I’m only going to say this once, so pay attention:

Magic is not dying.

It’s not giving up the ghost, jumping the shark, or appealing to the lowest common denominator. No matter what certain tech journalists say, Magic is still growing strong.

At the PAX party WotC confirmed and displayed the first “double-faced” cards. These cards have two Magic card faces and no Magic card backs. I, for one, didn’t think it was possible. But seeing people’s real-time reaction on the Internet made it seem as if it was this that was finally going to put the nail in Magic’s coffin.

Like the 6th Edition rules.

And the creation of Magic Online that was going to kill the paper game.

And the 8th Edition frames.

And losing Counterspell.

And rotating Extended.

And the Time Spiral Timeshifted Sheet.

And planeswalkers.

And the move to four sets a year.

And the mythic rarity.

And colored artifacts.

And the M10 rules changes.

And sticking to the Reserved List.

But this, this would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. We’ll ignore the people at the party who were cheering when the large cards were flipped; they must have been booing and raging on the inside. Or they were, and it’s just been a huge conspiracy by Trick and me, and others who were at the party, who want to push WotC’s agenda. After all, it’s just something you just don’t talk about in public.

If you hate the idea of DFC, that’s fine; I want you to have an opinion. I’m not trying to be some message boy for WotC by saying that you should enjoy them. There are plenty of cards and concepts that I don’t like. I have an unhealthy hatred of Slivers. Does that mean I think they’re a bad design and shouldn’t be printed? Of course not; I just know that WotC printed them for people who do like them. On the flip side, I love Clash. I wish there were more Clash cards, but unfortunately, I doubt there will be because it was a mechanic that didn’t test very well with everyone else.

When they try out new ideas, WotC has been making Magic long enough that they have a general idea of who is going to like what. For the past few blocks, WotC has been printing some very controversial things, ideas and concepts that wouldn’t have worked out even five years prior. First it was tribal and planeswalkers, then colored artifacts, which was followed by colorless spells, and bringing back poison. Finally we get to the DFCs. You know what each of these have in common?

They took a chance.

Magic is a game that has grown by leaps and bounds for a few years now, to the point where practically the entire Internet flipped over one post on a tech website by a writer who said that because he played Magic, Jon Finkel isn’t dateable. Now, some of it was the fact that all geeks/nerds/whatever you want to call us felt attacked because that’s how life has always been for us, but whoever thought ten years ago that Magic would still be going strong? There were hopes, and wishes, but Magic is the longest-running and one of the most successful CCGs out there.

When you get to the top of your field, there are two ways you can do things. Taking a look at Microsoft and Apple for a moment, you can see how different their operational philosophies are. Microsoft was the company everyone was talking about until Apple came along and rose out of the ashes. If you follow tech history, you know that Microsoft continued along the same path it was following; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Apple, mostly out of necessity, had to keep innovating to stay in business. Because of this attitude, we now have the iPod, iPhone, and this fancy little gadget I’m writing this article on: the iPad. Even though they’re the top computer company in the world, Apple has never stopped innovating. I do think that even with the loss of Steve Jobs, they will continue that trend. Not everything Apple has done has worked, but they kept on working at it.

Because Microsoft decided not to change and explore new areas, they are not thought of as the go-to computer company any more. I have a laptop and desktop that runs Windows 7, which is great and reliable, but I look at innovations from Apple, not Microsoft. Windows will allow me to edit pictures without buying new software? That’s great. I’ll be playing with my touch device now.

Magic, at its core, is all about change and innovation. New keywords and mechanics come out every set. If WotC didn’t want to constantly change things up, we’d have no Standard, let alone Extended, Legacy, or even Modern. By accepting the Commander format and leaving it in the hands of the Rules Committee instead of taking it over, they’re trying something different. Every set, every idea is a new leap in changes and innovation.

DFCs are not a last-ditch shot to try to get people to continue playing Magic. If you were trying to get a bunch of players to stop leaving, you think werewolves and a cheap gimmick such as this would stop us from leaving? No. This is innovation, and it’s what you can do when you’re on top (I firmly believe that if Magic was “dying” that we’d see the Reserved List broken and get foiled Power 9/dual lands as one last attempt; but even with that, I doubt that Magic would be dead). You have the luxury of trying out new concepts that scare people, because you have the money and the luxury of not being canceled if it doesn’t work out. If this experiment doesn’t work, now you know and you won’t try anything like it again.

