill Stark, “not necessarily Constructed auto-includes” uses necessarily to refer to what is necessary in the design of the set; not every Mythic Rare in a set has to be a Constructed auto-include. In no way does that mean that no Mythic Rare can be one.
^ What he said
People always seem to want to justify their own opinions about rarity by claiming that Wizards has somehow gone against its word when they really haven’t. Whether or not cards approaching these values are good for a competitive game is a different argument entirely (and one I’m much more sympathetic to, though still not certain about).
Here’s another thing people forget: because the sets from Ice Age through Onslaught were so large, the rares in those sets showed up in almost exactly the same frequency as mythics do now. Bleiweiss has done the math on this numerous times in his articles. So the difficulty in getting that Jace is about the same as getting that Rishadan Port or Cursed Scroll back in the day. The bigger issue is the combination of the increased growth of Magic and the fact that people don’t take inflation into account. The MSRP of packs have been keeping price with inflation pretty consistently, which is why it costs $4 a pack now for Zendikar compared to like $3 a pack for sets like Invasion or Urza’s Saga. This also means that that $30 Cursed Scroll or Rishadan Port would be closer to $40 now–not too far off from $50 for a Jace or Baneslayer.
And sticking with that, the current fetchlands are worth much more than their Onslaught predecessors were in terms of supply since they show up so much more frequently than the old ones did, yet still (even adjusting for inflation too!) are worth about as much now as those were then.
Rarity serves no purpose other then to help regulate limited and to sell packs.
I’m so tired of cards being mythic because they are “flavorful”. An orange dot in the middle of the card is not good story telling, that’s what the fluff on the bottom of the card is for.
If they’re going to try selling us that angle then every mythic should be legendary otherwise a fleet of baneslayers on board just doesn’t make any sense.
Can you imagine if every time you played street fighter in the arcade the game asked for an additional 50 cents if you chose Ryu over a less popular fighter like Blanka? Probably not because if you want to give the impression of a balanced game you don’t make wallet size a contributing factor
Not related to article directed at this idea that legacy is doomed because of cost, I find this idea completely misguided by a few articles regarding the reserved list. Basic argument starts around either tabernacle or underground sea, these do cost money, but the thing with legacy that people for get is that it only cost money once, right now the RWU deck to win SCG open in Atlanta has 12 Planeswalkers 3 jace, 3, gideon, 3 elspeth, and 3 ajani, Pretty sure it plays baneslayer also, point here is that except ajani, these all cost over $30 and they will drop and fluctuate a little, but not to much until they rotate, Then there will be more $30 cards to buy, over the course of 3 sets you will spend probably the same amount as you would if you played legacy, As for superextended i am not in favor of this, because it is ideally taking something people want to play and something people dont and smashing them together, Second it isnt exactly like any reprinting of key cards needed would drop the price even if it does, i would rather pay $50 for a FOW from 13 years ago then $30 for a shinny new one. I also think if you cand afford standard at a competitive level then legacy doesnt cost too much more.
I don’t think mythics should have to be “build around me” cards; the rarity of a card shouldn’t telegraph how to use it. All I want of a mythic is for it to impress me on every level with its awesomeness, because a card that’s so hard to acquire should feel worth the trouble. In my opinion, the size, great number of abilities (including the unique, flavorful “protection from Demons and from Dragons”), and Angel status of Baneslayer Angel make it awesome enough to be mythic. Jace, the Mindsculptor’s ultimate ability and planeswalker status similarly impress me. Of course, when making such generally useful mythics Wizards must, for the sake of their revenue, be careful not too make too many deck types too expensive for most players.
I do feel that the flavor aspects of some mythics could be improved. For instance, nothing about the flavor of Vengevine suggests that it’s a particularly special elemental in the world of Zendikar. (In contrast, the name of the mythic Avenger of Zendikar suggests that it is a being with a special destiny, called into existence by the crisis of the plane, not just another big creature.)
[...] news for all, the M11 intro packs will feature 60 card decks, amen. More on Mythics from Sam Stoddard of the in Contention podcast here on MTGcast. Here is [...]
LOL@ the idea of Arcbound Ravager being a Mythic! Certainly what the Affinity deck needed was for its staple rare to be worth $100 instead of $25. Please stay far far away from WotC R&D.
The problem with Mythic rares is that they’re not. There’s nothing “mythically rare” about them. Baneslayer Angel is one of the most common white cards in standard. Emrakul, The Aeon’s Torn will be the same way(my opinion). When you can reliably Summoning Trap a card like Emrakulon turn 3-4, WHY WOULDN’T YOU.
As I see it, Magic is warping from a strategy game to a cash game, with the winner decided not by who has the best deck or is the better player, but by who can afford a playset of whatever the current overpowered, unbalanced powerhouse card is.
For Mythics to live up to their intended purpose but still be balanced, WOTC should have brought back the restricted list and restricted Mythics by default. That would allow them to live up to their “Oh My God, it’s the rarely seen but dreaded…..” intent instead of their current “wow, another Baneslayer Angel”. They would be game-changers without being game-owners.
[...] contention (Sam Stoddard) schrijft over Mythic vs. Rare. Is Wizards goed [...]
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