I can hear the collective groans already.  Power creep and the ominous warnings associated with it are too often the stuff of common fanboy rantings.  So let me start this off by saying that the point of this article is not to compare the power/toughness and converted mana cost of past creatures to modern ones and crying foul.  At no point in this article will Serra Angel be compared to Baneslayer Angel as a representation of Wizard's horrible failings.  Examples such as these are simply unfair to the design team when taken out of context.  I am less concerned with the obsolescence of fifteen year old cards and more concerned with the subtle but often sweeping types of power creep that will hurt the game as a whole.  Alas, there are far more powerful forces creeping into Magic the Gathering recently and instead of complaining about a +1/+1 counter and lifelink being placed on Serra Angel 20 years later, I feel as though we should turn our focus elsewhere.

But what exactly is power creep?  To make sure we're all on the same page I'd like to provide you with a definition:

Magic the Gathering is unprecedented as a card game because of it's uncommonly long lifespan.  In many ways, the WotC design team is sailing into uncharted waters.  Can we reprint cards from 15 years ago?  How long should we wait between similarly themed expansions?  What percentage of the user base even knows about the "The Dark" or "Arabian Nights"?  These questions have never been asked by a company in the history of CCG creation, until now.  Through it all, Magic has essentially remained the same game.  There are still only so many things you can do in a game of Magic and the end goal is still the same.  Couple that with the fact that players demand better and stronger cards and it is understandable that, over the years, the game's individual pieces have become more powerful.  Overall, I think Wizards has done a fairly good job of keeping power creep at bay.  Cards have slowly gotten better to be sure, but the speed of this creep has been relatively sluggish (as it should be).  Here and there you'll find a block that is out of control or underpowered but, compared to other games that have fallen to power creep in just a handful of years, Magic has done quite well for itself.

[caption id="attachment_6188" align="alignright" width="235" caption="Is this not how Bloodbraid Elf usually plays?"][/caption]

That being said, there are some disturbing trends in modern Magic that keep my hand close to the "Power Creep Alarm" buzzer.  The first being the complete saturation and expectation of two-for-one spells.  Of course, spells like Flametongue Kavu have been around forever, and two for ones, when available, have always been favored by the professional player for card advantage.  But today, it's hard to find a tournament worthy card that isn't a two-for-one.  Planeswalkers are the obvious culprits here when it comes to getting multiple game effects on one card.  But let's take a closer look at today's winningest decks.  Fae, for example was chalk full of two for ones: Mistbind Clique, Spellstutter Sprite, Pestermite, Bitterblossom and even Cryptic Command has the words "choose two" printed on it.  Think things have changed since then?  Just go through the list of tournament viable cards right now- Vampire Hexmage, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Goblin Ruinblaster etc.  Jund makes it even more clear with Bloodbraid Elf, Blightning, Sprouting Thrinax... need I go on?  Is it just a coincidence that the two decks dominating standard for the past three years are based almost completely on the "more for one" concept?  Card advantage is probably the most underrated aspect of MTG strategy.  Even the players who use Fae and Jund don't understand that the reason their decks are winning is because they get to play two spells for one with every card they drop.  Cascade is the most glaring example of this, as it is almost unstoppable.  Are you going to counter or bounce Bloodbraid Elf?  Nope.  Doom Blade?  Maybe, if he didn't just cascade into a Blightning.  An uncounterable 3/2 haste creature for four mana that also makes you lose three life and discard two cards when it comes into play... If that doesn't constitute a shift in the power of an average creature, I'm not sure what does.  Designing two for one cards is one way wizard's has tried to avoid traditional power creep.  But ultimately, you're causing just as much harm as if you gave that creature an unpaid for +1/+1 and lifelink.

Which leads me to the next power creep pitfall: the influx of gold cards and an easily generated multicolored manabase.  There was once a time when the multicolored formulas held true.  A card was allowed to cost less if it required multiple colors of mana.  It was considered harder to play because generating two or three different types of mana was meant to be more difficult than producing just one.  That is not the case today.  How often does Jund struggle to find the correct types of mana?  Sure, they can get mana screwed just like anyone else but how often do they really want for that single black mana?  Almost never in my experience.  It is possible to build your mana base with exclusively dual and tri-colored lands with what is available in standard at the moment (and Worldwake is adding at least five more).  Right now, there is no difference between playing mono-red and playing Esper colors in terms of the difficulty of mana generation.  This throws off those multicolored formulas that have held true for so long.  Woolly Thoctar isn't any more difficult to play than any other three CMC, mono-colored creature out there, so effectively, the cost of a 5/4 creature as of right now is: three.  Instead of playing a 3CMC sorcery such as Mind Rot, you might as well play Blightning since it is just as easy to play in this multicolor-friendly environment.  Multicolored cards work well in a mana controlled environment but when mana bases are so incredibly simple to build, you might as well print a 5/4 creature for three colorless mana.

