Hello, everyone! I'm Levi from The Thought Vessel Show, and today we're looking at a mechanic that hasn't been used very much to this point but could become very popular in the future. The mechanic I'm referring to is Escalate.

Before we dive into Escalate as a mechanic, we need to cover a little background on the type of spell Escalate cards belong to: modal spells. The very first modal spell in all of Magic was Healing Salve, which either gained three life or prevented the next three damage from a source. At the time, Healing Salve didn't have the text "choose one" on the card, but it gained the wording when it was reprinted in Urza's Saga.

These types of spells are like a Magic player's utility belt, providing good but not great options to pick from. However, the variety of options makes them a lot more useful in various situations. For example, look at Rakdos Charm. Exiling a graveyard, destroying an artifact, or having each creature deal one damage to its controller are all objectively weak effects. But having a removal piece that can also serve as a win condition if a player has something like a token deck is very strong. If you play this game long enough, you will both win and lose to a resolved Rakdos Charm.

That is the charm of these types of cards. Being good at a lot of things rather than great at one thing leads to the ability to include a lot of unique corner-case effects in your deck, like countering a spell that targets you with Dawn Charm or gaining control of a nonland permanent with a mana value of one or less using Archmage's Charm. This is where Escalate comes into play.

Escalate is a mechanic that is always stapled to a modal spell. It first debuted in Shadows over Innistrad on six different cards. This was followed shortly after by Eldritch Moon, which added two more. The most recent set to use this mechanic was Modern Horizons 3, where Collective Resistance brought the total number of Escalate cards in existence to nine.

Escalate works similarly to modal spells in that you have a variety of effects to choose from. The difference is that Escalate allows you to pay an additional cost to choose more options at the same time. The additional cost is usually paid with mana, but in the case of Collective Brutality, Escalate is satisfied by discarding cards, while Collective Effort satisfies Escalate by tapping untapped creatures. Although the design team for Magic has not yet fully explored the potential of this mechanic, the power level of these cards can be quite strong. Let's look at some of the cards with Escalate and how they function.

This is a nice combat trick. It provides the option for either first strike or +3/+0 for only one red mana. For an additional three generic mana, you get both. Most of the time, that would be the difference between your creature living or dying. That +3 could also turn an attack fatal on a creature with double strike or with double damage, like Wolverine, Best There Is.

As mentioned earlier, Collective Brutality is one of the two Escalate cards with a cost that doesn't involve mana. By discarding cards, you can strip an instant or sorcery from a player's hand, take out a smaller creature, and drain an opponent for two life. Is that enough to make it into the 99 of a Commander deck? Probably not, but in a discard-themed deck, the additional utility could be nice.

Finally, we have the newest card, Collective Resistance, from Modern Horizons 3. I could see this card being played in a mono-Green deck or a deck with a very important commander like Koma. It can feel bad holding a bunch of slots in a deck for hexproof and indestructible spells since they don't deal with problems proactively, like playing more threats would. However, being able to protect an important creature while simultaneously destroying an artifact and an enchantment is much more appealing, even if it costs more mana than the usual rate of one to two mana on average.

In Outlaws of Thunder Junction, we got a version of this effect with Spree, which has various costs you can spend mana on to activate when you cast the spell. How Escalate differs is that any effect on the card can be selected at the same mana cost as any other, and more effects can be added on.

And there you have Escalate! Though this is an underutilized mechanic in Magic: The Gathering in the grand scheme of things, I believe we haven't seen the last of it. It's clear that these modal spells are popular in the game design space, and it's only a matter of time before we return to Innistrad or visit a brand-new plane that allows the creative design team to play with Escalate once more. Until next time, happy gaming!