So Jamie Wakefield bugs Wizards a lot. He harangues them constantly, telling them that Green is a crappy colour. He raves on about how Green needs to be given themes like the other colours have, not crappy critters that are worse than all the critters in other colours even though Green is the critter colour. So Urza's Saga comes along, and it looks like Green is getting some good stuff. Gaea's Cradle, Pouncing Jaguar, Wild Dogs, Albino Troll, etc. Green gets the good stuff at the low end of the scale, while Blue gets the best card in Magic, Morphling. Everyone thinks: well, Wakefield has to be happy about this. Green is finally good again. Then Legacy comes along, and Rancor is all the rage. Everyone thinks: Wakefield must be playing like 24-7.

Then, Jamie Wakefield says he is taking a break from Magic. Wakefield, taking a break? When green is the best it has ever been? When R&D has finally listened to his endless exhortations and made the game truly five coloured? Yep. Jamie is gone for a while. He stated that he would not be playing again while broken Urza's Block is legal. Funny, I feel the same way. I'm not taking a break from Magic, but Type Two just doesn't excite me the way it used to. Constructed Magic just isn't quite what it once was. You know why?

It wasn't Green that got the boost in Urza's Block so much as Stompy. Sure, Green got some good midrange cards, but nothing in comparison to Jaguar and Dogs and Rancor. Green's flavour in Urza isn't undercosted fat, utility, or card advantage without actually reading "Draw X cards". Instead, Green's theme is "kill you before you get to turn five". That isn't the Green Wakefield wanted, nor is it the Green I wanted. I like Green, but weenie decks just bore me. I look at critters with power equal to double their casting cost and shake my head. These aren't utility. These aren't card advantage. These are just critters that are faster than anything any other colour has. We don't need more of those in Green. All those do is contribute to games that last only four or five turns and aren't much fun to watch or play.

Of course, our story doesn't end here, on a sad, sad note. It continues, into a block much better and more balanced than Urza. A block where Green finally gets what it is supposed to have. Undercosted fat that forces people to find an answer or die in four turns. Not get killed on turn four. Critters that accept Wrath of God as an answer. I speak of course of Blastoderm and Hunted Wumpus. Look very carefully at Masques block at you will see a vision of Green for the new age. That vision does not include turn four Cradle powered kills. It does not include critters decks too fast to be stopped by Wrath of God. It instead includes an environment where Terror is a pretty good card. It is my firm belief that one can measure the health of an environment in many ways, and one of the best is the viability of Terror. If Terror is good, the environment can't be that bad.

(As a side note, the viability of Fish in Extended is much the same. When Fish is good, the environment is unbalanced in favour of some broken combo deck. When Fish is bad, things are probably as they should be.)

So things are changing. Slowly the Green environment is righting itself from the stumble that was Urza. As more and more new Green comes out (Here's hoping that it is in the same vein as Masques, not Urza), the world will continue to right itself until we have reached utopia. Sure, it's going to take a while yet before Bargain and Morphling and Masticore rotate into the land of Extended and Type One, but when they do, surely we will be living in the promised land of yore, where Terror is good, goldfishing takes six turns and lands that produce more than four mana per tap were never printed.

(But it feels so good to say Stroke myself for 20. I'll miss that most of all, I think. -Sky's Left Hand)

So wait a while. Wakefield and I have a lot in common, and one of those things is that we are both control players who prefer to control the game with gigantic monsters. I am patiently awaiting the day where there is no possibility that I will have to find an answer for Morphling or Masticore. Where stupid, stupid cards like Wild Dogs and Rancor are a thing of the past. I keep trying to discuss post Urza decks with people, and they keep telling me that it is silly to talk about a format where we don't know 500 of the cards. I don't care much about that, though. I am going to keep thinking about it, and waiting, and it will come, for I will be patient.

Truly, I don't know Wakefield personally, and I surely can't speak for him, but I would place a very confident bet that the very day Urza Block is no longer legal and we are using the next basic set in Type Two, you will see Wakefield wander back into his local store with some new creation to try out. I know I'll be there with bells on. Okay, probably just a new bandana and my cape. :)

I just went and checked out the raging debate on the Patrick Mello issue on a few other Magic sites. It's really interesting to see how a simple comment taken at face value can create an enormous fuss. Patrick certainly didn't mean what he was taken to mean, I think, yet he was insulted pretty seriously by some who read his comment. I remember when the Internet was new, and it was hailed as a utopian paradise where people were not separated by race, or class, or anything but what they chose to share with those around them. This incident, (In addition to my own little fiasco) have convinced me that there is truly a need for more non-text communication on this planet. The full range of human expression is not well communicated through text, and we get into more unnecessary problems that way...

If you want to read for yourself, this first started when Patrick was Player of the Week on the Dojo, continued with Alice Coggins' article on same, and is still going on Meridian Magic. (And elsewhere I presume.) Reading the whole story will make you think, if nothing else. Certainly our civilization could stand more of that.

Remember folks, I have a contest going on here, and all you have to do is make a deck with Field of Souls and Brink of Madness in it. Easy, no? Read my last article for details on the fabulous prize package and the specs.

Play Green,

stay rogue,

Sky Winslow Roy

swroy@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca

the rogue SKYcaptain