[caption id="attachment_6190" align="aligncenter" width="358" caption="What exactly is the creature P/T formula these days?"][/caption]

If it were just these two factors affecting the game of Magic, we might be okay. But couple these with the expected, traditional power creep and several other cumulative effects begin to emerge.  There's the issue of uneven power creep.  When you add unprecedented, powerful effects to creatures across the board- artifacts, enchantments and sorcerys are effectively replaced by said creatures, leaving entire swaths of gameplay for naught.  If one aspect of the game starts to creep, everything else must creep with it, including each of the colors.   Power creep also makes the game that much faster than it already is.  Unless Wizard's is planning on changing our starting life totals, the game is still based around the number twenty.  If 5/4 creatures that now cost three mana someday drop to two mana, then twenty damage will be reached that much sooner.  The game is already quite fast (see The Rule of Five) and shaving a turn or two off of a standard match would be one or two turns too many.

The game must move forward, I understand this.  And if printing a Lightning Bolt +1 made myself and my coworkers a million dollars and saved the game from oblivion for another year, I can't say I wouldn't print it.  I also understand the need to satiate those of us who have "seen it all" and long for something new and better in Magic the Gathering every rotation.  I have to admit, I would probably buy a few less booster packs if I felt the cards in that set weren't any better or more exciting than the cards I already own.  But there are good ways to address this, and there are bad.  Some good ways?  Jace, the Mind Sculptor is a great example of sustainable power creep.  Adding an extra ability to a planeswalker does make the card more appealing, but it doesn't touch any of the established mathematical formulas, speed up the game in any way or force the next Jace to be some bonkers incarnation.  Mulldrifter is a two-for-one at a fair price.  And Baneslayer Angel, while powerful,  doesn't tip any scales that haven't already been tipped and it's evolution is a fine example of Wizard's restraint over the years.   Many of the cards themselves are correctly printed, as is.  The current pitfalls are more ominous than a few overpowered creatures.  The speeding up of the game, the benching of entire aspects of that game and unintended power creep through multicolored spells/two-for-ones is what we should really pay attention to.  One day we might wake up to our standard games requiring only two turns, a two-for-one creature and a Fireball +1 to complete.

There are safeguards built in to the design process that Mark Rosewater has alluded to in the past.  There are a certain number of "Power Points" awarded to each expansion to be "spent" on various cards with varying power levels.  Once they are spent, they must go back and rearrange the set's structure such that the power points add up to the original number specified.  This works well, in theory, but in practice it fails to take in to account some of these cumulative power creep variables.  This does nothing to stop something like Cascade from being  undervalued in their power point system.  How many points do you award a card that lets you play two, three or even four spells of your choosing?   Sometimes you need to take a step back from the raw numbers and really look at what is happening to the game as a whole.

You and I can't do anything about power creep.  What you can do is be aware of the changes that are being made to Magic.  You can use this knowledge and understanding of the game to your advantage in deck building and in your every day games.  A sustainable power creep is expected, unavoidable and ultimately necessary.  And if the game continues to creep towards more powerful spells at the rate it is going now, I think we will be okay for a number of years to come.  However, if these other, cumulative factors are not taken into consideration, a stealthy and fundamentally more lethal form of power creep will disfigure Magic just as assuredly.  A Tipping Point is approaching.

(Head over to the spoiler pages for two new Worldwake Spoilers and some interesting Rise of the Eldrazi rumors that have been revealed since last time we spoke.)

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Just moments ago Wizards revealed a ton of new information on the new year's agenda!  From the Vault: Relics will be the next installment in that series.  Head over to it's page for all the latest details!  They also let slip a number of specifics for 2010; some old some new:

... and no, I didn't make that last one up.  ~Reinhart out