But I have a feeling it will work. Why? At the PAX party, that’s all the employees wanted to talk about, and that’s what we wanted to ask them about anyway. They read the rumor sites; they know that some of you were thinking that there would be translucent cards that would go on top of the other ones. I made a fool of myself when I was talking with DailyMTG.com editor Kelly Digges, saying that it was funny to think that people would believe that there would be no Magic back on these cards. Of course, after they were revealed, I went back to him and he laughed. Every one of the WotC people said they were fun, and they work out nicely.

I have to believe them. Yes, the same people who brought us Affinity and Jace 2.0 and Stoneforge Mystic also brought us DFC. But this isn’t something that they passed through at the last minute (which the other issues were); this is something they took very seriously. If it isn’t going to be fun, and if it isn’t going to improve the game then why do it? A mediocre bump in sales? And I’m pretty sure this won’t be the last time WotC does something like this—maybe not printing cards with no backs, but something crazy that none of us would ever think of.

Magic is not dying. Far from it. DFCs are the proof you need that they’re trying to stay on top of the game. All the stepping stones are set in place for it to last quite a while. and if fifty cards during one year (twenty in INN, an estimated fifteen in the next two sets) of Magic’s almost twenty-year history are enough to make you think the game is dying, I think you’re missing out on one fun game. Like a tech reporter who found out that being a little shallow and assuming the worst will cause her to be mocked by the entire Internet, all I’m doing is asking for a chance. If you don’t like it, I’ll understand your position.

But don’t cry out that the sky is falling, Chicken Little.

And now onto the Commander portion of this article:

Spending the day at PAX with Trick was a wonderful experience. Both of us are rather tall, bigger men (I stand at 6′ 3″; Trick is even taller than me), so I’m sure that we could’ve acted like football linemen and burst our way through the crowds at the Washington Convention Center. Trick told me that we all exaggerated our complaints all about the rain up here when all three times he’s been up here it’s been sunny. This week after PAX has been nothing but cloudy and rainy. Trick, come back up, please.

I got to play against, and with, Trick’s famous Kiki-Jiki deck, which was pretty cool. Yes, the 3D alter is awesome, and even Pete Venters, who did the original art and was there signing cards, thought it was great. He did pull off the greatest play of the day by casting Mogg Infestation on my creatures, then using Insurrection to kill me with an alpha strike. But all in all, it was a very fun time.

Stone Cold Commander of the Week (Of the Century)

But the real treat for us Commander players was the reveal of Olivia Voldaren at the PAX party:

Now, this is a B/R Legend I can support. 3/3 flying for 4 is pretty nice, but obviously the key to her is the ability to ping creatures to grow bigger and her ability to steal the creature’s she’s pinged. By pinging the creature, she turns that creature into a Vampire, which you can then steal for as long as you control her.

You can play her two ways, which combine for a singular way of playing her. You can steal your opponent’s creatures and then attack with them, or keep pinging your opponent’s flying creatures and make way for a large attack. Either way, you’re going to be a target on the table when this hits. Suddenly playing an Arrest type of enchantment seems pretty good.

But everyone who sees the card can come up with the pinging-and-stealing way (or, as Mark Rosewater put it, kill-you-or-turn-you), let’s work on something else. Why don’t you ping your own creatures to turn them into Vampires? Of course, she works well in a Vampire tribal deck where most of your creatures are going to be of the blood-sucking variety anyway, but if you have effects that make creature tokens, you might as well make them Vampires as well. Suddenly, Malakir Bloodwitch seems like a pretty awesome play with fifteen Vampires on your side of the table.

Whenever you have a tribal component in Black, I always like to suggest Patriarch's Bidding, which makes everyone else feel a little happy, too, since they can return their own stuff as well. And you can give them a ton of creatures to recur if you decide to use Death Pits of Rath in the deck, making each one of Olivia’s bites deadly.

We’re still a few weeks away from seeing everything that Innistrad has to offer. Vampires are going to be in B/R, so Olivia will have some more friends to play with. And as far as I can tell about the DFCs and their legality in Commander, I would say that you can’t have the card in your deck if both sides don’t match the color identity of your Commander. This means you can’t have Civilized Scholar/Homicidal Brute in your mono-Blue deck.

That’s it for this week. Next week, we’ll get back to the Highlander Collective. If there’s any Innistrad goodies, I’ll see if I can fit them in there as well.