Whose Name is it Anyway?

 

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another exciting: Blog post.

Alright, a little anticlimactic I will say, but you get the gist. Yes, boys, girls and the rest I wanted to talk to you about Magic: the Gathering once again. Now there's a lot of hay made today about Magic flavored Magic, and reskinning the corpse of a once beloved game series to appeal to more people.

And when we find out what a beloved game is, we as Magic players might one day experience that. But for now, let's talk about naming Magic cards over again.

What's that? Universes Beyond? No, functional reprints obviously.

Oh, you thought I was going to take a stand on UB? No, I don't have the mental faculties to try and talk about something like that. And I mean, why would I, plenty of much more intelligent people already made video essays, tweets and skeets about it more succinctly than I can.

But I did want to talk about cards that were named something else, and WOTC made them again just for commander players. Or, more likely, to fit the themes and mechanics of the world surrounding the cards for the environment that they wished to foster. Either way really.

So, let's get into it.

 

When discussing card games, players will often talk about the similarities between already existing games to bridge the gap for people who might not play. For example, when discussing new games, or talking about games' card draw in a vacuum several instances of [[Divination]] posting have been done. It's a ubiquitous card, mostly because we know what it does.

But interestingly enough, [[Divination]] is the imposter here. First printed in Magic 2010, it was predated 5 years by [[Counsel of the Soratami]]. Oh, Kamigawa you sneaky little minx, we meet again you sly dog. The card was later reprinted in 8th, 9th and 10th edition, but is often forgotten because the name is so directly tied to the plane of Kamigawa, we as players are unable to talk about it in conversation. Also, the name is kinda long. Also M10 was 2009, so people probably never heard of Counsel because it's from before the majority of players were in the game, or born.

But imagine if we could? "Hey man, you seen the spoilers, they have a new two mana [[Counsel of the Soratami]] in this set." 

 

Back-to-back in Portal Second Age and Portal Three Kingdoms, in 1998 and 1999. These cards are identical, both 3 and a B for draw 3, lose 3. Both have mundane names that allow them to be printed in sets without too much drama. Neither were legal in sanctioned tournaments of Magic until October 2005, when they amended how supplemental products worked for eternal formats.

BUT, [[Ambition's Cost]] was white bordered on first printing, clearly making it the superior card.

 

Oh, also, in Commander 2015, Craving was a rare, while Cost was an uncommon. This is for strategic reasons such as:

  

"This isn't even true, Reach is an Arcane"

Yeah, I know elephant in the room. BUT, for all purposes of gameplay in the twenty years that [[Kodama's Reach]] has been a card, I believe we have seen no distinction in it versus [[Cultivate]]. To further rub salt in the wound, the existence of Arcane cards has been undermined by Modern Horizons adding "Splice onto Instant or Sorcery", thus reducing the only truly unique aspect of Reach, worthless.

You know, unless you happen to be the one person playing Kamigawa spirits tribal with a focus on Ki counters.

 

"SEE, there's a usefulness to the card type, look!"

Yeah, whatever. Anyhow, there's almost certainly more examples of this sort of thing in Magic, but I am far too unmotivated to find them. SO, if you want to have your favorite talked about hit me up on Twitter @1Wollef, or drop a comment on the post itself. As always, stay safe and have a nice day.