Too often the Magic the Gathering community is divided between the casual, everyday players and the hardcore, tournament smashing, card-slingers.  Every new expansion brings with it a new set of issues that we all have to grapple with, regardless of our player profile.  The overall pace of the game affects every Magic the Gathering undertaking you will participate in.  Whether you're playing a 6-man game of EDH or you're at table 2 of a Grand Prix- the average number of turns in any given game is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing cards for your decks.

[caption id="attachment_9101" align="alignright" width="205" caption="Games are more fun when you don't know the final outcome."][/caption]

I recently wrote about "The Rule of Five" which, in summary is the current pace of a Magic the Gathering game.  If it doesn't happen sooner, turn five is usually the point at which you'll probably know who is going to win the game.  It is the point at which 20 damage can be dealt, it is when the huge threats start to drop and five mana is about the maximum amount of mana a fair-minded player is willing to pay for a spell.  But is that the pace you want your favorite game to proceed at?  Are you happy with about 5 minutes of suspense in your games, followed by another 5 minutes of "going through the motions"?  As a former Pro-Level Star Wars:CCG competitor, I much prefer a game that maintains a competitive, suspenseful edge for as long as possible.  Not just "more turns" but more active and suspenseful turns where neither player knows who is going to win or which cards might be coming their way.  Think about your most epic experiences with Magic.  Are they not the games that went on for 10 or 15 turns  and neither of you knew who was going to win?  That ability to recover, even after turn five,  is one of the keys to keeping a game fresh.  For some time now, I've advocated for a slowing down of Magic and Rise of the Eldrazi might just have answered my prayers.

The standard meta surely isn't the fastest we've ever seen.  Jund is a far cry from the turn three red-deck-wins, Fireblast, Seething Song aggro decks of yesteryear.  But Alara and her tri-land loving  spells keep most standard matches under about ten minutes, five of which are spent simply "going through the motions."  In the final matches of Pro Tour San Diego, the announcers accurately predicted the winners after the opening draws.  How much of a buzz-killer is that?!  While Alara's cascade mechanic, cheap multicolored spells and hasty creatures scream speed; the Zendikar block and RoE in particular make it seem as though the game might be slowing down for everyone.

The most obvious clue to the game's slowing is the ginormous price of the Eldrazi themselves!  Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple aren't going to get that 15CMC creature out much faster than turn seven if your opponent has anything to say about it.  And even then you'd better hope they don't counter, Terminate or Path to Exile him! (Who plays any of those lame cards anyway?)  This isn't to say "dies to Doom Blade" is the reason to hate on non-shrouded creatures; but it should be a tad concerning when you've undoubtedly built your entire ramp around a couple of squishy, game-ending targets.    Of course, normal mana-ramping methods do apply but great decks aren't usually built around god-draw-required mana-ramps (see the crazy over-hype of Lotus Cobra for more details on that).  But the Eldrazi are much more than a Darksteel Colossus +1.  They are win conditions in and of themselves so I would expect players to try and sneak them in any way they can.  Regardless of the combos you might use to try and get these dudes out quickly, the average converted mana cost in your post-Eldrazi deck is going to go up and you're going to need a long-game strategy.

The importance of CMCs when determining a meta's pace can't be overstated.  The cost of planeswalkers has also gone up significantly in recent releases.  In Alara, the cost of a planeswalker was 4 (Elspeth), 4 (Ajani V), 5 (Tezzeret), and 4 (Sarkhan Vol).  The prices on Zendikar? 6 (Sorin), 6 (Chandra), 4 (Jace and Nissa), 5 (Gideon) 5 (Sarkhan the Mad).  It might not seem like much but if the Rule of Five holds true, either these cards won't be played (competitively), or the game itself is slowing down.  I hope it is the latter.  I doubt we'll see a 4-drop, mana-ramping, aggro-planeswalker Garruk Wildspeaker ever again.

There has been a lot of controversy swirling around the new Level-Up mechanic.  Many players have called it "too slow" and "too expensive".  The fact that you must level up at sorcery speed has left a lot of players wondering- "why couldn't this have been faster?"  Tensions were high on twitter as Aaron Forsythe quipped "Let me know when you've thought about it as much as we have." in response to a fan-reaction to the mechanic.  Within the context of the current standard-meta we're looking at right now (Jund > All) I think it is fair to describe levelers as "slow".. maybe even "too slow".  But take a moment to look at it from Wizard's perspective.  If my theory holds, they are trying to slow down the game in order to promote what I like to call "fun" for the reasons mentioned above.  Within the context of M11, Scars of Mirrodin, and even "New Phyrexia"- these cards might make more sense.  When Alara rotates out, depending on the nature of SoM, we might be looking at a completely different pace of game.

[caption id="attachment_9097" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="You want fantasy? We'll give you fantasy."][/caption]

Try to think about these cards outside of the current "Is it better than Jund?" mentality.This downshift is going to be a painfully slow one (if you'll pardon the double entandre).  Think about it- even if Wizards had decided last year that they wanted to add a couple of more turns to the average game, there is no way to do that quickly.  You can't simply rotate Alara out early and if you print cards that are decidedly worse than Alarian spells, you wont be selling many Magic cards.  So what Wizards has done (as far as I can tell) is to slowly but surely "tap the breaks" with each new expansion. I see Rise of the Eldrazi as being the most obvious incarnation of this phenomenon, but even Zendikar was a step or two slower than Alara.   You have to start somewhere, right?   Thus far, no one has been tricked into playing anything other than Jund and from what we've seen of RoE, I doubt that will change before the next core set.  It's just too fast and god knows the Eldrazi are anything but.  So long as G/B/R can put out a 3/2 haste creature for four that also Blightnings you on it's way in, I seriously doubt Emrakul is going to make it to the party.

So for now, just enjoy your colossal, mythic overlords, your 4 CMC+ creature enchantments and your dreadfully slow levelers for what they are- casual, Timmy-ticklers that may or may not become competitively viable this fall.  But even if they don't, I know my EDH decks will never be the same.

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I hope that didn't come off as decidedly negative.  In fact, I am very hopeful for the future of Magic and very much hope the game will be slowing down.   Since M10, I've been thrilled with every expansion released to date.  As I said in the article, my roots and preferences are just in a much slower pace of game.  I see it as MORE fun to play the same match for a longer period of time and I cringe at the thought of "knowing who is going to win" on turn three.  I am honestly very excited for Rise of the Eldrazi if only to add all of the colorless cards to each and every one of my EDH decks!   But seriously, we've only seen about 25% of the cards in Rise of the Eldrazi so it's tough to judge just yet.  Keep an eye on our Rise of the Eldrazi spoiler page for all the latest developments.  Here are the newest spoilers: