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Andy Traylor's recent article"If That's Unfair, I Want ALL My Play Unbalanced" touched on a subject near and dear to my own heart, the never-ending obsessive search for"balance" in all things that leads the Magic R&D staff to - in the opinion of many - water down and ultimately hurt the game by flooding recent sets with an overabundance of mediocre cards.

Think about it. When was the last time you looked through a Magic set spoiler, flipped through a friend's trade binder, or tore open a booster, only to have your brain begin to flood with the first inklings of infinite possibility as you lay eyes on a truly awesome-looking new card? If you're like me, this happens quite a bit. It's a great feeling, isn't it? Now think back on how many times the excitement dimmed as you realized that no matter how cool the card's ability was, it was essentially"kiddy bait"; far too overcosted for competitive or even"competitive casual" play. No big deal, right? Every set has its clunkers. Then you look at the next card, and the next, and the next...

Sound familiar? Maybe the casting cost is just one (or two, or three...) mana too high. Maybe it has an awkward activation cost, or a very specific restriction that makes its awesome ability unusable in key situations. Maybe it costs just the right number of mana, but needs only one less of a particular color to be splashable into most of the decks it would be useful in.

Case in point: Personally, I didn't much care for the Odyssey set. When I though to wonder why, it occurred to me that if I went through the entire spoiler and chopped one mana off the casting cost of pretty much every 2+cc card...Well, if I didn't know better, I'd say that unlike now, most of them might actually be playable.

What's the problem? Balance.

I'm sure you've heard it before. The old Magic sets were"unbalanced." Cards like Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall were mistakes because they were unfair and too powerful.* The main reason Magic is so much better now is that cards are closer to the great ideal of balance. All equally powerful and useful. Right?

Well I have some news for you. Magic was never meant to be fair or balanced - at least not that way. That's boring. If the"balance" people had their way, Magic would consist of nothing but basic land and one creature (a 1/1 for four mana reprinted with a slightly different name in five different colors). At the very least, we'd all be playing decks like Eager Cadet Beatdown and Dwarven Pony Sligh. As a matter of fact, Star City's very own Ferrett once made this exact same point (and much more amusingly than I to boot).

You see, Magic is supposed to feature cards that represent the greatest and most awesome manifestations of wizardry. Cards like Timetwister, Black Lotus, and Mind Twist. These cards are intended to be the best of the best. Legends in their own time. They're supposed to make opponents shake with fear and be spoken of among newbies with a tone of hushed awe and disbelief. That's their role; ask any old-school player. And that was a very exciting part of the general atmosphere (the"soul") of Magic in the old days.

At the same time, Magic is also supposed to have some cards that are clearly junk - like Thoughtlace, Hill Giant, and Tunnel. Make no mistake: We need these cards as well. Every card can't be a winner - and that, too, is all part of the original, brilliant master plan. However, just because every card shouldn't be an Ancestral Recall doesn't mean that no card should be.

Ask yourself if the balanced sets we have now could have touched off the Magic craze if they were what first hit the cons back in 1993. Frankly, I think not. Black Lotus, Mind Twist, Swords to Plowshares, Time Walk, Lightning Bolt, and Berserk made Magic the success it is today. Magic then was fast-paced and unpredictable with a tremendous potential for sudden victories and dramatic upsets at any point in the game. If you had given the players"tap duals" and Lieutenant Kirtar then, Magic would have almost certainly gone the way of Spellfire almost a decade ago.

The lesson is this: The ideal balance of Magic is not a bland mish-mash where every card is"equally good." It's a balance between terrible, poor, average, good, and great cards. A full spectrum with either side and everything in-between fully represented.

Is it perfectly fair? Hell, no! It is, however, wild, crazy, exciting, cool, and (most of all) fun!

Now, Wizards works to undermine and unbalance the game in a much more important way. Specifically, they expect us to keep buying cards when they eliminate the greatness and keep the clunkers! Sets filled with chaff like Vizzerdrix, and suffering from a total lack of great cards like Black Lotus are unbalanced in a much more fundamental way that Alpha (or even Urza's Saga) ever was.

It's an open R&D secret that"bad" cards are often designed that way on purpose. That's fine with me. A lot of players rail against that fact, but not I. Lousy cards are a proud Magic tradition. As far as I'm concerned, R&D's primary mistake is not purposely designing more Type One-restrictable bombshells to accompany them. As it is, you have yin without yang. If you're going to give us more Sorrow's Paths and Rakalites in your sets, we'll allow that - we'll even shell out our hard-earned cash for it. If we're going to accept that prospect, though, you had damn well better include some Mana Drains and Necropotences in the bargain! Otherwise, what are we really paying for?

Over time, it's become increasingly clear that the history of Magic R&D has consistently been one of"it ain't broke, let's fix the bloody hell out of it!" The dismal results of this policy speak for themselves today.

Until Wizards realizes that"broken" cards are just as vital for a truly fun game as"balanced" ones, well, anyone out there have some basic Forests you're willing to trade me for this piece of crap Mirari?

* - Which reminds me; am I alone in the constant anger I've felt over the years (since at least 1995, or so) every time some knucklehead of a Wizards employee blithely insults the great old cards that made Magic a success to begin with by taking every available opportunity in print to point out what"broken" and"degenerate" mistakes they supposedly are? Show some respect for the history of the game! You wouldn't have a job now if Richard Garfield and friends had been better designers (by questionable modern standards, anyway). Yeesh!